A Certain Lack of Focus

Make My Day

When I got outside I was not at all surprised (though somehow, even still, dismayed) to see my car buried in the snow. My Subaru was one of only two in the lot, the other a truck, with a man I hardly noticed waiting for the engine to warm.

Resignation. I ran a gloved hand around the frame of my car door, relieved when the snow flaked off, no coat of ice lurking beneath. At least it would clear off easily. I sat down, legs outside, put my keys in the ignition. And looked up as my snow-cave car brightened in sunlight.

The man from the other car had wiped his snow-brush, the size of a janitor’s broom, across my front window. Another quick stroke cleared the snow from my back window and that awkward triangle back back window. I grinned at him. In five seconds he had spared me five minutes cold work. “Thanks!” I yelled through the glass.

He gestured with the brush. “Close your door!” Then he quickly cleared off the rest of my car while I sat comfortable and happily bemused. When he finished, he opened the passenger door, peered in, and said, “You have a NICE day.”

Undoubtedly.

Weeks or months ago: just before the downpour started I realized my front tire was flat. Found my jack missing, called AAA, got the spare on. The spare was also flat, but fortunately, not all the way.

I drove slowly and neurotically to the gas station and realized I wasn’t sure how to use the air pump. I pulled out my phone and texted my husband for advice.

Meanwhile I climbed out of the car and compared the air tube to my tire with some puzzlement. I noticed the tag on my tire with psi recommendations just before Matt texted me to look on my tire for psi recommendations.

Perhaps 45 seconds had passed from the time I parked my car when another car drove toward me. Before he even came to a stop, he leaned on the horn.

At first I thought he must be honking at someone else. I made the universal “what?” sign with my hands and shoulders. I glanced back at at the air tube, almost defensively. I wasn’t sure how to use the psi recommendation since I didn’t have a tire pressure gauge.

The man climbed out of his car. He was redfaced and breathless with rage. “Are you going to use it or talk on your phone!?”

Anger prompted anger, but I did my best to stay calm. “Well I’m trying to figure out how to use this,” I tried to explain. “I’ve never had a flat tire before.”

He shouted over me. “Are you going to use that? So why are you playing on your phone!?”

“I’m talking to my husband, he’s helping me-”

“Why are you blocking the air pump while you talk on your phone!”

Finally I gave up and yelled back. “My husband is telling me how to use the air through the phone! Why don’t you back off so I can use it?”

He glared at me, purple now. “A PHONE won’t help you do that!” He drove off.

My car was in front of the air pump for a total of five minutes. Most of that was yelling: once the man left I took about a minute to figure out how to insert the air tube and took a guess at tire pressure. After I saw the flat, it took me 20 minutes (in the rain) to admit I couldn’t find the jack, 45 minutes for AAA to get there, and another 15 minutes (in the POURING rain) to get the spare on.

I missed a doctor’s appointment, hoped I wouldn’t need to cancel my hair cut, and stressed about having to buy new tires, but even damp and rushed, I wasn’t in a bad mood until that self important jerk started screaming at me.

Small gestures, kind or mean, can have an incredible impact. When I was a kid in a Catholic school we had “Random Acts of Kindness” week. It was beyond lame. An obvious shortcoming was that orchestrating something like that sort of negates the whole “random” aspect. The suggestions were stupid and forced, the whole process brought with it a cumbersome self consciousness.

I can see now though, the hopeful mind behind it. When I feel the flush of happiness caused by something so simple, (or the fury caused by a minute of thoughtlessness) it’s easy to believe the world can be changed in small, slow pushes. I remember the movie “Pay it Forward.” It was an interesting concept, but honestly a bit unbelievable. The problem with “pay it forward” as the Sixth Sense kid imagined it is that it depends on such large acts. The movie implied that you have to give an awful lot to get anywhere, but I don’t think that’s true.

Maybe the things we do for (and to) people, the things that could change the world, can be so tiny we hardly realize we’re doing them. As small as yelling, as brushing off some snow, a snide comment or a compliment. Maybe the cascade will be so slow we won’t see the effects in our lifetimes, but that doesn’t mean they go nowhere. Every day we change the world.

*domino photo from Malkav

Zombie Stores

Halloween is my favorite holiday, it always has been.

Part of the lead up to Halloween of course involves not only costume shopping, but generally trolling (hah) among halloween stores to see what beauties they’ve come up with this year. I choose to pretend the travesty of inflatable decorations do not exist, but otherwise, most Halloween decorations can’t be to cheesily spooky for my taste. Motion activated hand in a bowl, fake flaming cauldrons, strobe lights, it’s ALL good.

You can usually get a good dose of Halloween gloom at craft stores and fabric stores. Novelty stores like Hot Topic, Spencers, and their smaller counterparts are always good for some unique creepy items. Of course the big box stores like Walmart and Target usually dedicate a decent sized section to “seasonal” items.

For the most pleasantly overwhelming experience though, the best source is a dedicated Halloween store. The quality of these stores varies, but you’re pretty much assured to be surrounded by grey, black and orange props, often extensively enough to spend hours giggling over fake corpses and daggers.

Even in the “higher end” versions of these stores you’ll be hard pressed to find anything not made of plastic, they tend not to have anything particularly fine, but that’s really not the point. While a store full of Christmas decorations can probably cause a tinsel seisure, oversaturation of Halloween decorations just produces little kid giddiness.

I’m always curious about these stores though. In recent years they’re HUGE, the size of a Best Buy or a Target, because often they’re in a building that used to BE a Best Buy or a Target. Often the very same shelves that previously held decorative pumpkin scented candles, now hold… decorative pumpkin scented candles.

You don’t find this sort of retail recycling for any other holiday or event. Halloween stores are almost universally in previously empty buildings whose previous residents went out of business anywhere from 6 months to 6 years ago. Then on November 1st they’re gone without a trace like Mr. Elvis’s Magic Shop, leaving the boarded up shell in their wake.

As much as I love these stores, I find this a little disconcerting. It seems like these stores rely on a failing economy for their existence. I’m not trying to make some political statement, revealing Halloween stores as soulless opportunists, it just seems weird. It is, appropriately, creepy.

Where are the stores when there is not an abundance of empty buildings? Living in the Steel Belt, it’s hard to imagine this being a problem. I can’t see Halloween stores having a hard time finding a spot any time soon. But what happens on the highly hypothetical day that Cleveland’s economy explodes? Do these stores just disappear?

I don’t think so. I think they find a place where there was no space before. On a previously empty wall, a door glowing at the edges with evil smelling fake fog. A construction site completed overnight, then bulldozed again next month. Maybe a derelict house on the corner turns on a neon sign and starts selling ghosts. You follow a black cat and realize you’re lost in a part of town you’ve never seen before, and that you’ll never find again.

How else COULD it be? It’s Halloween.

Frozen

On September 29th, a U.S. District Judge dismissed Janice Langbehn’s lawsuit against Jackson Memorial Hospital.

(click for larger version)

In February of 2007, Janice and her life-partner Lisa Pond were beginning a vacation with three of their four children when Lisa collapsed on the deck of a cruise ship. Lisa was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital (Florida) and Janice followed with their children as quickly as she could.

Half an hour after arriving at the hospital, a social worker went to Janice and told her, ““you are in an anti-gay city and state. And without a health care proxy you will not see Lisa nor know of her condition.”

Janice, a former health care worker, responded quickly, having her legal Durable Powers of Attorney faxed to the hospital. In spite of this, Janice and their children were left in the waiting room with no information for several hours. Eventually a surgeon told her that Lisa had suffered an aneurysm and would have no recovery.

A priest came to give Lisa last rites, and Janice attended with him, seeing her life partner for the first time in five hours. After the rites, Janice was ushered back into the waiting room.

Lisa was in the trauma room for 8 hours, but Janice was denyed the comfort of being with her during her final hours, minutes. Their children, legal children of both Janice and Lisa, were not allowed in to say goodbye before their mother died. Jance continued to wait in a non-informational bubble until Lisa’s sister came to the hospital. At that time, Lisa’s sister was told that Lisa had been moved more than an hour ago. They had not bothered to tell Janice or their children, waiting in useless space. The blogpost explaining the case can be found here.

In some ways, this story has nothing to do with Same Sex Marriage. Power of Attorney is exactly the legal protection someone is told to get if they want to make sure they’ll be allowed to be present in the event of a loved one’s deathbed. This is the power that allows you to make medical decisions for someone, to stay informed on their condition, to be allowed to visit their bed if it is medically possible. If a gay woman with Power of Attorney was denied those rights, there is no reason to believe she would have been given information and access even if she had a legal marriage. There was NO legal basis to keep Janice away from Lisa as she lay dying. As for keeping out the children, there is no human explanation. It’s nothing short of hateful.

The dismissal of the case is an endorsement for Legal discrimination based on sexual orientation.

This is not being overly dramatic. If there is no other legal basis for the decision, it can only be legal discrimination. My concern, beyond the obvious unfairness, is that if it is “ok” to discriminate based on sexual orientation for ignoring Power of Attorney, perhaps it is also ok to discriniate for treatment. This may seem like a stretch, but the precedent has just been set. I only hope they appeal.

In other ways of course, this is entirely about gay marriage. I have never understood why people who feel it is “wrong” for gay people to marry, think their belief entitles them to make the marriage illegal. Laws are meant to protect us, not to cage us, at least in this supposedly free country. Having same sex marriage in no way harms those who feel it is immoral. Keeping it illegal on the other hand, harms many.

I do not however think that legalizing gay marriage is the solution. Rather, I think all “legal” marriage should be abolished. Too many people of this country have proven that they are incapable of understanding the difference between legal marriage and religious marriage. Here is the point: the rights given by a legal marriage CANNOT be determined by religious standards. It doesn’t matter if we call it a marriage or a bunny rabbit; the only thing the STATE can grant two people, any two people, is a civil union. Currently, most states call this civil union a marriage. A few states call civil unions a marriage when it is between a man and a woman, but a civil union when it’s between two men, or two women.

It’s idiotic. Let’s just call them all civil unions and be done with it. If marriage is so loaded a word that we automatically attach religious meaning to it, the state has no business granting it, any more than it should start baptizing babies, or mandating fasting periods.

It is as problematic to have the state grant marriages as it would be to have the state tell churches who can marry. If the idea of having two men marry seems wrong to you, imagine having the government tell your church that they must allow men to marry each other.

Leave marriage where it belongs: In church. It should be up to churches to decide who can and cannot marry. If your church says it’s a sin for a woman to love another woman, that is their right, no one can force them to allow it. That’s what a separation between church and state MEANS. Meanwhile, if those crazy Unitarian Universalists start marrying Jane and Jane, WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? Please. I am begging. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Let them live their lives freely.

Slinking Suburbs

I heard a story on NPR the other day (ok, maybe the other week) about a weird trend in recent post bubble real estate, where realtors pay ACTORS to pretend to be neighbors in suburbs, with staged barbecues and invitations to nonexistent little league games, so that an empty neighborhood would seem to have people living there on Open House day. The feeling I got from the story, and that I get hearing people talk about suburbs in general, is that does not just represent the dishonesty of some realtors, it is an example of an atmosphere of duplicity that is increasingly associated with the suburbs in general.

Why does everyone hate the suburbs? Why have the suburbs come to represent all that is evil, all that is fake, soccer moms and security moms and helicopter parents and materialism? This annoys me, because as Matt and I start looking for a house I find myself having to defend our choice to look in pure suburbia.

Really I know the whys. One of the first culprits is Tim Burton. More specifically, Edward Scissorhands. I’m sure this movie wasn’t the first vision of suburban sameness, but the uniformly green grassed sameness has come to be part of popular consciousness, whether people realize it or not. The creepy echoes in Buron’s invented neighborhood are a fairly accurate reflection of many developments in post 1960s America, but they just as well describe the world of Camazots from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Not exactly positive associations, as was clearly intended.

And that’s fine. The artificiality being satired in Edward Scissorhands absolutely exists, and it can often be found in the suburbs. The problem I have is with the modern assumption that the suburbs are the cause. I grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a small enough city that it might as well be a suburb of itself. In my memory I lived in two different houses that were both cookie-cutter floorplans resulting from Eugene’s relatively rapid expansion. In spite of this supposed “sameness,” there was NEVER during my childhood, any sense of conformity in the homes around me. I’ve seen developments where the only difference from one house to the next is the paint color or a window shape, or a brick pattern. In the neighborhoods where I grew up, there was no need to fight for differentiation, because in spite of the repeated architecture, there was no standard look that the residents needed to fight against or conform to.

The sameness we find, I think comes from desire rather than actual similarities. The reason is not the location (suburbs), it’s that keeping-up-with-the-Joneses race that probably helped get us into the whole real estate mess in the first place. I need a bigger, more perfect house, because the neighbors have one. He needs a BMW because his cousin just bought one. It’s stupid, and it has nothing to do with a place, it has everything to do with people.

Matt and I eventually want to live in a house with a bit of land around it, in a safe neighborhood, with decent schools (since we’ll eventually be having kids) and less than an hour commute to the city. These are really not ridiculous wants, and the obvious answer, the only answer, is the suburbs. We hope to keep a garden that grows as much of our food as possible, maybe put up some solar panels or even small windmills, to keep energy costs down. I grew up with a backyard and I want my kids to have one too. We’d like some sort of woodland nearby. Basically, we want a compromise between urban and rural living.

If the human race is to survive into the 23th century, or the 30th century, I imagine someday we’ll all end up living in cities. This is (or could be) the most sustainable way to live, and at some point we won’t have a choice. In suburbs, people use hours worth of gas daily getting to and from work, burn up heat in poorly insulated homes, and spend gallons of water on uselessly green lawns. Maybe that’s why living in the suburbs is so detestable: the seizing of privacy, of space, of control and resources may well be selfish. I am occasionally drawn to the idea of living in an urban environment, with rooftop gardens and shops downstairs. There is appeal, until I remember that I can’t breathe after a few hours in New York, that I get itchy when I hear my neighbors through paper-thin walls, that the only thing I would own of the outside is a door. Someday I hope, large buildings will be planned with more public space, more green space, more space in general to keep us sane. Right now urban living is fun for some, but not a life I can imagine.

Ultimately, the life I’m seeking may not be sustainable. Suburbs, and most rural life, may fade away as energy sources dwindle and people are forced to huddle together for conservation. My response to that is to try and make a life with as small a footprint as possible, mainly to assuage the guilt that we’re contributing to the problem. I do think it’s possible to enjoy living in a dense population, I just don’t think it’s possible for me, today. I can only hope that by the time we have no choice, urban designers have come up with ways to make living wall to wall more tolerable.

*First photo by Wildernice, all others by me.

The Number is Sand

Nearly everyone’s seen those books, posters, etc: “How many is a million?” Actually, if you search Amazon for books on a million you’ll come up with a whole bunch on the same theme: trying to express the concept of million to children. It’s sort of a brilliant idea, but I’m not sure how possible it is.

In my high school world history class, our teacher stressed the significance of the invention of mathematics. Also the concept of zero. Both are extremely important, and probably represent huge moments in human achievement.

That they are important is inarguable (not true, everything can be debated given enough alcohol time, but never mind), but they’re also sort of inevitable. Simple math, numbers, counting: all came from trade. Business men needed a way to differentiate more from less, to assure that they were getting a reasonably equal worth. The origins of writing can be found in these clerical slips. Symbolic representation does not come from a human need for art or communication. It comes from accounting.

As significant and important as it is, I can’t help but think it must not have taken a huge leap of genius to start counting apples and oranges (or really probably dates and papayas since we are talking about the cradle of civilization here). You don’t really need the deep philosophy behind math to understand that 5 is more than 4. Babies and animals can identify these basic differences, because the concepts of less and more are far simpler than 4 and 5. Much (most?) of math comes down to this idea. Basic algebra is not that difficult, and honestly has more to do with logic than math. All I’m getting at here is that however much we may have pulled out our hair writing calculus proofs, math as an idea is pretty intuitive.

MATH though is more than numbers. Math is about theories, about twisting common sense, about measuring things that cannot be measured (imaginary numbers anyone?). Physics is a practical application of mathematics, and a theoretical physician can tell you exactly how practical physics is. Engineering is the practical application of physics, and even they come up with some whoopers.

The invention of zero falls firmly in the realms of math as a theory, beyond the tangible. If you’ve never heard of zilch, it’s a bit more of a stretch to conceive of it, but I still don’t think it’s particularly miraculous.

“0″ as a number might be hard to understand, but the concept of zero is pretty simple; it is nothing, it is absence, it has existed and been related to in all of human history because it is death. As I said, the application of zero is a bit more than “do not have” just as 5 is more than apples (dates). At some point though, it is not all that surprising that someone said: “I had five apples. Now I do not have them. Ergo: zero.” (All inventers must say ergo. Or possibly thenceforth.)

I say this not to understate the hugeness of inventing zero, is is merely to explain how small the understanding of zero is compared to the understanding of million.

I can have five apples. I can have zero oranges. But I guarantee I will never have a million apples or oranges. Even if I do, if you see what I mean.

To talk about millions is as effective as talking about infinity. No matter how long you look at a book with a million ants, or a million cars, or a million people, your brain, or at least MY brain, is incaple of comprehending any more than the trollish concept of “lots.” If you were to show me a photo with an infinite number of marbles (not possible I know) I would think: lots. A billion=lots. Million=lots. 100,000=lots. To be perfectly honest, 500=lots.  I’m not sure what the numerical cuttoff is, but I suspect it’s a much lower number than we think. I certainly understand that a million is more than 500, but it ceases to be a question of “how many” and becomes a question of “how big.” The group of ants with a million is bigger than the group with 500, but as far as my brain’s ability to count is concerned, there is NO OTHER DIFFERENCE. I can know that there are more ants in the million group, but it is impossible for me to see it.

1,000,000 is a number, but it’s not a real number. It is absolutely possible for something to exist and not be real. If you want to count the grains of sand on a beach, the answer is not a number, the answer is: It’s sand. The number is sand. How many stars are there? Lots. The number of stars is stars. That is the nature of stars, that they are uncountable. The fact that there are a finite number of sand grains (or stars, though I have no idea if that number is finite) is completely irrelevant because even if a machine counter told you that there were 94,392,347,778 grains of sand, the answer would still be: It’s sand.*

I would guess that it was far easier to invent the number 1 million than the number 0, but there is such a huge difference between knowing and understanding. In these days of unfathomable deficits, idiotic house prices, and rising world population, million has become common as dirt, and is generally shuffled aside for words like billion and even trillion. Ultimately though, they might as well use the same number, because it’s all the same to me.

*The irony here is that in order to explain the concept of infinity, all you can do is compare it to a really big number, while in reality the closest we come to honestly understanding a really big number is infinity, which is actually not all that difficult to understand, and basically comes down to: +1 etc.
**Photos by me, Srqpix Bruno Girin and Sanyam Studios.

Letter of the Law

I have recently decided, based on an opinion I completely disagree with, that Justice Antonin Scalia is nonetheless, not a total ass.

This week the United States Supreme Court ruled that a lower court must hear new (or changed) evidence that could prove a man on death row innocent. I applaud them. Justice Scalia (along with Justice Thomas) wrote a dissent, and I sort of have to applaud him too.

I am 100% against the death penalty. I think our judicial system is corrupt (or at least inadequate), and if Mr. Troy Anthony Davis is innocent, he won’t be the first innocent man (or woman probably) on death row. I absolutely think if there’s new evidence he should have the opportunity to present it. This is another perfect example of the kind of famously ridiculous opinion Justice Scalia is famous for. I wrote an indignant blog post sometime last year outraged at a statement he made stating that it was ok to torture terrorist suspects because they hadn’t been convicted of anything. If they haven’t been convicted, he reasoned, they aren’t being subjected to cruel or unusual punishment. You don’t punish someone who has yet to be convicted. You just torture them, and that’s a-okay according to Justice Scalia.

That combines with the more recent statement that it’s ok to execute an innocent man: “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.” It really makes Justice Scalia sound like a monster. Maybe he is. But I think I’m beginning to understand his thought process, and while I disagree with the particulars, I sort of get the theory.

In my high school government class (which was half a lifetime ago, so bear with me if I’m completely wrong) we talked about two different approaches to the constitution. I don’t remember what they’re called. They boiled down to Spirit of the Law vs. Letter of the Law. If you follow the Spirit of the Law, you believe you have to keep in context the reason for the laws in the first place, you have to believe that the laws are mutable. This is the argument, for example, that some use to repute the second amendment. They claim, quite rightly, that the second amendment didn’t actually have a whole lot to do with defending yourself from buglers and rapists. The second amendment had to do with civilian militias, and isn’t particularly relevant (ok, that could be debatable, but let it go for now) today. Letter of the Law proponents however, say that it doesn’t matter what it was FOR, it’s in the constitution and therefore stands. (Note: I realize this issue is way more complicated, I’m just using it to illustrate a point. Ok? Stop yelling. I’m not trying to take away your guns.)

If Justice Scalia is in the Letter of the Law category, he doesn’t necessarily believe that an innocent man deserves to be executed, or tortured. All it means is that he believes the Law, and in particular the constitution, is more important than the fate of a single individual. I hate to admit it, but I kind of, almost, agree with him.

We tend to be pretty casual these days about the constitution. We talk about our “constitutional rights” in reference to things that are not even hinted at in the document, and we dance around with the idea of adding amendments as though they were decorative fonts. All the talk of adding a “marriage protection” amendment scares the spit out of me, and not only because I’m a proponent of gay rights. That people can so easily contemplate adding any amendment at all, much less one that RESTRICTS rights rather than protects them, is terrifying.

Obviously, since the constitution has semi-recent amendments, the constitution CAN (and should) be changed if the circumstances call for it. My point is just that the constitution is important. It is supposed to protect us from the government, corrupt businesses, each other. Even small changes can have unintended consequences. It should not be twisted or taken lightly.

Which brings us to Justice Scalia, and this week’s court case. As far as I remember, the role of Supreme Court is to rule on whether things are constitutional. It is not the role of the Court to rule on whether things are fair. Under the constitution we have the right to fair trial. One. Singular. We can appeal a decision, but we do not have a constitutional right to another fair trial.

Of course it could easily be argued that if an innocent man is convicted, the trial was in someway unfair. In this case there are allegations of police leaning on witnesses and all sorts of shenanigans. The problem is that we can never know anything for sure. Relying on our justice system means sometimes innocent people will be incorrectly convicted of things they did not do, and sometimes guilty people will walk free. It is an imperfect system. A “fair” trial has to be judged by the court having the trial.

I don’t agree with the dissent, I think the court made the right choice. I still don’t think it’s ok to torture anyone, convicted or not, regardless of bombs they may or may not have planted, ticking away. The role of the Supreme Court is not only to read the law, it is to interpret it. If the constitution exists to protect the rights of the individual citizen, it is problematic to claim the paper is more important than the individual. I do however understand the strict, literal reading of the constitution, to the exclusion of any judgment of fairness. The constitution is a big deal, so interpret it, yes, but please do not stretch it all out of shape.

On the other hand, Justice Scalia is still a jerk, and whenever he opens his mouth, he completely weakens his case.

*Photos by Thomas Roche and Ralpe.

I Am Yuppie

I like to make fun of yuppies, but occasionally I have to admit to a great big closet yuppie chattering (loudly, on the iphone) inside me. Sometimes this happens when republicans are making fun of liberals and I think, what’s wrong with lattes? Mostly it happens when I’m grocery shopping.

I remember a few years ago waiting in the check-out line behind a woman a few years older than me. Her toddler, no older than two, was reaching for one of the impulse items. Quite seriously the woman said, “That’s biscotti. BIS-COTT-EY. Can you say biscotti?” It made me giggle at the time, but I guess I can’t make too much fun when I’m the one choosing to shop at a store where there’s biscotti up front instead of Butterfingers.

Today I had another reminder when we stopped to look at a plastic wrapped package of veal brains. You know your grocery store is catering to yuppies when they sell veal brains.

Matt and I made fun of Heinens for a while until we got to the check-out line. Then we got into a discussion with the woman working the register about the benefits of bison meat versus ostrich meat.

I looked at the items in our cart. Organic broccoli, organic garlic, organic eggs, organic milk, organic whole wheat pasta. Ostrich fillets and pesto turkey sausage. I realized, we belong here. Like it or not, we really are yuppies.

I shouldn’t be ashamed of trying to eat healthy, of trying to keep chemicals out of my body. I’m not really. I am occasionally embarrassed though. And why?

I know that Obama’s presidency is supposed to shoo in a new era of cooperation and forgiveness, but every so often I find myself overcome with a wave of anger at the right wing media machine.

I know republicans claim that there’s a massive liberal media conspiracy. As an openly leftist liberal myself, I can’t claim objectivity, so even though I think it’s absurd to call the reporters on NPR biased, I’ll admit there might be some liberal bias in some media channels, so long as conservatives will admit the same on their side. And to me there is a huge difference between the supposed liberal bias and the blatent, Fox News b.s.

The “liberal meda” might have spent the last eight years attacking the bush administration (and no, obviously that was a bias and not the result of, I dunno, incompetence) but Fox News has spent the last eight years attacking ME.

How the HELL did they manage to turn energry conservation into something bad, into a sign of elitism? Since when is buying organic a bad thing? How dare they imply that anyone who is health conscious, or environmentally conscious, or socially conscious is a flighty, empty headed LIBERAL, with liberal suddenly carrying approximately all the positive qualities of a pinko-commie-Marxist in the 50s?

It’s not only that, not only the anti-liberal message we’ve been force fed for years. I am furious every time I think of Sarah Palin talking about how the “real America” is in small towns. The clear implication is that if you aren’t a Palin “type,” not a corn farmer, or a fake plummer or a… whatever else it is they do in small towns, you’re not a real American.

So fine. I like fruufy coffee drinks and I buy organic. I threatened to move to Canada when Bush got re-elected. I threatened again if Obama didn’t win, and I kind of meant it. I am a liberal and I can’t stand Sarah Palin. I may well be a yuppie. In spite of all that, I would like to make one thing perfectly clear.

I do not eat veal brains.

*Photos from Flickr users Jhritz and Kerryank. And me.

Keeping It

My mother is the oldest of three girls and the only one that took her husband’s last name when she married. When I thought about getting married, I took it for granted that I would change my name, and felt sad about it. I’m not sure when it occurred to me that I didn’t have to.

See, I really like my name. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with the name Meagan Neely, but that’s not me. I’m Meagan Bayard Call. That’s who I’ve been for 27 years. Meagan Bayard Call is the creepy girl with a sword. She’s slightly odd, she draws a lot. She has big ideas, and sometimes she even manages to implement one of them. She’s not perfect, but after years of depression, struggle, loneliness, desperation, I’ve finally discovered that I actually rather like her. Marriage involves sacrifice, but this person, this self I’ve made myself into, that shouldn’t be one of them.

I’ve heard the arguments. By marrying, we’re creating a new life, the partnership between husband and wife, and so a new name represents the new life. That’s crap. The wife must change to a new person but the husband is the same as always? No. I AM Meagan Bayard Call. That is who my husband married. Part of me feels like keeping my name is a rejection of Matt, and that isn’t fair. It’s the same ugly little voice that had to be slammed into submission when I wanted a blue dress instead of a white one. Different is not the same as wrong.

There are practical reasons that made me want to change my name. Some day, probably sooner rather than later, we’ll have children. I don’t expect to give my children my name. I don’t wish to force a hyphen on them either. Which means when we have children we will be the Neely family, and there will be I, conspicuously Call.

Then there’s the symbolism. As much as I want to stand on my feminist high horse (if you are on a high horse, always sit rather than stand so you will be closer to the ground when it flings you off its back) I do like the idea of having part of Matt’s name be part of my name. Of taking his name.

And then I thought, you mean I have to change my signature, too?

I kept my name.

But I took his too. Or I will. When I get around to the legalities, I will be Meagan Bayard-Neely Call. As far as I am concerned, I already am.

Life is full of compromise, or at least, successful lives are. I wanted two names. Or I wanted my name with all the symbolic connection of his name. My new name, which is also my old name, does not perfectly satisfy my wants, but it meets my needs. It’s the best I can do, and that is enough.

Listening to Possibility

I am right now listening to the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.

On this weekend’s This American Life, reporters traveled around the country to get reactions to Obama’s eminent presidency. There were fewer negative reactions than I expected. One journalist put it: “No candidate would run on a slogan of ‘cautiously optimistic,’ but that seems to be a common feeling.” (or something like that. I’m definitely paraphrasing.) He was talking about people who voted against Obama, but who, instead of raging and expressing fear, are taking a “wait and see” approach.

I voted for Obama, and I’ve been an Obama supporter from the beginning of the primaries, but I think “cautiously optimistic” is a good description of how I’m feeling right now. I’ve been pessimistic about the state of this country, about the direction of this country for so long, that it’s hard to believe in the possibility of change. I do believe that today will be the beginning of a more positive turn for the United States, but I think there are many many people who are going to be disappointed.

An Obama presidency does not mean an end of racism. It does not mean the end of politics. It is not the end of lobbyists, of ignorance, of greed. Obama will not, with a shake of his magic pen, fix the economy.

George W Bush stole power for the executive branch while simultaneously dancing the steps of a puppet king. He showed how easy it is to move backwards, when we all know how difficult it is to go forward. Progress is like a diet. Policies that have taken decades to implement can be erased in weeks.

Obama has a hard road ahead of him, and the reserved part of my optimism is due not to Obama, but because of our government’s general inability to get anything done. Our government is DESIGNED to move at the speed of sludge, this is a built in protection to keep people from making radical changes before we can throw them out. Right now though, we need movement, and we need it quickly.

Here is why I voted for Obama. The most inspirational thing Obama said during his campaign is that we cannot depend on HIM to change our country, we have to do it ourselves. In the tradition of our best presidents, Obama has invited us to take responsibility for our country instead of whining about it. For the first time since high school, I’m actually thinking about what kind of volunteering I might like to do. For the first time ever, I’m thinking about how I might get into politics.

Many people sighted Obama’s inexperience as a reason not to vote for him, but I see it as a good thing. Here is a man who is eager to move, who maybe doesn’t know all the rules of the game yet. I don’t want Obama to play the games.

Obama is not capable of healing the world, but I think under his leadership, the people of the United States may be able to start moving forward again. Obama’s success does not mean racism is over, but seeing a black man at the head of the country can only chip away at discrimination, for white Americans and black Americans and all Americans.

The world has not changed today. It doesn’t work that way. Today is a symbol though, and today has the potential to be a beginning.

*Photos from Flickr users Alex Barth and Manuel.

Bubbles Should Stay CIA

Next week I’ll get back to posting wedding photos, (all complaints about the length of my attention span can be directed to the blog’s title) but today I want to mention something I noticed about a movie.

I’ve found when working on something visual, it’s nice to have a movie in the background, preferably one I’ve seen a hundred times before but not so much that it drives me bonkers. The key here is that it needs to be a movie that I still really like, but know well enough that I won’t get sucked in. Kid’s movies are especially good for this, and one of the movies I use most often lately is Lilo & Stitch.

A not entirely surprising consequence of watching a movie over and over is that, even when you’re not particularly paying attention, you notice things that you never would have picked up on before. With Lilo & Stitch, on my 794th viewing or so, (ok probably not) I noticed that Mr. Bubbles is actually a really horrible social worker.

Mr. Bubbles (your knuckles say Cobra) doesn’t seem to have a very sensible approach to child welfare. His concerns make sense, but they don’t seem to be scaled correctly. For example, while it is perfectly reasonable to be worried about the fact that Nani lost her job, expecting her to find a new job in, I think it was a day? seems a bit ridiculous. That’s just setting her up for failure, and it’s clear that the system doesn’t want her to succeed, doesn’t want what is best for the child in question.

On the other hand, watching the movie, it’s not at all evident that staying with Nani is what’s best for Lilo. I mean, sure, it’s clear they love each other and, as Mr. Bubbles says, it’s obvious that Nani is trying to be a good guardian, but it’s also clear that she’s failing miserably. It’s not so much all the horrible things that happen, all the things that cause Mr. Bubbles to conclude that Nani can’t take care of Lilo, it’s more that these things occur because, you know, Lilo’s dog is actually an alien, and no one is watching Lilo enough to notice this.

I get that Hawaii is, at least in Disney-vision, supposed to be a safe enough place to give a kid some freedom, but at a guess, Lilo is meant to be somewhere between 4 and 6. Being told to wait for Nani after dance practice doesn’t seem out of the question, but being given the run of the island with her new dog does.

The “dog” is another issue that suggests Nani isn’t prepared to care for a child. This is an unknown animal which even the woman at the shelter is frightened of. It repeatedly shows signs of aggression, is larger than the child, but is left unsupervised with the child for hours. In a way, Lilo and Nani are fortunate that Stitch is an intelligent alien, even a fugitive, because Stitch is rational enough to realize that his safety is reliant on Lilo’s presence, and therefor health. Had Stitch actually been a dog displaying those behaviors, it’s likely the story would have ended in disaster.

In contrast, the things that make Mr. Bubbles conclude that Nani is incapable of caring for a child don’t seem quite fair. As I mentioned the job thing is a bit extreme, and the breaking point didn’t seem to make much sense at all.

Lilo, Nani and Stitch are knocked off their surf board by aliens. Lilo is dragged underwater by Stitch, but quickly pulled up by Nani, brought to shore, and checked for injury. She’s fine. Then Stitch is brought to shore, half drowned, and on recovery he freaks out and snaps at everyone standing near him (including Lilo). Mr Bubbles appears from out of the tree line (what’s he DOING there, anyway?) and says that it’s obviously not working out, but I’m having trouble working out exactly which part of this scene brought him to that conclusion. Was it that Lilo was pulled underwater, something beyond Nani’s control? That she was on a surfboard? That the frightened dog snapped at her? Any of those things could have happened in a perfectly healthy normal family.

The house burning down does seem like a better reason to decide Lilo is unsafe, but then at this point, Mr. Bubbles really ought to have figured out that there was something going on beyond an irresponsible guardian. Since he “saved the planet once” he’s obviously had experience with aliens. Enough experience maybe, to recognize the signs of a plasma cannon, or at the very least, to know the difference between a dog and a test-tube created alien monster? Just saying.

At the end of the movie, David is at least nominally part of the family, the two aliens hunting Stitch become honorary godparents, and the family receives galactic protection. I think even Mr. Bubbles pitches in a little bit, so Nani has the help she needs and Lilo is finally in a safe, healthy (if odd) living situation. I think it’s pretty clear though, that as things stood in the movie BEFORE Stitch arrived, Nani was probably unable to care for her younger sister, all best intentions aside. It just doesn’t seem like Mr. Bubbles finds the right reasons why this is so. Personally I think he should have stuck with the CIA.

Then again, if his instincts regarding child welfare are any indication, maybe there’s a good reason he retired.

*Images from Flickr users Aaron Escobar, Quinn.Anya, Mikebaird, and E3000.