A Certain Lack of Focus

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.

Can’t Get What You Want

On of my peculiarities, and I have many, is that although I love hanging out at coffee houses, I don’t like the taste of coffee. Smell, good. Coffee ice cream, good. Black coffee? Bleagh!

I’m sure I’m not alone in disliking coffee, I get the feeling that for most people it’s an acquired taste, like beer. And like beer, I have to assume that most people start drinking it not for the taste, but for the effect. Caffeine doesn’t seem to affect me, so I’ve never had the motivation to get used to the taste.

I explain this to defend my yuppieness. Since I spend so much time in coffee houses, obviously I need to find something I can drink. Often I find myself ordering the dreaded froofy drinks.

I am a latte drinker. Worse, I am a latte drinker with extra explanations. Thanks to Starbucks, I know baristas are pretty much used to it, but I still cringe every time I ask for skim or sugar free. The interesting thing isn’t that I order yuppie coffee drinks, it’s that I can’t seem to get what I ask for, and they never mess up the parts I expect them to.

With your standard latte, the sweet isn’t quite strong enough to overcome the coffee. The solution is fairly obvious if it’s sugar free, it’s no diet killer to double the syrup. And that is where the confusion sets in.

I make my order as clear as I can, for example: fat free medium latte with a double shot of sugar free hazelnut. This definitely qualifies as a yuppie order, but as complicated goes, I’ve heard worse. So imagine my surprise when the baristas screw it up.

A single shot for a medium drink typically means four pumps of syrup. Logically, a double shot would be eight pumps, but for some reason, when I ask for a double shot, I get two pumps instead. This happens in all different brands of coffee house, with different staff, at different times of day. If this were the only order that produced that kind of difficulty, I’d write it off as a fluke, but I’ve noticed other common misunderstandings.

At Caribou my favorite drink, the one I’m hoping they’ll name after me when I’m famous, is a mango tea with a shot of cinnamon. It’s kind of a spiced fruit taste, very yummy. And not all that complicated, I think. Only every so often it gets confused, in consistent ways even at different Caribous.

One way this happens is they give me an iced tea instead of hot tea. I can kind of understand the mistake in the middle of summer, but this happened to me earlier this week, and I don’t get it. Why do they hear ice when I don’t ask for ice?

The other way this is altered really puzzles me. I’ve only caught it once, though I know it’s happened more often. I gave my order, then watched as the barista typed in “half shot.” This can’t be just a case of a typo because they have to push a special button for half, and when I politely corrected her, she seemed surprised. “You want a WHOLE shot?” she asked? I found that weird.

This isn’t idle complaining. I usually catch the confusion, and when I don’t, they’re very good about remaking it. I am genuinely curious as to why these communication breakdowns are happening. These people aren’t stupid, I chat with them as I order and it’s pretty clear that the bulk of baristas are pretty bright. I don’t think I’m stupid either, and I’m being as clear as I can. So what’s going on?

I do have some ideas. I expect that many people ask for a double when they mean a half. Or some people may just hear double and automatically translate to two. This isn’t really all that weird. Some of it must be trying to read the mind of the customer. I imagine people often don’t order what they want, then get angry when they don’t get it.

Any other ideas? I think it’s an interesting question about human interaction. Is this just the result of weariness, from doing a repetitive job, or do you think there’ something more happening here?

By the way, if my favorite spiced mango Caribou drink sounds good, ask for a HOT mango tea with a shot (full shot) of cinnamon. Once you get your tea, make sure it doesn’t steep for too long, I like a good red color, but not too dark. That usually takes about a minute, because with medium and large they put in two bags. When you order it, be sure to call it Meagan’s Tea.

Photos from flickr users Nate Steiner, Journeyscoffee, quinnanya, and me.

Watching Wall.e

Well, I didn’t get my white Christmas, and ironically, the Pacific Northwest was apparently blanketed in snow, but oh well. Maybe next year. I think stepping outside this morning to be hit with 62 degree air is a fair trade-off. Yay global warming?

Speaking of environmental concerns, one of the gifts Santa brought the girls was a DVD of WALL-E, which Matt and I were excited about because we hadn’t seen it yet and so far, Pixar rarely disappoints.

WALL-E is depressing. I knew nothing about the movie before watching it beyond it being about robots. I guess I was expecting something like, you know, Robots. As Bug’s Life is to Antz, I assumed WALL-E would be to Robots.

Anyone who knows anything about WALL-E realizes that although the main character is a robot, the movie is not about robots at all. The movie begins by zooming over cityscapes constructed from piles of garbage. There is lots of cute robot action around the planet, which, in spite of being monotonous, somehow manages not to get boring. About a half hour into the movie we meet the human beings.

Humans in WALL-E are totally disconnected from reality and each other, kept in perpetual infancy by robot servants, willingly isolated by virtual screens. This is an obvious satire on the current human condition, in some ways not absurd enough. One of the early jokes shows two men carrying on a conversation via the future version of cell phones, as the two sit right next to each other. This is such typical shtick with cell phones today, that it was almost difficult to see commentary. Other sections were more apt. My favorite line occurs when a character loses his permanent TV and is forced to see what is right before him. “Hey, I didn’t know we had a pool!” is both silly enough to be funny and true enough to be sad.

Perhaps the least believable thing in this movie is the friendliness of the human characters, and their ability to deal with change. The characters, waited on from birth, do not seem spoiled or self absorbed. Instead they are excited by the prospect of something new, and completely willing to throw their all into fighting a Dinsey-ized Hal. This seems unlikely, but not totally impossible, as the characters do possess a naivete that keeps them childlike, more able to fight hard for what is “fair” and be thrilled by the new. There are other tricky logic areas, but they are easily ignored, and don’t distract much, even with the cynical voice in my brain saying: “and when they landed on earth, they all died because they had no bone or muscle mass, the end.”

For me the most intriguing thing about WALL-E is its preachy goal. I frown on Disney movies trying to teach children life lessons, but  the nice thing about any movie is that you have the option of not showing it to your child if you don’t like the message. And there’s nothing subliminal about WALL-E, it would take a pretty dense adult to not catch the message, so if someone is morally opposed to environmentalism they can avoid it. (Preferably by falling in a hazardous waste dump.)

When the movie started, with the zoom-in over our decimated planet, one of my nieces told me, “That’s another planet. Aunt Meagan, that’s not our planet,” and I muttered, “not yet” and left it at that, but WALL-E would at the very least be a conversation starter. I think our planet is in enough trouble that it’s important to start those conversations early. The important question is whether WALL-E starts the right conversation.

An interesting study showed that children who are read a folk tale about George Washington telling the truth about a cherry tree are less likely to lie than children who are read a story about the Boy Who Cried Wolf. This surprised researchers and is a significant statement about human motivators. While WALL-E is clearly a morality story about our impact on the environment, I’d say on the surface it’s 90% the Boy Who Cried Wolf kind of morality and only about 10% George Washington.

There is an “ah-hah” moment, where the clueless captain makes a short speech about how it’s our human responsibility to care for our planet, but this moment is disconnected and far less convincing than the rest. On a story level, it’s difficult to understand how this completely sheltered man could have come to that revelation. While I doubt children watching this movie will be analyzing character development, the captain’s statement is a leap of faith that isn’t really backed up by anything substantial. I suspect for a child viewer, that most important message will be lost among the excitement of WALL-E trying to find EVA.

Maybe the half-hearted statement isn’t for the kids though. Maybe that positive message is better communicated by the fact that once WALL-E, a surprisingly well developed, barely verbal character, acts from the beginning with that sense of responsibility. The care with which WALL-E takes, not only to protect the tiny bean sprout, but the lowly cockroach, has the potential to accomplish what scare tactics alone cannot.

WALL-E, as with all Pixar pictures, is visually impressive and entertaining throughout. The environmental message is at times heavy handed, but in the end it’s a good movie because its characters. The humans are flat, but good enough for peripheral characters. EVA is a so-so supporting character, made more interesting by being a dominant, somewhat violent female character, who rescues at least as much as she is rescued. The cockroach provides the apparently obligatory sidekick, (actually there are many of these) but it’s not personified enough to be annoying. And WALL-E, is wonderful and simple, but still compelling enough to carry both the story and the message. I loved this movie because I loved WALL-E.

*Images from Flickr users Gi and Normanack.

Giving the Creeps

They weren’t Christmas gifts, they were end of year gifts, but the spirit is the same. In fact, I’d intentionally not bought anything for any of my teachers for Christmas because I didn’t want to look like I was sucking up. I figured the end of the year would be safe.

They were my teachers and even Miss Grace, the youngest teacher I’d ever had, was ten years older than I was. At fourteen, ten years is a very long time. Ten years is still a long time. So I really couldn’t imagine what they would want. It was hard to understand them as people, though I was beginning to get a glimpse. As always before, I fell back on my standby of drawing.

When I got to high school, in addition to being “the creepy girl” and, a year later, once I started fencing, “the girl who plays with swords,” I was known as “that girl who draws weird shit.” For some reason, the second part didn’t make it to the teachers.

They never seemed to notice that I was drawing people turned forcibly inside out, or little girls trapped in holes, or once: a woman naked and lying on the floor, menstrual blood streaming down her legs, needles stuck in in every inch of her body, pinning her to the ground with blood spilling from those holes as well. I don’t know what happened to that drawing. I think it scared me enough that I threw it away as soon as I finished drawing it. I’m kind of glad.

To the teachers, I guess I was just the girl who draws.

For Miss Grace I thought I should draw something fun and colorful, so I gave her a humorous drawing of Noah’s Ark, splitting at the seams with children (I figured a guy that old had to have dozens of grandchildren) and animals stalking each other.

For Mr. McGinnus though, I had larger plans.

Under Mr. McGinnus, we had lively interesting conversations that made me take notice even when I wasn’t drawn to the text. He drew these ridiculous graphs on the board.  Three circles representing the different kinds of love: Eros, Amor, Agape. A sliding scale to show how the dragon is the anti-king becuase while the dragon hoards gold, the (good) king wants to keep it in circulation. Might even have his head on the coin.

I don’t explain this to sing the praises of a good teacher, though I should, and the world could certainly use more of them. I explain all this to show how I went from point A: Noah’s Ark, to point B: something nastier.

See, Mr. McGinnus taught me to analyze things, and as I saw it, Mr. McGinnus liked things complicated. Kids liked to say that Mr. McGinnus could read deeper meaning into the Lion King, and he did too. When he heard the challenge, he brought in his daughter’s video and showed us how the Lion King was simply another Eden story, with the disruptive female destroying the garden.

So I figured I needed to draw something that Mr. McGinnus could analyze if I wanted him to enjoy it. Take a look at literature, or even just look at the books we read Freshman year. A book of Greek Myths, BeWulf, Romeo & Juliet. I never got around to reading Great Expectations. In the things I did read, war and death were prominent.

I drew him a war. I sat two people down at a chess board – not God and the Devil or Death, just two people, and around them I cast a whole bloody group of people acting out their war. The pawns, naturally, were children. Looking with an adult’s eyes, I can say with some confidence that it was pretty horrible.

I worked on that thing for WEEKS. It didn’t occur to me until, oh I dunno, sometime this month, that it must have been a pretty disturbing thing to get from a fourteen year old.

He never mentioned it, which didn’t seem strange since  I gave it to him the day before summer break and I wasn’t in his class the next year. Did he throw it away? Keep it and brood? Actually hang it on the wall somewhere?

I wonder if he stopped liking me after that. Maybe he thought it was a cry for help, or, worse, a declaration of violent intent. I wonder If I frightened him when all I wanted to do was give him something he’d like.

Mr. McGinnus left before my junior year, moved to California. Later that year, my classmates sat rooted to our seats in physics, listening to the radio account of Kip Kinkle opening fire on his classmates, twenty minutes away from our high school. For the next year and a half, kids were watched like criminals, any strange behavior got you put on a watch list. Anything beyond strange could get you expelled. Columbine only made it worse, and brought back the fear of the Thurston shooting, which suddenly was supposed to be no big deal by comparison. It wasn’t only the teachers, I watched my classmates too, wondering who could explode someday and take the rest of us with us. I had waking nightmares where we lined up for graduation and someone behind a spotlight started gunning us down.

If Mr. McGinnus hadn’t left, would I have ended up on a watch list? There’s no denying I was strange. Some of the kids even seemed to be afraid of me, because I wasn’t like them. I encouraged it: fear is so much better than scorn. I can probably never know what he thought of that drawing. I only hope sometime he realized that, creepy or not, it was meant to be a gift. Not a threat.

Back Pain and Sexism

While I was wrapping gifts yesterday, I felt something in my back move. Nothing agonizing, just a sharp pain that very clearly said: “You REALLY don’t want to do that.”

My body talks to me.  I’ve not had any major sports related injuries (fencing is surprisingly safe as long as you’re not an idiot) but I have endured tendinitis, sprains, pulled muscles and assorted foot issues. I have a pretty good idea by now of when my body is saying, “HEY, cut it out!”

This pain was endurable, I could have ignored it, but it was saying to be very careful.  So I experimented. Carefully. I found that I could bend at the waist with only a little pain as long as I supported myself entirely with my arms and moved slowy. Standing upright didn’t hurt at all but I couldn’t sit down.

Fortunately, it was already 11 at that point, so I just gave up gift wrapping and went to bed, with Matt trailing after me carrying all the things I couldn’t bend over to pick up.

I can’t sleep on my back. Mostly I sleep on my stomach, which as any doctor will tell you is, for back health, the worst possible way to sleep. I moved around trying to find a satisfactory position and I think at one point while I was on my side (which hurt) something moved back to where it came from.

This morning my back was both better and worse. I can sit, which is good since I’ll be spending 4 hours tomorrow stuck in a car and I think we’d get some funny looks if I tried standing up the whole way. On the other hand, last night the pain was very localized, there was just one spot that hurt only when I moved in a certain way. Now, it’s sore all the time, and the area all around it has tightened up. I can feel the effects of it from my neck all the way down to my ankle: the name of the game when it comes to backs. It’s no longer a “You’d better not!” pain though, more of a nervous, “Oh, oh, I don’t know…”

The doctor says it’s a pulled muscle, so it’s good that it’s nothing serious. Still not sure how I pulled a muscle hardly moving. She told me to load up on Motrin and apply heat, get backrubs from Matt (seriously!), and not to expect it to be completely better for a week or two because back injuries are like that. This will make finishing the gift wrapping difficult, but since the pain really isn’t that horrible, it’s mostly just annoying. The real reason I’m glad I went to see the doctor is that she gave me the most fantastic informational sheet on caring for your back.

The information sheet is photocopied poorly so there are places where I can’t read the whole thing, but mostly it’s common sense advice like: Lift with your knees! and Don’t sleep on your stomach! (whoops) At the end though, there’s a little box of Rules to Live By – From Now On. The first column is more of the same. The second column I’ll just have to share:

Chiefly for women

• Wear shoes with moderate heels, at about the same height. (huh?) Avoid changing from high to low heels.
• Put a footrail under your husband’s desk, and a footrest under the crib.
• Diaper the baby sitting next to him on the bed.
• Don’t stoop and stretch to hang the wash; raise the clothesbasket and lower the washline.
• Beg or buy a rocking chair. Rocking rests the back by changing the muscle groups used.
• Train yourself vigorously to use your abdominal muscles to flatten your lower abdomen. In time, this muscle contraction will become habitual, making you the envied possessor of an attractively feminine body-profile!
• Wherever you are, let a man open doors and raise windows. Men have greater natural forearm strength, well adapted for these movements.

Love the use of “well adapted” here, as though evolution factored in things like doors and windows. I couldn’t make out enough of the last bullet point to make any sense of it (not that all of these make sense anyway) but there was definitely something in there about “nature’s corset.” I wish some of these had a bit more explanation. I can accept that a helpful info sheet that MUST come from the sixties would assume household chores and at least one baby, but why does putting a foot rail beneath the hubby’s desk help a woman’s back pain? I guess I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt here and assume there is a sound medical reason for strengthening abdominal muscles beyond, you know, the figure.

The doctor probably shouldn’t have given the sheet to me: I’m not sure that laughing is really the best thing for my back right now. Just to be sure though, I’ll ask my husband when he gets home. My brain is a little overheated from all this reading, so I guess a Man’s opinion is needed.

*Original image from Flickr user FranUlloa

Clinging to the World

I was about fourteen when I realized I wasn’t a Christian. I wasn’t really raised anything in particular, my parents are both indifferent agnostics, but I went to Catholic school from the first grade on. Earlier if you count the preschool run by Peter Paul and Mary (no joke).

As a child I sort of became a Christian by default because all my friends were. At some point though, I got sick of “have faith” being the answer to all unanswerable questions, and I couldn’t find any better reason to believe anything I’d been told in religion class.

For a while I was a pantheist. Looking at all I knew about world religions, it seemed like they all had so much in common that there must be a grain of truth in there somewhere, and I figured all religions were probably just different faces for the same thing.

Only the faces seemed to be the main thing that most religions seemed to have in common. The concept of a personified god was, if not universal, at least pretty frequent, and that was the idea that I found least plausible. I made the google/wiki assumption: that what most people believe must be true, but as with Christianity, eventually I lost sight of any reason to believe it. I called myself a pantheist right up until I realized I was using it not as a personal belief system, but as a catch-all just in case. I had lost faith, not just in gods, but in Man’s ability to know the truth.

This led me to look more closely at Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism. I found reincarnation overly convenient, but otherwise the ideas of Buddhism attracted me. With one problem. I am, at heart, a materialist.

I don’t mean that in the Christmas shopping sense, the need of acquisition, I mean materialism in a deeper sense. Attachment, the sin of Buddhism, is something I can’t seem to avoid. I don’t so much strive for possessions as I do sorrow at loss. I am not a pack rat, it’s not so simple, but I think this is the secret of pack rats. The idea of something being destroyed, or worse, forgotten, is unbearable, as though mere objects have meaning. When I was two, I had a teddy bear that had been my mother’s when she was a child. I lost it in the grocery store, and the idea still haunts me. I’m an artist of ink and paper, but I’ve always disdained things made of paper, because of their temporal nature. They fade, and crumple to nothing. Food is even worse, because it is meant to be disposed of.

Last month, my favorite teacher died of cancer. While she was sick, even before I even knew this time would be the last time, I felt the need to find her first book, and buy it. When I heard she died, I was seized, irrationally, with the desire to go to school and photograph her door. The idea that it could disappear, that her office would be emptied and occupied by another, was heartbreaking. Instead of taking pictures, I went to find the packed away chapters of my book, and cherished each spider thin comment.

I have a friend who assigns feelings to objects. When he is forced to choose a piece of fruit, or a gift, he is slightly afraid of hurting the feelings of the rejected objects. I don’t feel this, but I can understand it. There is something holy about things. Something tragic. When I see a beautiful sky, I feel regret, not only because I cannot share it, but because I cannot keep it, because it will never be again.

It all comes down to death. I can pretend that things are permanent, If I save every image digitally, I can tell myself it will live forever. If I were a Buddhist, I would have to admit that everything is temporary. I know this is true, but I can’t do it. I can’t let go.

*Photos from Picasa and Flickr users Echiner1, and me.