Out here with the yellow lines and the dead armadillos.

The fabulous Jim Hightower once said "There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos." Certainly, in regards to the abortion debate, it seems that the two sides face each other across barricades, lobbing grenades back and forth. There is no middle of the road. Except where I am.

Make no mistake: I am completely pro-choice. I firmly believe abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.

But, on a personal level, I recognize the beginning of life as carrying very deep significance. Yes, even before viability. Yes, even at a very early stage. I would not abort a pregnancy even in the first twelve weeks, except to protect my life or my health. You can scoff, you can laugh, you can call me irrational, whatever, but there it is: I think abortion is an extremely significant moral act, perhaps not murder, but which can achieve in some circumstances an equivalent moral import. However, I recognize that is my own personal moral calculus and no one else's, and I make no judgment upon anyone who has had an abortion, other than to feel sad that they had to make what is often, no matter what your politics, a painful and difficult choice.

I can understand how someone in the right to life movement can come to say that "abortion is murder." I know people who say that. I have family who say that. I believe that they believe that. I also believe that, for some of the people I talk to, it is a shorthand for a complex idea that would otherwise be unwieldy: murder is the closest thing to what it feels like happens morally when an abortion happens, so that's the word they use. That may not mean that they think about all the legal consequences flowing from abortions in exactly the same way that they would murder.

I have seen in the past two or three weeks a lot of crowing about how hypocritical right-to-lifers are because of that "abortion is murder" stance. If abortion is murder, then why don't any of the proposed anti-abortion bills provide for prison sentences for the women having the abortion? They clearly don't actually believe what they're saying! They are only interested in subjugating women. HYPOCRISY! Idiots! We win!

Except that this isn't a high-school debating match. You don't get points for slicing your opponent up into little bits with your brilliant logic and rhetorical skills. What you do get is a closing down of dialogue, and an increasing radicalization on both sides. And really -- do you want to push people to supporting prison sentences for women getting abortions? That's just as likely as ever convincing people of the rightness of the pro-choice position by belittling them.

And what if they do mean murder when they say murder? It is possible to condemn a crime, and have compassion for the criminal. Or to view shades and degrees of culpability. Ah, but to allow that pro-life advocates might think that, then one has to view them as capable of making nuanced moral decisions. They have to be human! Gasp!

And it's not like we on the left don't occasionally come up with our own sterling examples of hypocrisy: the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has chosen to pass resolutions condemning various conservative religious organizations -- the Catholic Church; Battle Cry for a Generation, a fundamentalist Christian group that stages teen rallies -- who are anti-choice or oppose same-sex marriage. Considering that we -- by which I mean pro-choice, pro-same-sex-marriage progressives, presumably including the members of the SF Board of Supervisors -- have been fighting like hell to keep religion out of government, don't you think we should try to keep government out of religion? That wall of separation between church and state we treasure runs both ways.

People say that the two sides can't talk to each other. I think they're wrong -- and a January, 2006 study from the University of Florida backs me up. The study found the differences both sides perceived between themselves and the folks across the barricades were exaggerated.

Screaming at the other side over one issue -- abortion -- makes it all that much harder to change hearts and minds on other issues, such as the war in Iraq, or the dangers to civil liberties presented by the PATRIOT Act, or same-sex marriage. Because no one likes to be called a hypocrite, or these days, told that they are evil. For is not oppressing others evil?

Personally, I'd rather lose the debating match, if I can engage in open and heartfelt discussion. After all, that's what adults do.

If I seem angry and bitter about all of this, I am. I know people on both sides, good people, people who searched their consciences to arrive at an answer to the most difficult political and moral question of our age. I am fed up with the nastiness lobbed across the barricades. I am tired tired TIRED of the demonization, of the caricaturing, of the reductionism being spouted from either end of the debate.

You know what? Different may not mean wrong.

And, much more importantly, WRONG does not always and everywhere mean EVIL.

And maybe if we start remembering that for a change then maybe we can reclaim the debate from the screaming demagogues and actually get somewhere.

And maybe, just maybe, we can reclaim the center here. And get rid of these damned armadillos.

Looking at the Mountain

Early fall, I had been looking forward to Brokeback Mountain coming out. Not as much as some other releases -- Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, and Rent-- but I thought it looked quite promising. Ang Lee is a good director, and while I don't care much for Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhall is, to use a not-too-technical term, yummy.

For one reason or another, I didn't see it. I actually have not seen a lot of movies that one could not take children to -- not since I saw Capote, at any rate, which would have been early December. And when I did go to movies, I needed to see comedies, escapist fare; Brokeback Mountain seemed too heavy, too difficult. Now I find myself in the position of wanting to see more serious fare, with Brokeback still in the theaters ... and I no longer want to see it.

In the post-Oscar analysis, with the lambasting of the Academy's decision to award the Best Picture Oscar to Crash, it seems that liking Brokeback Mountain has become a political litmus test. What else to make of the analysts decrying Crash's selection as an example of rampant homophobia? Ignoring the fact that there were, in fact, people who were less than impressed with Brokeback Mountain, for reasons having nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the quality . (As there were with Crash, too, for that matter.) I know people who have not even seen Crash who are willing to blame Brokeback's loss to homophobia. Sheesh.

Me? I don't think Crash should have won. Does that make me a racist? I think Capote and Good Night and Good Luck were better movies. I'm not alone: if you look on Rottentomatoes.com, which aggregates film reviews from all over to give sort of a general rating, Good Night & Good Luck and Capote both scored well above Brokeback Mountain, which in turn scored well above Crash. But you don't see partisans for Capote screaming about homophobia in the award process -- oh, wait, Truman Capote was an "effete New York intellectual," as Jon Stewart pointed out. Doesn't count.

The fact is, Brokeback Mountain got made and distributed by a major studio, and as of March 26, 2006, has made $158 million, a nice return on a budget on $14 million. It was nominated for eight Oscars, it won three. And while people mutter how courageous it is for actors to play gay characters, within the last 15 years, several actors and actresses have won Oscars for playing gay, lesbian, or transgendered characters -- Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Nicole Kidman in The Hours, Hillary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, Philip Seymour Hoffman this year for Capote -- and quite a few more have been nominated. None of them seem to have suffered as a result.

Is there homophobia in Hollywood? No doubt. After all, the number of performers who are openly gay is slim, with actresses outnumbering actors. (God bless Sir Ian McKellen!) Is that why Crash won? Who knows? It's a movie about Los Angeles, most of the voters live in the San Fernando Valley, and it resonates with them on a primal, everyday level in a way that a movie about a couple of Wyoming ranchhands doesn't. (That theory is not mine: I've heard it more places than I can shake a copy of EW at. My theory is rather more cynical than that.)

I don't like my entertainment choices being turned into political or religious statements, whether that be by members of the Catholic League who opposed people like me seeing Kevin Smith's Dogma (best movie on religion ever made) or fundamentalists who imply that I need to see The Passion of the Christ to be "saved." Or people who insist that liking Brokeback Mountain is a requirement for showing how unhomophobic I am.

After all, in the end, they're only movies.

The world is a dangerous place. "Ethnic cleansing" by government backed militias in Darfur; eight people killed in a shoot out between police and drug gangs in Rio; protests over the youth unemployment law in France turn violent.

Iraq. Afghanistan. Israel. Palestine. Pakistan. Iran.

But two days ago the world got a little safer, hopefully: ETA declared a permanent ceasfire.

Esatablished in 1959, ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna -- "Basque Homeland and Freedom" in Euskara, the Basque language) -- Spain's cousin to the IRA -- is a Basque nationalist organization with extremely violent tendencies. In 1973, it managed to assassinate Spain's Prime Minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, and over the next thirty years carried out a number of bombings and assassinations. In 2001, following a year marked by a number of bombings aimed at politicians and officials, ETA announced that tourists were fair targets. In short, very scary guys.

So scary, in fact, that when Al-Qaeda bombed the Atocha train station in Madrid on March 11, 2004, the Spanish government at first strongly and unequivocally blamed ETA. The group's past made this quite plausible; so plausible, in fact, that the Spanish were able to get the U.N. to pass Resolution 1530 which names ETA as being specifically responsible for the attacks [pdf]. That it was determined rather quickly that Al-Qaeda was behind the attacks, not ETA, led to the downfall of the conservative government in the elections three days later, amid suspicions that it had deliberately misled the public about ETA's involvement. Not that suspicions of ETA were completely unfounded, mind you: two weeks before the bombings at Atocha, a van filled with explosives was discovered during a routine traffic inspection, leading to the arrest of two alleged ETA members.

By most accounts, the organization has been weakened through arrests, and the Al-Qaeda bombings have made ETA killings political suicide, even more so than they might have been before. I don't know: wounded snakes can still bite, can still kill. And ETA has declared ceasfires before: they haven't held. This is the first time they have ever used "permanent" to describe a ceasefire, though.

I hope to God this holds.

Spain is a magical country, a country of deep history and almost indescribably rich music, art, and literature. Alcala de Henáres, where the bombs that destroyed Atocha may have been placed on the trains, is the birthplace of Miguel Cervantes, creator of the noble knight who, in a very, very roundabout way (through the words of lyricist Joe Darion) is honored in the title of this blog. Madrid, where ETA's last car bombing took place in 2005, is a grand and colorful city where you can marvel at Heironymous Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" or weep over Picasso's "Guernica"; head over to the Plaza Mayor and check out the street musicians; or simply wander along the spacious avenidas or through the narrow calles looking for tapas bars. And there is Barcelona, site of ETA's bloodiest attack, in 1987, which is home to Antonio Gaudi's remarkable Sagrada Familia and other works. And Seville, where in addition to being barbered, you can wonder that a human can actually move their feet that fast, when you are introduced to the art of flamenco. It was a EU summit in Seville that touched off a series of bombings by ETA in resort towns in southern Spain of 2002.

I'm sort of fond of the place. Can you tell? Along with New Zealand (which I love for very different reasons) Spain is very dear to my heart. Anything that makes the Spanish people safer matters a great deal to me.

The Basque region is seeking greater autonomy, and I have no problem with that. I support it, even. Just not when it involves bombs.

Justitia fiat coelum ("Let justice be done though the Heavens may fall.")

-- Edwin Horton's grandfather's motto

In 1933, Judge James Edwin Horton, Jr. supervised the second trial, conviction, and sentencing to death of Heywood Patterson, one of the Scottsboro Boys, for the rape of Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. In spite of evidence from the doctor who examined the two women which undercut Price's story, and Bates's testimony on the stand (admittedly, the subject of speculation that it had been bought) that there had been no rape, that the women had been with their boyfriends and had made up the story of the rape to escape being hauled in on morals charges, the all white jury took five minutes to find Patterson guilty. The trial had also been marred by racism and anti-Semitism on the part of the prosecution (the anti-Semitism aimed at Patterson's lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz).

Judge Horton, troubled by the evidence, and having been pulled aside by another doctor who had been present at the examination of the girls and who was sure they were lying, but who was too afraid to testify, did the unthinkable. He ordered a new trial for Patterson.

Clearly, this was not acceptable. The Alabama Supreme Court removed the case from Horton's control, giving it to a Judge William Callahan, who among other things, instructed the jury that it was to be presumed that no white woman would every voluntarily consent to sex with a black man. Horton also paid a personal price: he was defeated for reelection when he ran for the bench again.

Judge Horton's action was a stirring example of judicial independence in the face of mob mentality. It demonstrates why the judiciary is independent, needs to be independent -- so that they can seek justice without regard to whether it is popular. Sometimes popular notions of justice and common sense are wrong, because of prejudice or reluctance to change, and there is a long litany of cases -- Brown v. Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, Griswold v. Connecticut, to name just three now widely accepted examples from the Supreme Court -- which testify to this.

All of which might seem obvious -- except that there are some people in South Dakota who feel otherwise. There is a ballot initiative which would effectively establish popular oversight over judicial decision-making, by creating a standing Special Grand Jury allowing anyone to bring complaints against judges. The presumption of probable cause would be against the judge, and, unless the case were completely spurious -- difficult, since the allegations of the complaint are to be liberally construed in favor of the complainant -- a special jury would be empanelled, which would act as both trier of fact and as trier of law (i.e., both jury and judge) . Three sustained complaints and a judge would be off the bench -- and there is no judicial immunity, and judges are responsible for providing for their own defense. Terry Karney has the text of the initiative and an analysis, .

Fortunately, there are many sane and responsible people in South Dakota, at least on this issue: both houses of the South Dakota legislature unanimously passed a resolution urging voters to reject the measure. The description of the motives and intentions of J.A.I.L. (the national organization behind this insanity) contained in the resolution is chilling, especially

"the author of Amendment E has publicly stated that with the passage of Amendment E, Judicial Accountability Initiated Law members from across the country will 'purposely drive to South Dakota...just for the privilege of getting a traffic ticket so you can demand a jury trial. I anticipate traffic courts to be among the first courts to all but totally close...,' thus depriving South Dakota citizens of their constitutional right of access to our courts and making it clear that Amendment E is not intended to help cure any alleged problems with South Dakota courts."

Equally disturbing is the vision of the effects of the bill: "Amendment E would permit convicted felons, whose convictions have been affirmed by our Supreme Court, to sue the prosecutors who prosecuted the felons, the jurors who voted to convict the felons, and the judges who sentenced the felons," and "Amendment E would actually allow lawsuits against all South Dakota citizen boards, including county commissioners, school board members, city council members, planning and zoning board members, township board members, public utilities commissioners, professional licensing board members, jurors, judges, prosecutors, and all other citizen boards." By eliminating summary judgment, by which a great many cases are disposed of, it would bring the machinery of justice to a grinding, messy, halt. By allowing suits against other public officials, it would destroy the integrity of government at the local and county level, since it would open up the possibility for local govermental agencies to be held hostage by potential litigants.

This is anarchy. It is the state constitutional enshrinement of jury nullification -- the concept that a jury can legally do whatever it damn well pleases -- with the added threat of dire consequences to a judge or public official who doesn't play along. No doubt Alabamians in 1933 would have welcomed this, and no doubt Judge Horton would have quickly found himself in front of a jury charged with the "blocking of a lawful conclusion of a case."

No one is safe -- not judges, not jurors, not public officials, and certainly not the public. And the ballot initiative may be coming to your state soon: JAIL is aiming at passing laws like this in all fifty states. The scary part is -- what if they succeed, even in one state?

All of this is based on a notion that "the people know best." No, they don't, not always. There is a reason the Bill of Rights exists protecting individual rights against the power of the state. Enstablishing what is essentially justice by popular opinion makes all of us unsafe -- for who is to say when any of us might need the services of an impartial and independent decisionmaker, bound by law instead of the popular emotion of the moment?

Spring Fashions have just arrived!

The Wild Winds of Fortune has a new look. Those of you familiar with my Live Journal will know that I change my layout every few months -- or every few weeks, even sometimes every few days, in times of stress and boredom.

I think the new color scheme is more "springy" and besides, the white on black was just too stark. Not quite goth -- it was too angular for that -- more rigidly modern. The world is a stark place these days; blogs don't have to mirror that in their design.

Well, to tell you the truth, all pretentiousness aside -- and was that not pretentious? -- I think the white on black was giving me eyestrain. Since I reread posts several times after their initial postings -- editing along the way -- that's no fun.

About that *other* baseball season....

A great man once said about the game....

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."

A. Bartlett Giamatti*
President of the American League
Commissioner of Baseball
for far too short a time
One of the Good Guys

* Because my mind works this way, I am absolutely compelled to tell you that Bart Giamatti was the father of actor Paul Giamatti. In fact, in the movie Sideways, when Paul Giamatti's character Miles looks at a photo of himself and his father, he is looking at a photo of himself and Bart.

Play ball!

It's baseball season again.

I hate baseball season.

I didn't use to. But then, baseball season meant rooting for teams with players whose average height was something over 58 inches. And who were older than my television set.

I am a bad Little League mom. Not bad in the psycho-baseball parent sense (those tend to be dads anyway; the psycho-moms tend to be in sports like skating); bad in the clueless and unenthusiastic sense.

Clueless because I don't play catch with my kids to develop their skills because I can't. I can catch okay, but as far as throwing... let's just say that if the fate of the free world depended upon me being able to throw a baseball and hit, oh, the broad side of a barn, we'd all be toast. (Oddly enough, I can be quite accurate with a set of car keys. Go figure.)

Batting is no better. Three years ago, the coaches on one of my kids' teams had the parents take batting practice, to boost the morale of the kids. Most of the parents were mediocre -- certainly not as good as the kids, which was the point of the whole exercise -- but I was execrable. I could not hit it when pitched to me, no matter how gently or skillfully. I couldn't even hit it more than a few feet off of a bloody tee.

Not very enthusiastic because, try as I might, I have a hard time being cheerful about sitting around freezing my ass off and watching a bunch of nine- to twelve-year-olds run around. Even when one of them is mine. No matter how much I love the kid.

It is a little known meteorological fact, but Little League ballparks in the San Francisco Bay Area are an average of ten degrees colder than adjacent land. Or maybe it just seems that way. At any rate, when it is 59 degrees, with probably a good 5 extra degrees off for wind chill, not cheering at every strikeout becomes difficult.

I've been involved in Little League for nine years now. I've never been a team parent, or a coach, or anything but a parent. I do my part as far as team snacks, and I'm fine about working the concessions stand, but that's it. I also will volunteer to keep score, because I actually know how to keep a baseball scorecard, which fewer and fewer parents seem to know how to do. And you know what? I've never regretted not being more involved. Bad mom, bad, bad mom. At this year's opening day ceremonies, people like me were sternly lectured by the league president about how this was not day care and that the league couldn't operate without parent volunteers. Wait, you mean it would have to fold? Can I organize a boycott?

It could be worse. At least I'm not a Little League psycho-parent. Although I have had the pleasure of working with lovely people as coaches, and sharing teams with generally responsible adults, there have been a few episodes of behavior (almost always on the part of people on other teams) that have made me just cringe, and say "I would never do anything like that."

Only once, though, was I ever sorely tempted to kick someone. There was a boy on a team with one of my sons whom I had never liked much. He was an angry little boy, and as my son often caught the brunt of the anger, I was not predisposed to trying to understand him. ( I like his mother, though.) One day, he was walking up to bat, and his father said "Remember, no hit, no dinner." The boy froze. The father laughed.

Poor kid. The father may have been joking -- who knows? -- but the boy thought he was completely serious. He had a panicked, desperate look on his face as he approached the plate. Fortunately, or perhaps not so fortunately, depending upon how it might have played out otherwise, the boy got a hit. They were not on the same team with us the next year, having requested different coaches, because they felt that the ones we had had (and who were continuing the team) just weren't aggressive enough. At least, that's what they told me. I was happy to have them elsewhere. The coaches they didn't want? They were a lovely couple who felt the emphasis should be on sportsmanship and fun and who were the best embodiment of what Little League professes itself to be about (as opposed to what it actually seems to be about) I've seen in nine years in the sport. And as for that boy -- I've gotten angry about how he's treated my son sometimes, but I can't find it in my heart to really dislike the kid.

Fortunately, I am down to only one Little Leaguer now. There was a time when I had three of them -- on three different teams, at three levels -- which meant three different game schedules to keep track of. More often than not, there were two games that overlapped -- or a game and a practice -- and sometimes three. Nothing like trying to be three places at once.

My kids aren't going to be their generation's Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire. That's not where their talents lie. I am not going to try and make them miserable thinking they have to be great at this -- I'm just happy if they get some exercise and fresh air. And having Little Leaguers has meant that I have actually used (i.e., for content, not simply as a pop-culture reference) Tom Hanks's exasperated exclamation from A League of Their Own: "Are you crying? There's no crying in baseball!"

Maybe baseball season isn't so bad after all. It means I get out in the sunshine -- what there is of it -- even if it is cold. Later on, in the late spring, games will very pleasant. And my son has reached the level where most of his games will be played at the park down the street. Which means I can walk to the game, and I'll get a little exercise. Win-win. Well, not exactly -- I've never had a kid on a winning team, and I doubt it will happen this year, either. But that's okay, too.

And you never know....

The most hapless team any child of mine was on was the last one that my middle child was part of. These kids were not merely bad, they were creatively bad. I didn't care, nor as far as I could tell did most of the other parents, at least past the mid-point of the season when it was apparent that they were not going be anything other than awful. We would sit in the stands and cheer anyway, because that's what you do. The coach, who was frustrated at the lack of skills of the players, still tried to rally her troops every game and keep their morale up. Which was hard towards the end: games that had been 15 run blowouts became absolutely gruesome after the "five run per inning" rule was lifted three weeks before the end of the "regular" season.

Then came time for the playoffs. It's a bit silly, really: all the teams go to the playoffs. We expected an early exit -- it's a double elimination tournament, so a couple of games and we'd be gone.

Well, no. The first game, we narrowly lost to the team that would go on to win the division championship. The second playoff game, we WON. All of a sudden, kids were hitting the cut-off man; sliding under tags; bunting. Not to mention hitting everything in sight. I still remember one pleased but shocked parent saying "What did the aliens do with our kids?" We won a second game, then a third game, and advanced to the quarterfinals.

Fairytales have to come to an end, and this one did. Throughout the streak, no one had said anything to the kids about what they had accomplished, other than "Good job!" They were just told to go out and have a good time and do their best. Other teams, burdened with expectations, couldn't handle a group of boys whose most pressing concern was what the snack was after the game. Unfortunately, before our last game, our coach told our boys in detail how remarkable their streak was and how they only had to win two more games to get to the championship game.

They came unglued. They reverted to the form they had had all season, with painful results. I don't remember the final score, other than "some godawful number to zero." I am sure I was not the only one unhappy with the coach. While I don't know that they would have won without her speech, I think they would have played better. They forgot about the "having fun" part.

You know, as much as I kvetch about Little League, I bet I'm going to miss it in three years when my youngest gets too old to play anymore.....

Naaah. It's still baseball season.

I hate baseball season.

Just travelin' thru....

I am not all that tuned in to what right wing fundamentalist Christian circles are fulminating about, beyond what I see in the media and in a few blogs. There's a reason for this: there is enough that provokes anger in this world, and placing myself where I add to it may not be healthy. I will leave it to stronger warriors than myself to fight those culture wars.

So my understanding of current fundamentalist ire at the movies is somewhat limited. From what I've heard, although they mention Capote and Transamerica as part of the great gay plot to corrupt the youth of America, their ire is mostly aimed at Brokeback Mountain. This makes sense, given the iconic nature of the cowboy in the American mythos. (Not everyone bought into that myth: the homoerotocism of the Hollywood western has been a matter for amusement long before Jon Stewart's very funny Oscar night montage.)

After the Oscars, I downloaded "Travelin' Thru" by Dolly Parton from Transamerica. After a single listening, I was astounded that there has not been screaming indignation from the fundamentalists about this song sung by Dolly Parton -- a country and western luminary -- in a movie about... about... transsexuals!!!!! How dare they!

Because "Travelin' Thru" is a spiritual.

Questions I have many, answers but a few
But we're here to learn, the spirit burns, to know the greater truth
We've all been crucified and they nailed Jesus to the tree
And when I'm born again, you're gonna see a change in me

She said "born again"! Well, clearly, she doesn't mean it like we mean it. Or does she? And just mentioning the name of Jesus doesn't make something a spiritual.

But calling on the name of Jesus does -- and with an assertion of God's love, to boot:

God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain
Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain
Oh sweet Jesus if you're listening, keep me ever close to you
As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wonderin', as I'm travelin' thru

A spiritual with a message about acceptance and redemption. A remarkable message about becoming who you are. Especially remarkable when, as is the case with transgendered people, who you are is subject to misunderstanding, rejection, and even possibly violence (such as Brandon Teena and Gwen Araujo suffered).

A friend of mine who is a transman has described to me in the past the frustration of dealing with people who insist on calling him by his birth name, use "she" and "her" -- or worse, "it" -- when referring to him, about people who think that he is evil or damned, about Christians who say "I'll pray for you," when what they mean is "I'll pray for you to renounce your sinful ways and return to being a nice feminine wife and mother." The pain when he spoke of it was palpable and heartbreaking.

As long as I've known him he's been a man. I can't imagine him as a woman. The sort of emotional and psychological distortions he'd have to undergo to become a woman would drive anyone insane. His being a man hurts no one at all, and makes him emotionally healthier than he ever was as a woman. And we are suppposed to shame him into being someone else simply to fit our preconceived notion of who God finds acceptable?

Oh sometimes the road is rugged, and it's hard to travel on
But holdin' to each other, we don't have to walk alone
When everything is broken, we can mend it if we try
We can make a world of difference, if we want to we can fly

Amen, Sister Dolly. I just wish that the people who would condemn my friend for being who he is would feel the same way. Or, if they do, they don't interpret "mending" as "forcing into the mold we need them to be in." Because that's not mending, that's bludgeoning.

Like the poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song
I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find my own way home
Oh sweet Jesus if you're out there, keep me ever close to you
As I'm travelin', travelin', travelin', as I'm travelin' thru

As so are we all. If we all recognized that fact the world might be a gentler place. A place safe for all of us, even a middle-aged MTF meeting the son she never knew she had, or my friend.

I think that would be worth a song, don't you?

March 8 is International Women's Day. Therefore, it is also Blog Against Sexism Day. (Who decides these things, anyway?)

I have already written about feminism when I wrote about the death of Betty Friedan. And there are a great many women (and men) out there writing about sexism today, their own personal experiences of it, political analysis, etc. Because of the South Dakota Legislature, a number of those people are discussing abortion.

I need to talk about paradigms, and hope, and self-definition.

In 1854, Coventry Patmore, a respected Victorian poet, published "Angel in the House," a book-length sentimental ode to his wife Emily that would provide the standard for respectable Victorian middle class women -- and would remain influential into the early 20th century. Patmore's "Angel" was a woman who lived solely for her husband:

Man must be pleased; but him to please
Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She casts her best, she flings herself.
How often flings for nought, and yokes
Her heart to an icicle or whim,
Whose each impatient word provokes
Another, not from her, but him;
While she, too gentle even to force
His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
With pardon in her pitying eyes;
And if he once, by shame oppress'd,
A comfortable word confers,
She leans and weeps against his breast,
And seems to think the sin was hers;
Or any eye to see her charms,
At any time, she's still his wife,
Dearly devoted to his arms;
She loves with love that cannot tire;
And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone.

Virginia Woolf, in 1931, said that "killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer."

Echoes of the Angel still exist. I heard her in the voice of my eighth-grade best friend warning me that boys didn't like me because I was "too smart." She was whispering in the ear of Kansas state senator Kay O'Connor when she opined that the 19th Amendment happened because "men weren't doing their jobs, and I think that's sad. I believe the man should be the head of the family. The woman should be the heart of the family." She had her fingerprints all over Maureen Dowd's 2005 book Are Men Necessary?, in which Dowd argued that men were put off by powerful, intelligent women. (To which I say, no man worth having is put off by powerful, intelligent women.)

Fortunately there are other, opposing paradigms, even for people who have the strange (and inaccurate) view of feminists as a bunch of man-hating, Birkenstock wearing separatists -- and some of them from the most unlikely places. You might never have thought that a movie about a country and western singer would provide us with a portrait of a strong and independent-minded woman, yet there she was. Velvet and steel. June Carter Cash was a remarkable woman.

Reese Witherspoon, who won an Oscar for portraying June Carter Cash, herself presented no mean role model in her grandmother: "She taught me how to be a real woman, to have strength and self-respect, and to never give those things away." What a world away from Coventry Patmore's ideal! And what a ways away even from the picture of womanhood presented by Kay O'Connor.

It's a long road, and a hard road. And people like Maureen Dowd don't help. But maybe, within my lifetime, the only Angel in the House will be the one we stick on top of the tree at Christmas.

"At the rager, chicks come and go..."

We here at Wild Winds of Fortune believe that great art deserves recognition. Therefore, we would like to expose as many people as possible to the joy that is T.S. Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, as rewritten for frat boys.

Thanks, I think, to Geekchick over at Livejournal for passing this wonder along.

I shouldn't even have been in St. Isaac's that morning.

I was supposed to be in Paris, stretching luxuriously as I awoke in the Hotel de Nice on the Rue de Rivoli, looking forward to a leisurely breakfast of croissants and wonderful coffee and then a trip on the Metro to the Musée de Orsay, where I would bliss out on rooms and rooms of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art.

However, we had run into the bizarre circus that was Air France's St. Petersburg operation. In those days (and these days, for all I know) the Air France counter in St. Petersburg operated on a first-come, first-served basis: as in, first-with ticket, first-on plane. Just like all other airlines right? But in St. Petersburg, they added a special twist: it didn't matter when your ticket was for -- today, tomorrow, a week from Thursday -- they would put you on the plane. At least that was how it was explained to us when we arrived at the airport well within Air France's suggested window, with confirmed tickets, only to be told that not only was the plane filled already, it was preparing to take off.

Okay, no problem, they could just put us on the flight tomorrow, right? Well, yes, they would honor my husband's ticket, but my frequent flier ticket was no good. We would have to buy another ticket for the flight tomorrow. My husband argued with the Air France manager for a long time, at one point leaving me to sit under the watchful eye of increasingly suspicious Russian soldiers with submachine guns, to no avail.

So, after an uncomfortable evening, with me being particularly grumpy at my husband on the irrational grounds that it was his idea to go shopping that morning (we ended up buying what was thereafter referred to as "the $600 lacquer bowl"), we decided to spend a little time (not much, we planned to get to the airport way way in advance, as the Air France manager hinted that he could make sure we got on the flight if we got there by such and such a time) at St. Isaac's Cathedral. St. Isaac's had once been an operating church, but under the Communists had been turned into a museum.

In Russia, there are two prices for everything, a Russian price and a tourist price. The Russians justify this on the hard to argue with grounds that a) these are their national treasures, and b) if you're traveling there, you can afford to pay more to see things. (Even the tourist price was quite low.)

I approached the ticket table. It was staffed by two Russian women who looked to be in their late forties or early fifties. (This was in 1997.)

The ticket seller looked at me for a moment and then said something in Russian, pointing to the cross I always wore, the cross I had bought a couple of years earlier in Germany. Then she said to me, "Priest's wife." (Orthodox priests can marry, and often do, and their wives are respected members of the community.)

I smiled. "No, no, I am not a priest's wife."

The woman insisted, "Priest's wife," and pointed to my cross. The other woman explained, "In Russia, the only people who could wear crosses were priest's wives."

I was taken aback. Then it occured to me that these women grew up in an era when the simple act of wearing a cross could be dangerous.

The two women, beaming at me, insisted that I pay the Russian price for admission, in spite of my protestations to the contrary. I went in to view the marvelous mosaics and gilded walls, feeling like a bit of a fraud: although, yes, I am a Christian, I am not a hero.

Whenever I hear American Christians whine about persecution, I grow angry. I remember those two Russian women, and countless others, for whom persecution was not a matter of people possibly saying mean things about you but about safety for yourself and your family. We are free to practice our religions in ways large parts of the world can only dream about -- just ask Christians in Algeria, or Buddhists in Tibet, or Muslims in Uzbekistan.

We can wear crosses with impunity, or without meaning. They can be just jewelry, to us.

But never to me, not again. I think I owe it to the Russian women to wear the cross more thoughtfully than that.

At some point, my life became strange. Or maybe my life remained normal and I became strange. Or both.

It's been strange for quite a while now. I've dealt with it being strange by pretending that things are okay. That my life is pretty much just what I want it to be, thank you very much. No, crying in your sleep doesn't mean anything. It's not like I'm screaming. Or that it happens all the time. Just... more often than I would like it to, considering everything.

When life hand you lemons you... ah, shit. I don't make lemonade. I say Jesus Christ, what am I going to do with these lemons? And then I pretend they aren't there. Because after a while, the lemons can just become part of the scenery. Lemon yellow is a very pretty color. And when lemons dry out, they smell spicy, and turn a nice shade of yellowish brown.

Through it all I have had something I held on to, to remind me that life was not always strange, or that I had not always been strange. If you have read Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, it was the equivalent of Sam Vimes's cigar case. (If you haven't read Night Watch, go read it. It's one of Pratchett's best Discworld books.) It was a silver cross I had gotten in Hildesheim, Germany, at the cathedral gift shop.

I had gotten the cross because of the rose bush. Hildesheim is the home of a rose bush planted by Charlemagne, of which the locals are very proud and which has been a tourist attraction for centuries. You look at it climbing up the end wall of the cathedral, its blood red blossoms against the modern red brick and you can't help but be impressed.

That's right -- modern red brick. The end of the cathedral -- and the rose bush -- took a direct hit from a shell during World War II. The locals mourned their cathedral and their rose bush and their shattered lives. And a year later, in the spring, rose shoots sprang up from where the bush had been. A thousand years is a long long time, and the rose bush had put down roots strong and deep enough to withstand being bombed into oblivion.

I liked that. Something promising about that story. So I had bought a cross in the gift shop. I didn't pay any attention to the name, or the history, or anything other than it was from the cathedral with the rose bush.

A cross is a symbol of resurrection; a cross from Hildesheim doubly so. While Jesus rising from the dead seems remote and unreal -- a matter of faith, certainly -- the rose bush rising from the remnants of its tattered roots is tangible, solid. Maybe God sends us the reminders of His presence that we can use best.

I held on to that cross for ten years. It helped comfort me through long nights and painful days. Through hospital stays and childbirth. Through the death of my father, and the discovery of my son's autism.

It went with me everywhere: no mere piece of jewelry, it stayed around my neck unless I was absolutely forced to take it off -- which meant it stayed on except for when I had x-rays, CT-scans and MRIs done. Which was what I was having done in September -- a CAT-scan -- when the cross got lost. I took it off, and in the confusion (and the fact that I was falling asleep) afterwards, forgot to put it back on. It's not been found.

I have been devastated by this loss. It was not "the last straw" -- there is never one of those in life. One deals. And it was a simple thing, a little thing. But it meant more to me than any other piece of silver I've ever owned.

The cathedral had a museum, which had a website. In German. Which I don't speak. And it does not have online gift shop ordering. I couldn't even name what it was that I was looking for.

Tonight I was sitting working on a post on alienation, on community, on how I feel one and not the other, and how I write maybe to break through one and create the other... when I found myself Googling "Hildesheim." It took an hour of searching, including several false leads (going through the medieval art collection at The Cleveland Museum of Art, and the ceremonial cross of Countess Gertrude), but finally ...

I found my cross. At least, I found the cross that I had a silver replica of. The "Bernward Cross."

I am going to replace this cross. I need all the reminders of hope that I can find, these days. As do we all, I think.

Remember the rose bush.

This makes my blood run cold.

How dare they. How dare they.

The House of Representatives passed an immigration bill which, among its provisions, would require churches -- churches!!! -- to check the immigration status of parishioners or others before they offer them aid.

How dare they try and turn the house of the Lord into Caesar's gatekeeper. How dare they presume to place requirements on who the people of God can help.

Oh, and the best part came in a quote I heard in the news report from Channel 11 from the head of an anti-immigrant group, which ran something like "Judeo-Christian faith of course places a high value on charity... but [and this part I remember clearly] there are limits."

The Son of God came to earth, was born of a woman, suffered torture, died on a cross and this...this...this excuse of a man says there are limits?

NO. There are no limits but what we, in our cramped and ugly and grasping little hearts, place to keep other people from having things we think we should have all to ourselves.

Bastards. You shall not use God's house to exclude, to limit, to harass.

God is bigger than that. God's people are better than that.




Write your Senators. Let them know this just is not acceptable. Maybe it will get killed in the Senate version.

Talk to all the people of faith, any faith, that you know -- let them know about it, and ask them to write their Senator, as well.

Reality check time.

Let's recap, shall we?

Through Friday, the U.S. had won 23 medals, eight of them gold. That exceeds the number won at any Olympics other than Salt Lake (where we had a surreal 34) by ten. Even subtracting the events that were added to this Olympics -- team pursuit in long track speed skating, side by side slalom in snowboarding and snowboard cross -- we've won 20 medals, six of them gold.

And yet, the general opinion of sportswriters has been that this Olympics has been a great disappointment for the U.S. team. Ann Killion of the San Jose Mercury News wrote that Sasha Cohen, by winning the silver instead of the gold in women's figure skating, had failed in her opportunity to "redeem" the Winter Games for the USOC.

What the hell is going on here? The answer comes from Yahoo's Ken Murrah. All medals are not created equal, he said. "The problem is, the wrong people won at the wrong times."

On behalf of Hannah Teter, Julia Mancuso, and the men's curling team, I would like to say...

Vaffunculo anche.

If what Murrah says is correct -- and I recognize that he was talking mainly about why the ratings are so dismal -- then we have become a nation that cares more about hype than actual results. It's not enough for an athlete to win one medal -- such as Shaun White, who dominated the men's halfpipe competition -- or even two -- such as Joey Cheek or Shani Davis, both of whom have a gold and silver apiece in long track speed skating. Nor is it enough to win a silver medal in a sport in which the U.S. has been hopeless for so long that there are no expectations of success, such as Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto did in ice dancing (ending a thirty year medal drought with a remarkable performance). No, you have to be annointed a star by the media (and Nike) before the Games begin, and, unless you are a figure skater, you have to succeed by winning multiple gold medals.

Have you noticed who sportswriters are griping about losing? Bode Miller, who was the subject of intense media hype before the Games. Chad Hedricks, likewise. (Hedricks wins my "Olympian I most wish belonged to some other country" award.) It's not enough that Hedricks has won three medals, putting him in an elite group of American athletes who have won multiple medals at one games: he didn't win enough, and only one of them was gold. Then there was the case of Jeremy Bloom, who was hyped because, not only was he a world class freestyle skier, he's a football player! Woo hoo!

They are complaining not because the U.S. isn't doing well, but because they guessed wrong about who the stars were. Big whoop. The football cliche about "any given Sunday" may be a cliche, but it still holds true, which is, as they say, why you play the games.

This is not to say that the U.S. Olympic team doesn't merit some criticism. Someone from the U.S. skating team or the USOC should have taken Davis and Hedricks aside and talked to them before their feud became bitter and public. And Lindsey Jacobellis, what in heaven's name were you thinking, girl?

But by hyping individuals rather than competition, by losing sight of the spirit of the Games themselves, the media have only fed a public perception of the Winter Olympians as losers. And that's unfortunate.

And unfair.

Oh, and Sasha Cohen? Maybe it's me, but being the second best figure skater in the whole freaking world strikes me as pretty damn impressive. So she fell. She didn't fall apart. She showed grace under the most difficult of conditions and came through. I am proud that she represents my country. If she wants to be disappointed, that's her perogative, but everyone else should just shut the hell up.

Golden...

I love the Winter Olympics.

I love the outfits the ice dancers wear. I love the goofy grins and youthful enthusiasm of the halfpipe snowboarders. (I really hope Shaun White gets to date Sasha Cohen -- who could resist such a pickup line as "You do a 1080? So do I" or that marvelous red hair?) I love the insanity of what was really the world's first X-Game -- ski jumping -- and the NASCAR-like aspect of skeleton (c'mon -- don't you watch to see if someone washes out? I do). I love the way that the people who end up being stars are rarely the people that have been designated as such beforehand by Nike (Bode who?), the unknowns who suddenly become household names. (Paging Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto.)

Tonight begins the major dramatic event (cue weepy music) of any Olympics: women's figure skating. Personally, I don't really care who wins -- I'm more interested in the men's 1500m speed skate. This year, men's speed skating is marked by the sort of off-ice drama normally reserved for the ladies in sequins: in one corner we have the outspoken Chad Hedricks, skating's more successful Bode Miller, groomed to be a multiple-gold winner, who had only won one, allegedly upset (or not, depending upon which newspaper you read) because Shani Davis had pulled out of the team pursuit, after which the Americans had finished fourth. In the other corner is the taciturn Davis, winner of the 1,000m, whose supposedly domineering mother has been portrayed as the force behind his success. A third factor is the heroic Joey Cheek, who has donated his bonuses for the medals he has won so far (a gold and a silver) to a charitable organization called Right to Play. Okay, so it's not Nancy and Tonya, but it's much more interesting that the whole Michelle Kwan "will she or won't she?" issue, and the hype surrounding the skater who finished third at nationals and who is a major news event primarily because of her sister.

I have six more days of Olympic bliss before I have to let go of all this. Then it's the long wait until 2010 and Vancouver.

Wait... I've been to Vancouver. I've even been to Whistler, where the skiing is going to take place. It's only a couple of good days driving from here. By then the kids will be old enough I could take off a bit and head north. I should start planning now...

After all, how could I miss the chance to experience Olympic fever in person?

In vino veritas...

Last night, my husband and I went out to a sports bar, looking to get out of the house and maybe watch some of the Olympics away from the kids. Trying to watch ice dancing when you can't hear the music -- because, after all, no self-respecting sports bar is actually going to be blaring "Carmen" from their television speakers -- is rather an exercise in futility, although it was interesting to watch the skating without the music.

I am a cheap drunk. There is a line from the junior show (a musical staged by the junior class every year) that played my first year at Wellesley, "You can't change a Wellesley woman's mind with just one drink!" which applies to me: it takes only two. Over my second rum and coke, I said something which has been terrifying me lately, and which I do not know what to do with. Something which I have been afraid to admit to anyone.

I am desperately afraid I have become a "good German." You remember them? The ones who stood by while the Nazis took power? The Nazis did not begin with concentration camps and ovens -- they started much much smaller, with the Nuremburg laws of 1933, and even before that. And all along the way were people who stood by, who did nothing.

It has become popular in some circles to equate the current Administration with the Nazis. I am not doing that here. But there is a great many things which we as a country are doing which are horrific and which undermine all that we once stood for.

We have accepted torture -- in fact, if not in words -- as a legitimate exercise of state power. (Oh, sorry, that should be "aggressive interrogation techniques.") We throw people in prison with minimal due process, on the grounds that they are "enemy combatants" -- even citizens. (Just ask Jose Padilla -- who was held for four years before being charged with criminal charges -- about the sixth amendment's guarantees of a "public and speedy trial.") We have a President who admits to illegal wiretapping, and claims that he is exempt even from legal requirements so favorable to the executive that since 1979 (the first year FISA was in effect) only 4 of over 18,000 requests for warrants have been rejected (all in 2003, in which 1,723 were approved). Opposition to the war is portrayed as being at best anti-patriotic at best and treasonous at worst. Desire to get to the truth of what is happening at places like Abu Ghrayub, or in Fallujah, where we have been so eager to "win" that we use weapons that skirt the line between chemical and non-chemical weapons (weapons we would decry as illegal and immoral were they being used against our own soldiers) is "undermining the troops."

And so on.

And I don't know what to do. I go about my everyday life. I watch what goes on, write the occasional letter to my congressional representative or senator (which gets acknowledged) or to the editor (which doesn't). I don't talk politics much with people except online (see my post about my family). In that last, I am cowardly and I recognize it.

And it makes me wonder, how many of those "good Germans" were simply people who were appalled but helpless? What can one person do in the face of institutional evil?

A letter to the Mercury News

Dear Sirs:

In his letter of Sunday, February, 19, 2006, Scott Abramson upbraids the media for showing the latest round of photos from Abu Ghurayb, claiming that they will likely inflame more hatred towards American troops.

Whose sensibilities is he really concerned with here? As a nation we are responsible for what happened at Abu Ghraib. We need to hold our leaders accountable -- not merely the few low level military personnel who have been tried. To the extent that these photos show that the abuse was more widespread than previously believed by the American public, that it was a pattern and not merely the actions of a "few bad apples" like the Adminstration repeatedly told us, they need to be seen. Instead, people like Mr. Abramason would have us look away, would minimize what was done in our name. Rather than try and get to the truth, he would have us stick our fingers in our ears, and cover our eyes.

I am sensitive to the feelings of our soldiers, but that sensitivity must always take a back seat to a search for truth. I love my country enough to expect her to do what is right and honorable, even when that means facing hard truths, such as those shown in the photos from Abu Ghurayb.

Purple is such a lovely color.

In my wedding post, I spoke about my family's politics. That was way too flip of me -- I used a shorthand which obscured a range of opinions about many things. (I also forgot and left out my younger brother, who is likewise liberal, although not as liberal as I am.)

Truth be told, we don't discuss politics all that much. In the past, we have discussed "religious issues": abortion, gay rights, women in the priesthood. We don't agree. I know this. I don't discuss these issues with them any more because I think the chances of changing opinions are small, and we do not see each other often enough that I want to spend our limited time together arguing.

I come from the bluest of blue states. My oldest sister and her husband and my older brother live in the reddest of red states, and my other sister likewise in a red state. My younger brother lives in another red state -- although he's a moderate. By all accounts, if our family were a microcosm of the sort of public discourse seen today, we should be barely speaking to each other.

The fact is, there are things we agree on. My sister who lives in Alaska is upset about no-bid contracts and conflicts of interests with Halliburton and what she sees as the greed of the administration. My older brother is concerned with the NSA wiretaps (heck, even my mom is worried about that, if what she said at Christmas is any indication).

The closest I came to a political argument all the time I was visiting was when my eldest sister (the mother of the bride) and I started to discuss global warming. I dropped it after a few minutes -- she had enough stress in her life just then, and I didn't want to add to it.

But I have heard this sister, the most conservative -- and nicest, by the way -- of any of us, in the past speak against capital punishment. She has a consistent ethic of life: against abortion, against euthenasia, against assisted suicide, against capital punishment. I respect that a great deal, even if I don't agree with all the positions she takes.

One of the hardest tasks facing the country today is for us to get beyond the great divide that exists between political camps. Except... what if the divide isn't as big as we are led to believe? What if we could all step back, and figure out the ways in which people of different political leanings agree with one another?

Maybe we could start listening to each other? How radical would that be?

After all, people in red states and people in blue states are .... people. Imagine that.

I am using this blog to write, not as a place to link to other people's writings -- I don't have a large enough audience to make that worthwhile to anyone. However, in this case, I'll make an exception.

Terry Karney is an intellegent observer of the political scene. If you get a chance, you might want to check out his Live Journal (see my link list), he's an interesting guy. He's no knee-jerk liberal; a current Army interpreter who has also worked as an interrogator, he is willing to call out idiocy on any side.

He has several posts on the current political situation that more people need to read:

About the efficacy of the NSA wiretap scheme, and dangers it poses for the rest of us

About fear

About the dangers of an Imperial Presidency

As I said, Terry has a calm head on his shoulders. If he says we're in trouble, that means something.

Love and marriage...

I spent the last weekend at a niece's wedding. This particular niece reminds me of Bubbles, the Powerpuff Girl: blonde hair, blue-eyed, pretty, and with superpowers -- she has a mind like a steel trap, one bachelors' in math, another in computer science (she has yet to start her masters' work), and is able to program code like nobody's business. Did I mention she hangs out and helps her new husband when he works on his jeep?

During the wedding and reception, people talked about how lovely the bride looked, how handsome the groom looked, and how they just seemed right for each other. Since they had been dating for seven years, they pretty much had time to work out whether in fact they were right for each other. They also have a very large and supportive network of friends and family, which is invaluable to a young couple. I'm not in the least worried about my niece and her young man.

And it got me to thinking about marriage in general. One area in which my more conservative relatives (which would be pretty much all of them -- I'm the liberal black sheep of the family) and I disagree -- strongly -- is same sex marriage. I have trouble seeing where allowing long-term committed couples to be able to formally recognize that relationship endangers or trivializes marriage. (That my family and I are able to get along as well as we do having such disparate political views -- they love me in spite of much of what I believe -- gives me hope for the rest of the nation.)

I also remembered an exchange I had had with a woman in another online forum several months back. The context was a discussion of, I believe, the war. This woman was making nonsensical and bating comments. Another commenter, who I know pretty well through online interactions and through mutual friends, replied with a comment full of passion and eloquence, which included quoting Wilfred Owen. It was magnificent. I jokingly said "I know it would never work out -- as we're both married -- but marry me?" It was a stupid reply, I know, mainly because such eloquence deserved something better.

The first commenter went after me, saying "Since the concept of "marriage" doesn't mean much to most including the author (apparently) need I say more. Yeah, right, asking someone to marry one in an anonymous forum... how trivializing of the state of matrimony is THAT!!??? (Oh yeah... Just a joke. Hehehe.) "

For a great many reasons, most of them having to do with my personal history, that hit very close to home. I swear, if I had been in the same room with this woman, I might have become physically violent.

I managed to calm down enough to write a simple answer, along the lines of "I've been married long enough -- 22 years -- to have earned the right to joke about it....", but it was still quite an unpleasant experience.

And I also got to thinking about what does endanger marriage:

It's Renee and Kenny.

It's a nation that actually cares whether Brad is with Angelina or with Jen.

It's people -- Rob and Amber, Jessica and Nick, to name just a few -- who let the most intimate relationship of their lives become fodder for cheap entertainment.

It's a nation where couples, on average, spend enough on twelve hours of their lives to feed a family of four for a year.

It's every bride who has not asked her friend to be a bridesmaid because she was too fat or not pretty enough.

It's every groom who checked out and refused to have anything to do with the wedding or preparing for life together.

It's every bride -- or groom -- who went down the aisle and made sacred vows because "everything's been paid for and it would be a big problem to call things off at the last minute."

It's every planner who left people off the guest list that would have otherwise been invited so that the couple could have a fancier dinner.

It's every person who used wedding invitations for business purposes.

It's people who go down the aisle thinking that there are always "do-overs."*

It's every mother-in-law who insists she be more important in her son's life than her daughter-in-law.

It's every father-in-law who refuses to see his grown married daughter as anything other than "Daddy's little girl," and treats her husband accordingly.

It's every friend who said** "You know, your life would be so much simpler if you'd just leave him."

It's every coworker who says "I can't believe you let your wife get away with that!"

It's the Southern Baptist Conference, and every religious organization that insists that wives are to be submissive to their husbands.

It's every preacher who speaks of "wedded bliss", as if the two words implied each other.

It's every romance novel and fairy tale that portrays marriage as easy, or smooth, or forever romantic.

It's every movie where couples never go to counseling before splitting up.

It's every husband who sexually, physically, emotionally or verbally abuses his wife.

It's every wife who sexually, physically, emotionally or verbally abuses her husband.

It's every person in the world who think they know more and are more qualified to make decisions about what is going on in a given marriage than the two people who are in it, and who are willing to tell them about it.



A simple joke? No. Same sex marriage? No, not that either.




* I'm not saying that people should not get divorced, just that if you are thinking about how to get out of your marriage on your wedding day -- and there are people like that -- maybe you shouldn't be getting married. Linda Ellerbee once said that we had it all backwards, that we should make it hard to get married and easy to get divorced. I think she may be right.

** unless abuse is present. If one or the other parties is being abused, then friends should be urging them to leave.

'Night, Sister.

On Saturday, Betty Friedan died. She was 85.

It is hard to overestimate the impact she had on the nation's psyche. She destroyed some of the myths we held about who we were: all to the good, as those myths were eating the soul out of countless women.

There are a lot of criticisms of her feminist writings, most of them valid. She did view things from a straight, upper-middle-class, white perspective. After all, "the feminine mystique" that she railed against in her groundbreaking first book was a syndrome found among bored suburban housewives, not poor working women. As a friend of mine in college once explained, "If all your life you've had to work to support your family, it would be nice to have a choice to stay home and raise your own kids." And in some ways, perhaps, her writings made the choice to stay home and raise kids (because someone has to do it, if not you then a nanny or babysitter or day care worker) seem unacceptable for intelligent or educated women.

But because of Betty, and her comrades, women had choices. Not all women, in many ways not enough women and not enough choices, but more of each. The questions were beginnning to be asked.

I am three years older than Betty was when she wrote The Feminine Mystique. I came of age during a time and a place (the South) when girls were expected to be nurses, not doctors, before Little League fields had youngsters in ponytails, when a woman president was a joke, not a possibility. When you could be fired for being pregnant. Before the first woman astronaut, the first woman Supreme Court Justice, the first woman to be nominated to nationwide office by her party.

I am growing older now in what has been sometimes called the "post-feminist age". Rush Limbaugh and his ilk sneeringly refer to "feminazis" and young women without a trace of irony say "I believe in equal rights, but I'm not a feminist." At a time when Kansas state senator Kay O'Connor can say that granting women the right to vote was a bad thing -- and then run for the office of Secretary of State, which in Kansas oversees elections.

But you know what? I'm a feminist. And regardless of what goes on elsewhere, I'm going to be a feminist until I die. And do you know what that means? It means I believe...

In equal pay for equal work.

That all honest work is honorable.

That there is no "men's work" or "women's work" (outside of a very few short term gigs limited to reproduction) only "peoples' work."

That it is wonderful that my nieces have degrees in engineering and computer science, and that should be honored.

That it is likewise wonderful that my son wants to be a daycare worker when he grows up, and that too should be honored.

That being a doctor or lawyer or Republican State Senator is a choice that is open to all people who possess the proper qualifications -- and "having a penis" is never a requisite qualification.

That raising children -- your own or someone else's -- is a choice and should be respected as important work, regardless of the gender of the caregiver.

That men should change as many diapers, and wash as many dishes, and write as many thank-you notes and Christmas cards as their wives do.

That yes means yes and no means NO.

That women should have the same access to the boardrooms, the classrooms, the machine-shop floors, and the playing fields, that the men have.

In short, that all people, regardless of gender, are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This is who I am and what I believe. I would have come to believe these things without Betty Freidan, I think, but I would have been alone. With Betty, and the movement she was such an integral part of, I was part of something larger. There is safety in numbers -- it helps reassure you that you are not mad. Being exposed to the feminist movement meant that I had other people who understood my frustration and pain. Although I never met her except through her writings, by being the catalyst that she was, Betty Freidan changed my life.

So, Betty, a younger sister says thank you. Rest in peace.

Yeah, what THEY said....

Orson Scott Card posted a defense of teaching Creationism in the schools. I would have liked to pointed out all the holes in his argument, but then Pharyngula did such a lovely job of it, better than I could have.

I wanted to express my frustration at what I saw as the false theological dichotomy being set up -- just because we know how something works, why does that mean God is not present? -- but then Real Live Preacher wrote exactly what I was thinking, only so much more brilliantly than I could have.

So, I think the only thing left to say is....

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars— mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere'. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination— stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern— of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent.
---- Richard Feynman

To inspire and guide....

On Devon Island, in the Canadian Arctic, there are seven inukshuks. An inukshuk is an Inuit "stone man" -- it serves to comfort people on dangerous journeys and mark pathways. The inukshuks are a little smaller than life-size, and are made of stone of the area.

I know about the inukshuks firsthand because my husband helped erect some of them. As part of the Haughton-Mars Project (so named because Haughton crater on Devon is a good analog site to conditions found on Mars), he was there in the summer of 2003 and 2004 when the stone men were being built.

Were you to go to Devon -- not many people do, it's only accessible for a couple of months in the summer -- you would find the inukshuks at McCool Crossing, Husband Hill, Anderson Pass. Brown Ridge. Clark Point. Chawla Peak. Ramon Point.

Each inukshuk has the bio of one of the seven Columbia astronauts, a patch of the crew's shuttle mission, and a patch of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project. According to a statement by Pascal Lee, Principal Investigator for the Haughton-Mars Project, "it is our hope that the Columbia Inukshuks on Devon Island will help bring peace to all those who continue to miss these seven astronauts, and will help inspire and guide future generations of space explorers who will journey to the Moon, Mars and Beyond."

How interesting, to place memorials where the people who will see them are themselves explorers and scientists. To inspire people actually working to get us "to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond."

NASA is an agency of the United States government, make no mistake about that. There is bureaucracy. The politics can be byzantine, just like any other government agency. But often, you get people who work there whose idea of public service extends beyond our borders to all humanity, beyond our time to generations unseen. People think in terms of years -- sometimes in terms of decades.

There will be future Columbias, future Challengers. (Not to mention the occasional probe or rover that goes astray.) Space is not a place hospitable to humans. In many ways it's remarkable that there have been as few disasters as there have.

And there will be more inukshuks -- on Devon and elsewhere, perhaps only in our own imaginations. But there will still be those willing to take those risks, to push those boundaries.

We are all the better for it.

Maybe I need more windmills...

Samuel Alito is now on the Supreme Court. The Administration continues to defend its domestic spying program. There is Plamegate and the Ambrahamoff scandal and war and discord and fear.

And this weekend my nine-year-old and I completed a massive construction project: we rebuilt the Santa Barbara mission in styrofoam, salt clay and construction paper. We did this while listening to show tunes together -- because although he proclaims loudly how much he dislikes them, it is always "except for...." "Rent" (the song, not the entire soundtrack -- he's too young for that), or "I Wanna Be a Producer" (from The Producers) or "Do You Hear the People Singing" (from Le Miserables) or, tonight, "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha. You cannnot imagine how wonderful it is to hear a boy soprano singing "This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far..."

The Republic will survive, somehow. Me, I have a knight I have to hang out with.

Mission 51-L

The mission page for Space Shuttle mission 51-L looks pretty much the same as for any other mission. Until you skim past all the verbiage about the launch and orbit stats (not too many of those) and see "Landing: None. KSC Landing planned after a 6 day, 34 minute mission."

The words make you catch your breath. The sheer, clinical, tidiness of them. But of course -- what else would they say? "Landing: a pile of burning debris in the Atlantic Ocean"? Like the rest of the mission history, it is professional, scientific.

Professional. These were professionals, after all: all of them, even the least experienced, the civilian whose presence overshadowed the others in the media and who just by being on board ensured that millions of schoolchildren were watching as the twin spirals of smoke drifted off into the clear Florida January sky.

Professional. Which is as it should be. Yet, somehow, in the mission objectives and the mission "highlights" -- highlights which never took place -- there is a sense of deep loss. "Was scheduled to have..."; "would have been deployed..."; "would have been spent in preparation of.." Experiments never perfomed, feats never accomplished, lessons never taught, dreams never fulfilled.

There would be other losses: January 27 marks the Apollo 1 fire, the first time when American men died in pursuit of space. February 1 marks the loss of Columbia, again with all hands aboard.

But Challenger was different: as a country, we had enough experience, we thought, with this space business that it was easy, safe, or relatively so. Although the launch was shown in classrooms -- primarily because of Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, it wasn't on the networks, except for cable. Shuttle missions were old hat. We were naive.

We're not naive, now. Columbia struck us to the core and filled us with grief, but it didn't break our hearts like Challenger did. Instead of "Oh, my God, how could that happen?" it was "Dear God. Not again." There is a difference.

But they weren't naive, the professionals. They would have gone in knowing the dangers, and they did it anyway. And for that, we honor their memories.

Rest in Peace:

Francis R. Scobee
Michael J. Smith
Judith A. Resnik
Ellison S. Onizuka
Ronald E. McNair
Gregory B. Jarvis
Sharon Christa McAuliffe

And thank you.

It's only teenage wasteland...

It is so easy to be judgmental.

I was reading a little bit about the Starkweather homicides on History Channel's This Day In History. You remember reading about those? They were before my time -- three years before I was born, to be exact -- but they were a milestone in post-war America: teenage alienation hits home, and scares the crap out of everybody. They so impressed Billy Joel that he included them in his it's-a-list-not-a-song "We Didn't Start The Fire."

Short form, for those unfamiliar with the saga, or with Terence Malick's Badlands: boy -- Charles Starkweather -- meets girl -- Caril Ann Fugate, boy argues with girl's parents, blows them away with a shotgun, strangles baby sister, boy and girl tool around Nebraska backroads stopping every once in a while to kill someone and grab a different car. Scare the shit out of a whole lot of people for days. Become a bogeyman and a vision in adult nightmares for years.

They were finally apprehended when they crossed the state line into Wyoming. When they were picked up, Caril Ann switches sides, claims that, far from being a participant, she was a hostage. While Starkweather originally supported her claim, at her trial he turned on her.

Yeah, yeah, I said. Hostage. Right. If I were caught, I'd claim to be a hostage, too. Then, glancing back up the story, my eye caught a detail it had missed before.

Caril Ann Fugate was 14 at the time of the murders.

Fourteen.

I remember fourteen. I remember what I would have felt like had a nineteen-year-old actually dared to look at me, let alone go out with me. I would have done anything for him... and if he turned out to be the devil incarnate, I would have not known where to turn. I wouuld have been sucked into the death spiral just as Caril Ann was.

I have not read accounts of the trial, but I imagine much was made of the fact that she did not attempt to escape. Maybe she believed he would kill her if she tried to escape -- not an unreasonable belief for anyone in her circumstances, but when you're that young you tend to feel powerless to help yourself.

But there might have been something else, too. I remember fourteen. Sometimes, when you're fourteen, you pretend bad things are just going to go away and everything is going to be all right in the end, as long as you just keep doing what you're told.

Charles Starkweather went to the electric chair -- a sociopath to the end, he refused to have his organs donated on the grounds that "No one's ever done anything for me"; Caril Ann Fugate, perhaps helped by her youth, was sentenced to life in prison. She was paroled in 1976, having spent more than half of her life in prison. She lives an uneventful life now, refusing to discuss the murders which made her infamous.

I don't know. Maybe Starkweather was right: maybe Caril Ann was every bit the willing participant he said she was. It's never possible to know what another human being is thinking. And psychopaths don't spring into adulthood full blown -- they have to start somewhere, maybe this was where she would have started, who knows.

But, my God, she was just fourteen. A psychiatrist once told me that "everyone is psychotic when they're fourteen." And yes, they don't all kill people; but then again, how many of them have Charles Starkweather as the devil at their side?

Seen any hatters, lately?

Today was Lewis Carroll's birthday. Very prescient man, Carrol:

`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

Somehow, I think Humpty Dumpty would have felt right at home in the Bush Administration:

QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I'd like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use --

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But the --

GEN. HAYDEN: That's what it says.

QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But does it not say probable --

GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says --

QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard --

GEN. HAYDEN: -- unreasonable search and seizure...

GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.

Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer, and don't want to become one -- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe -- I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.

In case you're a little fuzzy on the text of the Amendment at stake here, it reads, in its entirety,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

And there is this:

President Bush on Monday defended a program in which he authorized the National Security Agency to conduct real-time surveillance on persons in the U.S. with “clear links to al-Qaeda” and other terrorist groups, saying that he had the authority under law to authorize the program.

“Article II of the Constitution gives me that responsibility and the authority necessary to fulfill it. And after September the 11th, the United States Congress also granted me additional authority to use military force against al Qaeda,” Bush said at his year-end press conference Monday morning.

“Do I have the legal authority to do this? And the answer is, absolutely,” he said.

On Friday the New York Times revealed the existence of the NSA “special collection program” in which the NSA collects international communications of people in the U.S. with ties to terrorist groups, according to the Times. After initially refusing to confirm it, Bush confirmed the program’s existence Saturday and gave additional information on how the program works.

“Where does he find in the Constitution the authority to tap the wires and the phones of American citizens without any court oversight?” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).

....

Bush showed a great deal of emotion at the news conference, alternately appearing angered and appearing to plead with those watching to see things his way.

Bush emphatically denied he was trying to usurp power. “To say ‘unchecked power’ basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the President, which I strongly reject,” he said.

(The full text of Article II is here.)

While nothing in the Constitution is easy -- it is like the Bible, the devil is in the details of how you construe the document -- to say that Article II allows a president to ignore the Fourth Amendment because he feels it is expedient to do so is, even given an expansive reading of the document and the way it has been interpreted by the courts, nonsensical.

One thing Article II does require is that the president take an oath "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." But of course, you claim to be doing that.

Quite a nice rabbit-hole you've got us into there, Mr. President.