White Gentrifier Guilt

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been tooling around Teh Intarwebs and the real world, getting a feel for real estate. Watching my mom, aged 80, continuing to grapple with the question of whether to leave the home she shared with my stepfather (answer: almost certainly not) has me thinking about what I'd like my own old age to look like, and it's possible it might not look best in the house I've got.

When I purchased my home in July, 2001, I never imagined being in it 18 years. It was meant to be starter equity, to be traded in when I found some hapless victim man - really very nice, but nothing I meant to become permanently attached to.

Well, my equity is now old enough to vote, or to die in a foreign war (but not drink!), and I find myself wondering whether it might be best traded on at some point. The house is two steep storeys, AND has a full basement: and the laundry is located all the way down there. Being of a moronic and stubborn nature, this means I regularly huck hundred-pound loads of clothes up and down stairs in varying states of safe clearance. Oh, in my fantasies, some engineer appears magically and offers to build a motorized dumbwaiter in a convenient spot. But then, in my fantasies I also have a slate-floor screened porch, a brick car port with electricity, and the house is suddenly not located in a super-white neighborhood either.

Yeah, I am 51 years old, and have realized that MOST of my life has been lived in a White Flight bubble. The schools I went to were named for old white politicians, proponents of Massive Resistance (we could have been Edgar Allen Poe high, but ohhh no - must be a politician!). The suburbs I spent most of my time in were without diversity.

So I don't really want to live my entire life in the economic, cultural, and personal bubble that is White Fragility Comfort. If I do sell, I'd love to see my place go to people who don't look exactly like me. When I bought, I was still a little afraid to buy in neighborhoods with bars on the windows.

Now, I'm more afraid to buy in those neighborhoods because, inevitably, those of us who grew up like I did are seeing how nice the houses were, that our parents or grandparents left behind in heading for the suburbs ... and they're coming back, displacing historically Black neighborhoods, denuding beautiful homes of vintage architectural details (white shaker cabinets that do not reach the ceiling and theoretically high end finishes that clash with and poorly cover older homes' interiors - what I call "stick on" kitchens), falling for ugly and disrespectful flips. Gentrification is killing family businesses and families, pricing people out of places they have lived maybe for generations.

I don't want to be that person. The notation "yoga studios and coffee shops are popping up everywhere!" in a listing, translated, means "don't be scared, lil' white folks, you can come back to the city because we're papering over what it used to be as fast as we can destroy lives!" It also means ramping up economic inequality - and, cringe-ironically, sending those who'll no longer be able to stay to cheap apartments ... or maybe the midcentury ramp crappy flips we're leaving behind now that they're no longer fashionable.

In just a few weeks' looking at my own future and driving around trying to suss out the worst of the gentification, I haven't figured out how to puncture the white economic bubble I've spent an awful lot of my life in, versus avoiding landing like a lummox on an even more delicate neighborhood ecosystem without damage.

One thing I know: whatever comes, I'll have zero use for boo-teeks, coffee shops, or yoga studios, so at least I don't have to feed THAT aspect of economic flux.

But I don't really know if there is an answer. It's entirely possible the answer is, "Sit down and shut up" - and, the fact is, I'm entirely willing to take that answer. Eighteen years in, I let my eye rove, and what I find when I come literally home is, home is a really nice place. Maybe I ought to hope my own environs might diversify with time, and save money for that dumbwaiter, that porch, that car port. A person could do far worse.

For now, I'm educating myself, and it's already working. I'm getting a feel for what the real priorities would be, what it would take to take me away from the house where I have loved my Sweet Siddy La and Pen and Goss, where I endured my father's and my stepfather's and my best friend/sister's deaths. Where I felt Mr. X's hands across my back as he held me, the day dad died, the first time he ever visited here. It wouldn't be easy to strip my home and leave these walls, these bricks, these good bones.

Maybe at some point I'll figure out the balance. Maybe (it's remotely possible) Mr. X and I might even find a home together someday.

Eh, maybe I'll be hit by a bus tomorrow. It's unlikely. But in the meantime, I gotta live.

And my place isn't a bad one for doing that...

Sturm und Traum

This morning, it was one of those utterly implausible, plausible, detailed dreams. I was shot in a mass shooting - four times. My right flank, side (right in the imaginary tattoo - though I do have one on my left), shoulder, and right below my eye. As happens in dreams, I was initially terrified of death, but my dream kept going. Something about getting to my house (the one I grew up in, but now mortgagetually "mine"; that address seems to have appeared more, through the past year, hmm), getting to my mom, protecting someone else, and failing, failing, failing, failing to get ME to a hospital. At some point I was driving myself, again through the old neighborhood, not apparently to get care.

In the dream, the medical upshot of my injuries was unclear apart from bruises rising up from each bloodless bullet hole. One wound, indeed, couldn't be seen for the bruising and the tattoo. Even in the dream, I dismissed the caliber as a small one, since I could keep moving. For what seemed like hours.

The thing is, the real impact of the dream was that first moment: that fear of death. The shock.

The stunning truth of it.

I'm not special. ANY of us is subject to dying this way, in the United States. Land that I love. Sigh.



2019 has not been the worst year, for me, in recent memory. Yes, we still endure under the increasingly authoritarian and demented regime of the puppet Drumpf. Yes, there is much still to do. But even with that, much is happening, too. HR8 passed last week, and in a time of inured sensibilities, Cohen's testimony was scathing. (His redemption narrative, I could personally live without, but perhaps the benedictions he has received are not positivities best dismissed.)

And but personally, so far this calendar year is kicking 2018's ass.

The time I have taken off (quite a bit, so early in the year) has been for VACATION, not illness and death and mourning. So far.

I have spent time with far-flung friends, and family-by-adoption, people I love, and a new puppy I don't have to train. Mom's doing better, and my house has not fallen down around my ears. Yet.

Three four-day weekends in, I have celebrated a birthday, a bar mitzvah, and a long-distance visit.

2019 ... well, to quote something I said about 2009: it's been better than it had a right to be.


Breathing is good.


Now if I can just avoid being shot.

Collection

I am a fifty-one year old woman, and this very blog reflects that experience. Take a look at the history of the vanity tag; it tells a story.

A reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world. This diminished status can, in fact, sustain and inform—rather than limit—our lives. Going unrecognized can, paradoxically, help us recognize our place in the larger scheme of things.

Yep. This is, more and more, informative of my spirituality.

My personal favorite Hawai'ian deity is Kamapua'a, but this guy actually does hang on one of my walls. (My print is definitely worth less than $5k.) Another interesting tale of repatriation and also a story about provenance.

Sigh. When you check your stats, and all the Russian and UAE bots seem to be swarming to the post you wrote about your best friend, who just died. The post you wrote in 2015, when that wasn't even conceivable.

Ahww, man. Guilty ...

In this moment of political division, Garry sees a spiritual test. The temptation to discard others has always been strong, and in some ways it is stronger than ever. But this is an old problem, maybe the oldest, he says. The Bible is all about overcoming the temptation to discard, to dismiss, to unfriend. If it were always easy to love your neighbor as you love yourself, it wouldn’t be a commandment. “We trust anger. We believe anger gets things done,”

Florence and the (disaster preparedness) Machine

Yes, it is coming this way. Forecasts, of course, vary - but the upshot in more than one tracking-map I've seen seems to point to pretty intense inland flooding, which means: for all the frustration it took me dealing with JES (ugh) to get it, I *am* provisionally glad I have a pretty new sump pump and waterproofed basement.

For all the frustration JES caused me over a year and a half trying to get it right, I will also be WATCHING carefully to see how well the 'proofing and pump will perform.

As for the rest of it ... I stopped this morning for gas. There was a pretty impressive (but blessedly not static) queue, and this at a station with ten pumps. There are several gallons of water for me and the fur kids, kibble enough for them for more than a week, and for me some less-perishable foodstuffs and a non-electric can opener. Tonight, I need to remember to throw several large bags or bottles of water in the freezer; these can help it act as a cooler for at least *some* period of time in the event of an outage. Other than that, plentiful candles and funeral fans.

Funeral fans, for those not familiar with this Southern tradition, are good-sized stiff paper fans, most often provided by funeral homes for those ladies sitting beside a burial in the hot Southern summer. These fans outpace any folding fan I've ever had, for maximal air-movement output. And, fella babies, I can tell you: as a woman enjoying the frequency of hot flashes reserved for those of us passing out of August and our fertile years, moving air is not low on my priorities list in facing this possible emergency.

It tends to be hard for me not to be amused at the way my hometown responds to the merest whiff of emergency. We go mad for grocery stores and water when weather calls for anything beyond routine, and so when a disaster may actually be looming, the drama still looks quaint - because, frankly, I've seen this city go nuts time and time again, when six flakes of snow were in the offing. Sixty miles away.

So, facing what could end up being a twenty-four-incher on uncertain heading, but looking likely to visit here, even if peripherally ...


Yeah. I'm amused by my community. But don't think I didn't buy gas on purpose, and that inventorying the hand-fans and water available are just entertainment.

As seldom as I have troubled to actually *write* anything here since my stepfather died, I will check in.

For those of you so much closer to the impact of winds and real danger: my prayers are with you. Be well, and check in when you can too, please. Donna. Colin. Anyone in the Carolinas.

Reunion

My vacation this year was a trip to go see Beloved Ex. Back in our day, BEx was in a band, and a few months back he mentioned to me they were planning a 30th reunion show, with the original lineup. Intriguing! I thought it'd be funny if I showed up, and ... ended up, somehow, deciding to actually show up.

I haven't seen that town or those guys in 24 years and a month. BEx and I split one week before our first anniversary, and though that wasn't quite the end of our marriage, it was the end of my time in Ohio. I never even saw my in-laws again, and only one of my friends from that time.

Driving into that city for the first time in all those years was cognitive dissonance extraordinaire. The old classic rock station was playing the same music they played back then (not "classic" at the time, I suppose ...). I knew how to get around, but the look of the place was alien to me. It was something like the reverse of a phantom limb - I could touch, I could see, but the sense was gone somehow. The texture, the earth from which the town rose and was built, was impossibly strange.

Being of a Certain Age, too, hormones got the best of me and I cried coming into town. Pearl Jam's "Black" didn't help, though the reasons for that are a bit personal to get into.

Before hitting my hotel, I spun briefly around my college campus - BEx was my "townie" back then - and was struck by how easily I found the places I lived and knew, and how strange they looked to me. And how TINY that campus is.

BEx and I had a date that night, and of course I wanted to look good. I got a bit of rest, cleaned up from the road, curled the oddly-colored hair, put on a dress. When he called to say he was on the way, I was ready. I saw him out the hotel window, and watched his car arrive, watched him get out and look about a bit, head inside. He looked good, but I knew that. How I look these days was a concern, but there's nothing you can do about that once it's time to answer the door.

I got a hug to "squeeze all the mean juice out of me" (he learned that one from my dad - aww), and we went to one of those places that was out of our price range in the 80s, has probably been there since the early 60s, and seems to have the same wait staff and decor it always had. The pizza was good, the service ... personal. Heh. Then we went for a walk on campus, through a night impossibly blessed with a lovely breeze and beautiful sky. He drove me around town until fatigue took over, and we called it an evening. I hadn't recognized much, beyond the walking-distance environs of my college years. Our stomping grounds after marriage, we didn't even get to.

Day two, something changed, and I operated more as if I were in a place I once called home. Whatever was different, my brain adjusted to, and it wasn't so strange.

I picked him up this time, and we spent a while with his mom. Let it be said here, if my Ex is "Beloved", so too were his folks. Though it made no sense on paper, his dad and I always liked each other, and his mom is a lovely lady it was always nice to have women's time with. They were generous, my F-I-L was really funny, and she was as sweet as BEx. Catching up on a drizzly morning was nice, and she seems to be well.

We wandered about for the day, among other things finding a GREAT bookstore, and came back in the evening to meet both his folks for chicken, which we brought along. Dinner was convivial, his dad more laid back than years back, and it felt like family. Maybe in some way it was family (hey, apparently I'm godmother to one of their grandkids; and we never did hate each other, so it works out). Even if not, it was just a nice, easygoing meal with people I enjoy.

The Really Big Show was Saturday, and the guys in the band had let BEx invite me to come see them and get the chance to actually hang out a little outside of the show. The drummer gave me the biggest, warmest greeting I got from anyone through the whole visit. Sweaty from loading out and some rehearsal, he grabbed me in a bear hug and rubbed his sweaty face on my face. Heh. He seemed genuinely happy to see me, and I've always loved the guy, so that was pretty great. Hey, and - sweaty drummers - what're you going to do, hate 'em? Nope.

All the guys were good to see, generous and still the great guys I remember with a lot of fondness. Sound check was impressive, and I sat through a couple songs before wandering off to let them do their jobs.

Campus is just up the hill from the venue, so taking some time to go up there, I was serenaded by the band in the distance - walking the student union, heading up the hill to the chapel.

The chapel on this campus is absolutely filled with mid-century design and really amazing art, and as the rain stepped up, I stayed in there for a good while, taking lots of pictures. The stained glass windows, the floor, the meditation chapel, the whole sanctuary. Even the lights. I even tried to go up the steeple tower, but it was locked at the top. No harm/no foul, I was very glad the chapel was open.

Back down to my car in the rain, the whole campus was empty. Not silent, of course, though the reverb from down the hill was low. Here, the familiarity was at its height, and when I saw the statue of the undergrad I had forgotten existed, I was genuinely happy to see it again.

In the brick walk were a few memorial items ... my creative writing professor and his wife ... a girl whose unique surname and year of attendance might have made her the daughter of the one single "boyfriend" I had from the school itself. Huh. He was a nice guy too. Physics major, actually.

The show was perfect, and two of my best friends from those years, the other "girl with the band" and a singer from our crowd I always remembered with a smile, were there. "Come to my bosom!" the first said, which was hilarious and so absolutely her a thing to say.

The whole visit kind of felt like coming to a welcoming bosom, really.

I've shed my prejudices about that town - my snobbery towards it was bitter for long, stupid years - and never did resent the people in it. Seeing the place again, and those old friends, was a balm.



One of the things several people said to me, unbidden, was how much I needed to get away. Some knew I'd lost my stepfather, but that they could see how much that and everything since has been "on me" was a bit of a surprise. I don't know that BEx troubled to say anything other than to family - I would be surprised - so apparently, my sense of relief to be out on my own was pretty palpable.

And it was a blessing and a blast.

He and I wandered around again on Sunday, one more great bookstore (this one with a cat; I do love cat-owned bookstores) and an indulgent dessert at the local dairy. And that was it.



I'm grateful to have been able to see my friends, even my old school (of which I am less forgiving than this city I used to hate, though the grounds are not responsible for that), and my old home. I was there for most of almost nine years, which astonishes me to count out on my stubby fingers.

Geez, all those YEARS I knew that place. It was my home, even when I wanted to deny that.

And it welcomed me back and said, "Come to my bosom!"

Good trip. Good vacation.


And now ... back to work.

How we KNOW

Through the past several months of #MeToo and all of the stories we all have endured, one of the less-spoken throughlines comes down to something like "how do we know not all men are like this?"

Granted, we certainly have the #NotAllMen hashtag to 'splain about these things. Ahem. And lots of us will note the guys in our lives we're sure are above it. Men themselves discuss how abhorrent certain behaviors are.

It is not a fact that the only good men are the men who live in the imaginations of others, idealized out of reality. I don't know there are Good Men just because I think my dad and my brother are good men. I know there are good men because there are men who have unequivocally demonstrated goodness in (cis and otherwise) manhood. And, yeah, it's not all binary either. But let's look at the binary that binds so many, ant look at it.


There are real STORIES, real moments in time, which prove the lie that All Men (whatever that can possibly be thought to mean) are creeps.

And, you know? I think these stories really need to be told. The unambiguously clear stories about non-predatory behavior.


***


Names, obviously, are altered to protect folks I have not seen in years, but let's start off with a couple Tales from College - and I went to a college where tales of the #MeToo sort abounded, to be certain. Hell, the earful my parents got the night before my graduation is enough to speak to the sexual entitlement of drunken frat boys.

But.

Then there was my "brother".

He and I became friends early out of the gate, freshman year (1986/87). It is not unlikely he had a bit of a crush on me, at least at some point, but he never acted upon it. Literally never - and we spent a lot of time together, at all hours and at that age when Not Acting On Things was more an anomaly than an expectation.

Then there was M.

I worked in the scene shop, and he was an associate in the drama department, I think 25 years old or so and himself scarcely past the college years (and so forth). He was wonderfully moody and intellectual, scathingly funny, and pretty well fixed up with all the things I still dig in a guy: dark, curly hair, sardonic wit, and a level of subcultural nerdliness/marginality.

I spent a lot of hours alone in the shop with M, and (as faulty memory implies) probably not without hopes that something drastically inappropriate might occur with him. Memory of any specific ideas I had about him are not clear, but I do have recollection of one particular day, when Beloved Ex and I were on the outs (I met BEx sophomore year, but worked in the scene shop for several; so by this point, I would have known M for a good year and a half - taking a class with him, working with him, making sure of course to display my intellectual cred at every opportunity). We talked a long time, and he let me go on a bit about whatever bothered me - maybe "boys" as a general caste, maybe just BEx specifically. I am fairly certain I made my vulnerability and availability for "reassurance" pretty plain.

And M didn't do a damn thing about it.



Now. Let it not be said I think I was some irresistible thing, so to resist me must be a feather in any man's cap. But I was fairly cute, making myself clear, and oh about twenty to, by then, his maybe 26 or 27. It wasn't exactly out of the question.

But M not only cared about the preservation of his job: essentially, he just was not that guy. He wasn't the guy who would mess with a student, even one he knew well, even one who wasn't "out of the question" - in circumstances other than the situation we actually did share.

Plus, I believe he had a girlfriend.

So, not only is it a dead-cert FACT that some men don't infringe upon women who might even be up for some level of infringement, but some men don't mess around on their girlfriends to do it. This is unquestionable.

There are men who do not use power - authoritarian, financial, or physical - to extort or demean a woman. There are men for whom that could never be sex (etc.) at all.

"You can do ANYTHING you set your mind to."

25 years ago now, having left my marriage and come home to Virginia, I found myself in a job with one of the best managers I've ever known, a woman I'll call C. C managed a keen balance between getting the ratty jobs done but finding each employee's talents, and playing to them. So it was that, as a secretary, I ended up assisting the guy who was writing a book. And the IT guy. Writing our newsletter. And, by the end, taking care of orphan clients (we were an insurance and financial services agency).

It was just at the moment I was about to be sent to Minnesota in February for securities training that I left that gig. But I never did forget that manager, and C stands out to this day as one of the smartest people I've ever worked with. And I've worked with some great, wise people.

All this time later, I have found a position where I get to do my own balancing - still a secretary, but one with decades more experience on the resume, and in a company/with a team where I have been able, almost singlehanded, to define my job. I get to play to my own strengths now.

Not long ago, I was thinking again about how I ended up being a secretary. Yeah, it was the early and mid-80s that formed me, and yeah I was VERY much an underachiever during my early career (though, looking at that job I mentioned above - maybe not so lacking in gumption as I have told myself for so long now) ... but nothing was stopping me from pursuing some more specific or lucrative or creative ambition.

But, the thing is: my parents always told me, "You can do anything you set your mind to."

Here is the problem: they never gave me specifics. Mom might occasionally talk about things *she* would wish to do, or which she found prestigious.

But neither my mom nor my dad ever did as C did: took up the thread of what I loved, or was good at (which were not entirely the same thing), and revealed to me the particular things my talents or my abilities could lead to. Nope, not even my dad. And he was a professor - a student advisor. His very life and career were dedicated to pushing people toward success.

Or ... maybe just to knowledge. To understanding those concepts he himself taught, or to harnessing those from other disciplines, which his students were studying. Synthesizing these to the tools to reach their specific goals.

My dad was encouraging to a fault - but the fault was, he just opened the doors wide. He provided no guide but "anything" - and that was too much. Overwhelming, or under.

I have always known that what I do is "less" in the eyes of other people; nobody's subtle about it. I basically fell into it to make a living. Doing what I do was not a dream, wasn't something I *sought*. I have made it mine, and I'm not complaining nor regretting. But it, in the barest and least freighted, but clearest sense of the phrase, "is what it is."



I could do anything I set my mind to. Sure. But in high school, I already knew I was directionless.

And MOST OF US ARE as teenagers. And that is okay.

But then majoring in Theater (or, insufferably, Theatre/Dance, at my insufferable alma mater) never was going to get me famous and wealthy and yield a successful movie star at the end of college.

(To which I now say: Thank MAUD.)

But it wasn't getting me anywhere else, either. Working on the crew was pizza money and fun, not a career trajectory. Our department wasn't good enough to provide one of those, frankly.

And I could type.

So I fell into my first jobs, my early talents - whatever they might have been - sublimated to make a living, and over the years I've done well, or just done *enough*, and scrabbled and fought my way to giving a damn ... and here we are.



I am proud of my work, and I love what I do. But don't ever think that this was my fantasy. Or even my calling. It was barely my *aptitude*, even, for a while there.





This morning, musing to a friend at work that my hair was looking particularly teased-and-tapered in an 80s sort of way, I pulled up Beauty and the Beat on my phone, and revisited that time before directionlessness became ... well, to borrow one of the Go-Go's song titles, Automatic.

The Go-Go's, I think, may seem a bit bugglegum and maybe even gimmicky these days. But that first album, steeped in 1981 and its New Wave-ness, was not a feather-light pop concoction. There is a menace in the chords. This album is bouncy, but it's bouncing on bruises, and it's propulsive. (Automatic is very dark and affecting. It *still* hits me in a very deep place, perhaps the more for life's experience rather than less.)

And this album is inextricably linked to the one person, before C, who ever pointed me at anything specific.

It was my brother.

I can't remember how it came up, and how it ever seemed "real" at all - and, the fact is, the moment of this memory may not have lasted more than a few days. But my brother, for some reason, excitedly encouraged me to get a band together, like the Go-Go's. To cover them, for Stunt Talent Night. He pointed to Kathy Valentine, and said I could do what she did.

It didn't change my life - or, at least, it didn't set me on a path. But my brother was the only family member who ever looked at anything in me, and pointed to anything at all. He didn't say "You can do anything you set your mind to."

He said, "You could do THAT."


I was too shy. I didn't know any musicians. Time ticked on, the moment passed, I never did it. Years later, I still entertained the odd fantasy of being a drummer - or, later still, a lead singer. But instead I watched Beloved Ex do it, and was still too shy. And never thought to connect to the many musicians we did know then, to try to become one of them. Well, never thought of it seriously. Never had the confidence to try.

And I had a job. And hadn't, perhaps, divested myself of the vague idea I might become wealthy and famous by sitting around waiting, hopefully being 80s-foxy enough for the world just to arrange its attention and money around me. Or maybe being a writer. Or just getting by, day to day.

There were a lot of years of getting by, long periods of time lived day to day.

And, not in the least ironically at all, it was my brother, again, who pointed me at something, years later. Aged 35, he asked me to go to a writers' conference ... and we all know how that has gone. Still the world has not arranged itself around my ridiculous success. But at least I consider myself something more than a 'nartist now.


I don't wish things had gone some other way. My life is an awfully good one to live, and the means to my living never has been the most important thing to me (the people I work with are, though). The idea of an alternative life in which What I Do *was* more important is no source of regret for me; perhaps in that life, my soul would not have been the one I have here and now, and my soul means everything to me.

No, I don't wish things had gone differently at all.

Just: looking at my parents. Thinking of the way C managed the people she worked with. I'm actually just surprised it *didn't* go differently. And curiously grateful I failed to have certain dreams ... ? What I did have was people like C, and others, and enough privilege to say I've made my way successfully, even if not prestigiously.


And I'm doubly grateful for that big brother, too. Turns out - he's actually even more special than I understood. Back in those years when I idolized him so, and didn't even know why.

Happy Enough Old Year

The evening is underway, as are feline and canine post-supper naptimes. Goss has his front half upended inside the warm curve of his back half, curled in the new chair, and Pen is flaked out on her flank in the floor. I chose "Arrival" tonight; slow-moving and blessedly low on explosions, at least halfway along it is - it's gloomy and murky but not too thinky so far. Seems to be just the ticket for me.

The year has been dwindling down with oddness and pains in my head, a great deal of work around the house, but mostly quiet. It is one of my pensive years, to be rung out alone and contemplating.

Last year was a jangle. Good times with friends, but the car got towed, there was loud music and cigarette smoke. This year, just this; staying in, staying warm. Remembering, and looking forward as as I do: seldom and poorly. The memories are ones which once were so painful, but now only make me who I am. And I am content with that, mostly. Always some work to do.

Life is like homeownership; if you don't have something you think you need to work on, the place'll go to pot.

In two weeks from now, many long months of meeting planning, and two trips to attend them, will be over. I realized this a couple of days ago, to my own surprise. Most of 2017 has been occupied with these events; and now I will be able to just do my day-to-day job. It'll be strange for a little while.

I am as content as the fur-bearing critters, this hour. Never satisfied. But content.



CONTENT NEW YEAR TO YOU, and to yours.

*Raises a glass, be it whatever you happen to like* Cheers!

Reckoning.

(T)heir guy isn’t well known enough, that the stories are now so plentiful that offenders must meet a certain bar of notoriety, or power, or villainy, before they’re considered newsworthy.

I told you it's not just powerful, rich men. Here's a reporter to tell us that those're the only guys who'll get any ink.

Here is the thing about this lengthy piece, about what we "all" have to reckon for: I've reckoned before. When I worked at The Federal Reserve, and a contractor who knew I worked till 5:30 p.m.  himself stayed late one dark evening, and held out to me on a napkin a cherry stem, tied in a little knot, and said only "No hands" ... I was revolted. The next morning, first thing, I spoke with a manager - not mine, and a woman at that. And she essentially dismissed me as a hysteric. I chose to put the issue to bed, moving forward, concerning myself only with my future and my feelings.

Much later, when I saw from a strong physical reaction to him, by a woman with less power than I, it was clear to me that I was not the only person he had "made uncomfortable" (see also: repulsively harassed). I thought about the issue again, and discussed it with one or two trusted people.

Later still, when The Stem decided to apply for a permanent position, I instantly - I mean, within five minutes - went into my boss's office and phoned him while he was travelling. HE took me deadly seriously, and HR had an executive meeting with me almost immediately.

I thought about this guy's kid. Yep. But I also thought of that woman I had seen squirm. The Stem took his risks, knowing he had a kid. He behaved execrably, knowing he had a kid. Oblivious as he was socially (this is a man who discussed with me on scant acquaintance the extreme gruesomeness of his ex-wife's labor in bearing said son; he was ALL kinds of awkward, this guy). If, in his book, the "no hands" approach seemed even POSSIBLY valid - never mind potentially impressive - he needs a new book, and I'm not responsible for reading the text he was working from. Nor am I responsible for his son.

I was, in my knowledge, responsible for that woman I had done nothing to help. I was, too, responsible for the reputational risk to my own employer, who would have been exposed to legal risk by allowing a serial harasser on board. My employer: who kept me in mortgage payments, and that woman's family as well.


The woman manager, who dismissed my concerns? She didn't dismiss me because she was covering for a valued or powerful colleague, she shut me down for thinking what he'd done was an issue at all. His power, in the moment he flummoxed my pungent personality to the extent of an awkward joke and sheer befuddlement, was transient. And, in the end, mine was greater: my report had more power than his resume.

I have often thought about the background and experience that leads to attitudes like that manager's, though. These days, I imagine she's scoffing a great deal about all the precious little daisies enduring Weinstein's casting couch, so-called "consenting" to Louis C. K.'s displays, and on and on and on. Blaming them for being so sensitive. And maybe she has dismissed other women, too. Very possible.

I pity that woman more than myself. But, for her initial reaction to me and my opting for silence, I am GUILTY: about the other woman who worked there, who transferred away from our location I suspect to get away from The Stem. Whose price to pay I do not know, and is among the debts on my own soul. I pity the manager, whom I did not name but did talk about in that meeting with HR. But the other woman lives with me in a much more direct way.

I will leave this post with the following excerpt from the link ...

I struggled a lot internally about whether to name the Harasser at my former job. I decided not to, largely because I understand something about how things have turned out. In a rare outcome, I — along with some of the women he pestered — now have more power than he does. He is, as far as I know, short on work, not in charge of any young women. And so I decided, in consultation with former colleagues, not to identify him.

But here’s a crucial reason he behaved so brazenly and badly for so long: He did not consider that the women he was torturing, much less the young woman who was mutely and nervously watching his performance (that would be me), might one day have greater power than he did. He didn’t consider this because in a basic way, he did not think of us as his equals.

Many men will absorb the lessons of late 2017 to be not about the threat they’ve posed to women but about the threat that women pose to them.

This is not a gotcha. This is: manning up.

Flagged

Last Year

I set out my clothes for the next day, after I get home from work every day. The ritual is this: come in, greet Penelope and Gossamer, put down some kibble for them, put my cell phone on the couch so I won't miss important messages from my boss. Check the mail. Pen's done eating by now, or has had enough to start following me around, so she goes in the yard. Goss and I go upstairs. On the best days, he races me, and he ALWAYS wins.

In the bedroom, I put down the things of the day, take off the jewelry - always a nice moment, a physical relaxation - change clothes, check the weather, and decide on what to wear the next day.

I rarely dither, in this wardrobe selection. But last night, instead of weather, that local channel served up two campaign ads in quick succession, so I forwent the forecast. And laid out shoes, pants, and a short-sleeved blouse. It took me a while to pick something, even the purse to carry. But it had to be something with red in it - to remind myself: "tomorrow is election day."

Wearing red/white/and/or blue is rather on the nose, but I am all for obvious symbolism for any occasion. (On 11/9 last year, I wore cream and pale aqua - laid out the night before - meant to be a celebration of our freedom from the long, stressful campaign ... things did not turn out as I had hoped,of course; but I wore the cream and aqua anyway.) (And I wore brown on 11/8; good fall colors - and a locket with my dad's picture.)

So yesterday I had my nod to patriotism ready - but when I came up for bedtime, I saw the weather forecast at last, and found (hurray!) it was not expected to be short-sleeve weather. Time to rethink.

Today I am wearing a soft sweater, light beige.

So far this morning at the office, I have spotted: two red sweaters, and another work pal in royal blue.

Seems I am not the only one who goes in for symbolism - whether they did this consciously or not.

Accessorized to the nines.

How do you observe election day (even if today is not one for you)? Some do it with a memento, I know. We often respond to participating in democracy with something less concrete - prayers, even tears.

Do you carry something with you? Do you find yourself wearing a color or a shirt that gives you confidence, makes you feel bold?

Do you vote?


I voted today. Whatever else comes, that is a magnificent privilege still to treasure. That is a blessing to be thankful for.

"I don't live by the river"

Editing at the top to add this curious note. One of the people at this concert dropped into my brother's life briefly, pretty much at the moment I was inspired to write this post. I hadn't gotten around to posting it yet when he told me about the encounter, days later.

Curious thing, life.

Should've worn the Chris Crafts.

But, I mean, it was a concert. It was The Clash. The little Asian cotton Maryjanes were the thing. I wore The Thing. And my nerdy jeans and beige socks, yeah. But then the cool top, it was kind of new wave. Vivid turquoise stripes, cool puffed sleeves.

As cool as *I* got in 1982.


I was fifteen.

My brother asked me to go to a concert with him. It was weird, but with his girlfriend's little sister going, maybe he kind of had to. Or maybe he was just being cool with me. It was about this period in our lives that sort of thing began to happen here and there.

Whether he had to bring me, or wanted to ... Didn't matter. We were excited. I remember us spotting other cars as we got closer to Williamsburg, "Bet they're going." Seeking shared anticipation.

Fortunately, for a change: not seeking boys. This isn't because I was with my brother, though usually he terrified any boys I might find interesting, event he other punks. No, it was because Joe Strummer with a mohawk looked too much like my big brother.

So I enjoyed the whole show without dreary old sex interfering mentally, and actually experienced the concert.


That unique smell - of The Reagan Years ... of the ozone-crackled electricity that was the music itself (mountains of speakers and amps) ... of that much youth packed into a venue. The incredible, the ineffable scent and sensation and sight of youth, in the early 80s. Angry youth, but exultant too.


The crush was intense at the front. I was with the other kid sister, against the barricade; barely more than a child.  Some guy saw me (us?) and got concerned. Or maybe he just wanted my spot. But ... it was after ... Maybe he really was scared for me. He signaled the roadies, they pulled me out of my cherry position. My memory has failed, in 35 years, as to her being pulled up to, but probably so. Dragged up onto the stage, shooed off it, shepherded around - and ended up out of the crush. I was annoyed.

Where my brother and his girlfriend were, who knew - I didn't care, there was nothing to be afraid of. Not even death by general admission. Safe. Wherever the older sibs were, they were never farther than the walls of the venue. Nobody in the crowd was out to hurt us. There was a show to go on.

And so, I wormed my way BACK up to the front, once again causing annoyance, but this time to the guy who had ordered us "saved" from the crowd. Maybe the other kid sister and I did this together. I just remember I was there.

I latched onto the barricade like a tick.

The Clash. Front row. Sea of kids, strange adulation and imperative demand. It was sensational.

At some point, we pulled ourselves back out - noise-fatigue, or the desire to find the others, or maybe they found us. I have some recollection of standing on the seats, scream-singing, bopping.

I had lost one of my flimsy cotton shoes, either in the dragging moment of my salvation, or stomped off during the second round, surrounded by combat boots. Stuck the other shoe in my back pocket - heaven knows why. Maybe I thought I'd find the lost one after the show. Maybe I even did. History and memory have failed in this detail.

Standing on a seat, beer-sopped socks, the muck of spit and sweat and beer and cigarettes. Just a few hours of a life; a meeting of four people. Of thousands.

Then a drive home, on an autumnal night. Ears ringing.


"Rock the Casbah" was the big deal that year, and it was pretty great. But even today, I maintain that "London Calling" is one of the great tracks in recording history. It echoes in a way beyond the mere sonic definition.


The weekend before that concert, The Clash appeared on SNL. Little Opie Cunningham was the host (this was before he disappeared completely *behind* cameras). He drank a beer live on camera, protested his Little Opie Cunningham-ness, and got ribbed by Eddie Murphy.



The ineffable scent of the 80s. The sound of soaring, roaring, echoing, raw music. GOOD music, but raw in a way that's really only synthesized anymore.

I really did see all the good concerts.

Work (the Paid Kind)

The only use spam comments have is to remind me of the occasional old post I don't hate rediscovering. Today's special was this one. I remember that day, but my memory is unlike what is said in the post. Funny how brains work.

Yet again, though, it gets me thinking about my current gig. For a long time, I still thought of this as my "new" job - and yet, in a career blessed with so many reorgs and layoffs, it is by a huge margin the position I have held for the longest time in my history.

For decades, I never kept a single job for more than two years. By and large, this speaks to the nature of the economy since I began participating in it; and only a few of my job changes came at my own hands, as promotions of sorts. When I was with a certain large securities firm no longer as-such in existence, my tenure was over five years, but I held four jobs in that time: and every change was upwardly mobile, and every change was at my own instigation. But mostly, I am a product of the ever-"evolving" (growth-and-shareholder-obsessed) economic times I came of age in.

So realizing recently that I've been with my team, my "new" company, for three and a half years has been curious.

It doesn't feel like a long time, compared to the most important jobs I hold in my memory. It also REALLY doesn't feel like I've reached (or distantly passed) an endpoint, which I have felt even in jobs I have loved in the past. Two years and I become afraid. Two years, and I see change whether I want to or not. My last job, which I was proud to hold and did not want to leave, lasted two and a half, and I was giddy with fear just because of my own presumed expiration dating ... slightly before I realized that the changes around me gave me reason to be giddy with fear because I recognized what was going on. I left. And almost immediately, the cliff I'd been perched upon crumbled. I was safe, but it was heartbreaking.

And I am still safe.

The things I have accomplished in this position, with this company, pretty easily surpass anything I have been able to manage before.

When I began to look afield, after a couple internal interviews with said previous employer, I reached out to someone I knew from HR there, who had left. And ended up with the company she went to.

She had recommended me to my now-team, specifically my now-executive, knowing that I was a seasoned admin and he was unseasoned with having one, and that I would be able not only to step into required competencies, but also to form the work I'd do and essentially train my team to have an admin at all. The unwritten side of this was that she knew I'd be able to create my own work.

The way this has played out is that I have created my own terms.

My team don't have me doing PowerPoints to speak of, I rarely write memos that aren't my own idea, and apart from monitoring expenses for compliance and speaking to my direct boss's availability, I don't do a lot of the things most people THINK secretaries spend our lives on.

When I first started, one of the managers under my boss's care jumped in with both feet. He had me working on a lot of things, but one key one remains a core part of my work - albeit now in a very different way.

Both Feet left our company years ago, and in his absence, I picked up a great deal in his area. It took a long time to fill his position, so by the time we did so, I was uppity in the extreme in this department. So the new guy came into a situation with a secretary already managing up. And he seems to have been willing to leave me to it. With the result that that administrative tedium I picked up way back when is now an area in which I have streamlined, assertively managed, and brought into an entirely new proportion.

I've saved my company a crap-ton of money, on my own initiative, cemented best practices, insert-your-least-favorite-corporate-speak here. Because I cared, and because nobody else was doing this work, and because nobody told me not to.



I lived right up to what that HR person expected of me, and then some.


***


So re-reading that old post was interesting, in the context of my continued realization that I seem to be in a job well on its way to Methuselah status as far as my CV goes. I see in it a bit of the same sinking-my-teeth-in/getting-it-done-ery that has served me here, and even some of the amusement I felt at losing a job I so desperately hated (but which I took a long time to realize I did).

I still call that the worst April Fool's Day joke ever - not least as they jumped the gun by a day on the punchline.

A Poem of Sorts

Today, I wrote a poem of sorts to Mr. X in an email ...

http://dianelmajor.blogspot.com/2016/01/fractured-light.htmlYes, that wasn't written today. But it's my heart again today.
I want to cut my hair. I want another piercing in my right ear. I want a new tattoo.
I want you.

The thing about cutting my hair ... it would be hard for anyone who has never met me to understand just how "big" a statement that is. My being long-haired is so much a part of who I am it's almost a point of stubbornness. Well, it IS stubbornness. Resistance of my mom's utter loathing for long hair. Resistance of What is Expected of me - of women. Resistance of making anybody happy but myself.

So it's weird, these thoughts - this near-obsession I've been nursing for a couple or three months now, of cutting my hair. I'm forty-nine, for goodness' sakes. I resisted cutting it when I reached A Certain Age - now I want to chop it all off?

But here's the thing.

I look around myself, and more and more women my age - and older - are long-haired, and what they seem to be resisting is their age.

Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.



When I was very small, I had long hair and bangs for a very short time. Tangles and my sensitive headbone screwed that up for me. I was horrible for my mom to work with, brushing my hair - and so, in the seventies, when super long hair was in, when hippie chic was my equivalent to Disney Princess glamour, I lost my long hair and got a PIXIE cut.

I hated that cut. I hated the shags that followed, and every iteration of NOT LONG HAIR my mom dictated to every stylist she ever dragged me to. I managed longer hair in middle school, but somehow (still under maternal control as under the paternal roof) ended up yet again with Mackenzie Phillips's layers come high school. If you look at the old photos of me at the link above, though, you'll just manage to perceive - I also managed a sort of take on Cyndi Lauper's hair, senior year. The cut as produced by a stylist was as seen in the purple sweater, but as it grew out, I would razor it myself, and it was much shorter. I kept it this way for some time, but eventually I tired of maintaining the shaved-right-side.

(Side note - being My Brother's Little Sister, he of the punk rock and scariness: I did not know at all that shaving one side of my head was the least bit odd, for many years. It honestly was just easier for doing schoolwork - I didn't have to constantly throw my hair out of my own way.)

By my freshman year in college, it was plain old shaggy, and I had my eyes on the prize: out of mom's control, my hair could be under my own control. I grew it out. And grew it, and grew it.

I never got Crystal Gayle with the stuff, but it was long enough at times it'd get caught in my armpits sometimes. Heh. That grossed my sister-in-law out once, when I said that. I never could sit on it, but I've always sat BACK on it. Even today, if I didn't wear it up most of the time, it would be long enough to hang between my back and any seat-back.

But I wear it up most of the time.

Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.

There was a time I didn't wear my hair up all the time. I liked to let it fly. I wore it differently all the time; one of the hallmarks of my style was the time in my teenage years when someone said to me my hair was different every day. I liked that.

These days, it is limited to knots, braids, and very rarely I'll do a barrette on top (and then I end up knotting the hanging length half the time) or a hair band (and then I end up knotting the hanging length more than half the time).

Even when I am alone at home, I twist it out of the way. The stuff is almost never down.

And these women - a lot of them even older than I - with long hair. I don't like their aesthetics. I don't like the sense they're clinging to youth gone by. The sameness. The sadness. I never had much problem with ageing, even though people do tell me I am relatively poor at it. Jamie Lee Curtis's story about Jessica Tandy has long stuck with me. JLC kicks copious amounts of bootay. And she has uber-short hair: undyed.

Hmm.

And the older I get, the more keeping up with my roots annoys me. I got to about an inch and a half of white showing last month, and my most recent dye job is already growing out. Not obvious to anyone but me - YET - but the point is, the upkeep is constant. And it takes two bottles for me to dye my hair.

Mind you - I LOVE my contrasts - the fair skin and dark hair. The light brown eyes and freckles. Playing with makeup and coming out Morticia.

Hmmmm.

I have said for maybe 15 years now, that when I get around 50 and I have "enough" white hair (my hair is WHITE-white, like my mom's and my grandmother's; not steel, not grey), I'd strip it and cut it. I had images of a 50s style and a body wave, something soft and sophisticated.

With the onset of the earliest symptoms, I think, of menopause, have come more concrete ideas in this direction. It began amorphously - jokes with my friends about using bright color in it, once I do go white. Random interest in certain haircuts. The realization of just how edgy it could be, even before I let it go white. A glossily dark bob, curled. A crunchy zhush of short, crispy layers, framing my face. Letting the bangs grow out. One long, soft dark wave.

And, frankly: the fun I would have, shocking the crap out of everyone I know. Not least of all: my sainted mother. She would love me to cut it, of course. She'll both hate and laugh with anything more subversive I do. She will never believe it. That's a fun mental game, right there - just showing up one day, shorn and  super stylish. Crazy colors or spiky bits or no, she would DIE.

The thoughts: they have become more specific. More focused. And they're sticking with me.

The Gift of the Magi
I had a beautiful moment recently with my beloved friend Cute Shoes. She gave me an absolutely stunning hairpin; a vintage Deco piece, with grey rhinestones. Graceful. Meaningful. Gloriously beautiful. I had my hair down the day she gave it to me, and immediately put it up. I've worn it several times since.

I had all but set an appointment for a cut that very Thursday. Of course I could not bring myself to do it, suddenly.

A few days later, I researched ways to wear a hairpin in short hair. (This is, by the way, almost as tricky as researching ancient Carthaginian women's names.)

The cut I had in mind, I don't know how well it would work ... but hair grows, too. And I have many styles in mind; I plan to change things regularly.



It came over me again today - how exactly I want it to be, how I'd need to explain to a stylist about the inconvenient cowlick on the wrong side. Working out twice in a fitness room filled with wall-sized mirrors, I mentally pictured it. Looking at those high school pictures, I looked at that short-on-one-side thing.



Tonight, I'll let my hair down. And leave it.

And tomorrow, I'll be wearing a beautiful, gorgeous hairpin. And I love you, CS. And I'll figure this thing OUT.

"Well, Dang."

It's become clear to me with age that I'm one of those people who "won't go to a doctor." The thing is, last time I did go - with labyrinthitis, an illness I know ALL too well - they decided to do tests on me ... and told me I had: labyrinthitis. Go home, take meclizine.

Which was what I knew before I took the DIZZYING step of leaving my home, exposing strangers to the virus, my mom insisting on across town to drive me and make me go (and exposing her - and by extension my ailing stepfather), and experiencing a few hours of matchless torture for the privilege of being told what I knew already.

And that test cost me $285.



So, this past Wednesday, when I felt a sore throat coming on, I turned into one of those treat-it-yourself morons. I spent a day at work, possibly quite contagious, downing NSAIDs and thinking I was beating this thing.

Yeah. I know. Just be glad you aren't one of my cube farm mates, I guess. I suck.


I took my laptop home that night just in case, so I could work from home, and not infect anyone.

Thursday wasn't great. I did work, though. You can get good electronic housekeeping done with a puddy and a pup for company.

Friday, though - no way. The fever that had begun the day before was 101.6. I don't know when I've had a fever to speak of; it's been long enough I was actually in incomprehension, looking at the thermometer.



See, my mom raised us skeptical. She wasn't one to easily believe her kids were sick - we were NOT going to get away with malingering - and so, to this day, I often tend to disbelieve it when I am sick. Which is funny, because at heart I am an underachiever, often enamored of the idea of not being at work, home wrapped up in a blanket.

One of my bosses and I once had a conversation about the phenomenon of not being able to malinger; in his case, the superstructure for this was Catholic Guilt. In mine, Mom Guilt.

She's good, no doubt.

So for me to be out of work for two days is almost intolerable; I feel like I'm stealing.

Which is why this weekend - when it got so much worse - was not exactly relaxing. I think Friday may have been the worst of it, but Saturday wasn't the world's most breathtaking improvement. Yesterday - well, yesterday I made myself clean the dang house.

To be fair, being sick in a dirty house is the PITS. But it's a bit more of that mom thing. I wanted to be comfortable - but I also was insisting to my body, "I am better."

Well. Ish.

The cough still hurt a lot, though the fever was gone. I had energy enough to clean. "See!?" Clothes were laid out for today at work (oh yes I did go).

And then before bed I had to admit - that cough had blood in it. Old blood at one time, bright and fresh new blood at another.

Neither of these bears good implications, and I am not a complete ass. Though I did go to the office. Which ... actually may be completely assy. Fever or no, the likelihood where blood in the cough is concerned is "infection" (likely bacterial), and that means that, five days on, fever or no, I could be contagious.

Sigh.

I actually did feel remarkably good this morning. Which is odd, as I've had insomnia unlike anything I've experienced since my twenties for two nights running (and no nap yesterday, because housecleaning!).

I also called the doc.

One prescription later (seriously, I can take the cough; do just give me an antibiotic so I'm not Typhoid Mary over here), I can at least put to rest the Complete Ass of a Coworker concerns, and get on with things.

Thank goodness it didn't cost me $285.

Now to wait for the bill.

At Last!

The stories about who died in 2016 are finally at an end!

Gossamer took a trip to Brooklyn again, for the first time in a while. Aww.

My new year started with good friends, a fun night out ... and the car being towed. But I was with friends, and not wearing heels, and we got through it together. Home and in bed by 3:00 a.m.

The blessing of this opening salvo, such as it is: this happened to us - not a woman all alone, and not  to someone for whom the $125 redemption of the car is not a complete financial catastrophe. Given that (and my footwear), I am glad it was us.

How has 2017 begun for you? Hoping nobody else's stories are as "interesting" as mine ...

Writing Music

Over the years, I've had periods when I've paid attention to the music I often have on VERY quietly while writing, and periods when I have not. There was a nice time long ago, when I had Fiona Apple and Bowie's Hours on random mix, that worked curiously well.

Of late, it's been seventies easy/funky rock - Gerry Rafferty, Atlanta Rhythm Section, that sort of thing. This is among the many kinds of music I grew up on, but not exactly because it was anyone's "thing" particularly. It's good stuff, often really good stuff (not quite the white bread same thing, but another groove I really love - Bill Withers' Ain't No Sunshine, or just about any track of his).

Something about the buzzing funk but the soft rock goes-down-easy-ness of this music really works for me creatively. It reverts me out of the present time, almost firmly taking me out of my own head and sitting me down with a rhythm that can be dramatic, but also comes to the calling. It's easy and crunchy at once - the echoing rasp of "Driver's Seat" opening up a space for my creativity to work - or the infectious but gentle "Couldn't Get it Right" bouncing my brain along.

For the writers amongst my readers - or just for those who like to work with music propelling their time along, especially the work days - what is the soundtrack of your productivity?

Television Watching

Television Without Pity was a bit of an addiction of mine in its day, and after re-watching Battlestar Galactica a year or so back, I hit up TWoP for its recaps.

Reading about an awful lot that happened in that series, written in the shadow of 9/11 but perhaps more resonant still right now, is something almost eerier than "timely" ...

The most stunning aspect being its two Presidents, Laura Roslin (who attempted to steal an election) and Gaius Baltar, a celebrident possessed of superb un-self-awareness, psychological projection, and delusional urgency.

(H)is new plan is to strike a chord with the common man, which is funny because he totally had that, by virtue of being a sexy smart celebrity, until he put everybody in concentration camps.

Now is not the real seat of this post, but it's a good time for it.

Now has been a time of examining at my entertainments categorically, and eliminating some of them. Not my first time doing this (it's been *years* since I could stomach the "special" part of Special Victims Unit - namely, the weekly rape/exploitation/murder of women and children, or the darkness of "Criminal Minds"), but right now my focus is less on darkness than a different kind of cruelty. Right now, I'm eliminating normalization from my life.

Normalization of sexism, racism, homophobia, and anti-intellectualism.

Normalization of trivial and frankly unfunny gay "jokes" such as Big Bang Theory is rife with. That show made me laugh during one of the worst years of my life, and I hung in with it from its earliest days - but the stupid humor about Raj and Howard always annoyed me and never worked. And now I'm flat done with that show. It bends over backward by GENERATIONS to make outdated, stupid, mean jokes that don't work. No more.

Normalization of retrograde gender roles and/or The Stupid Girl (who may be well past 50 years of age) imagery. This ditches almost any reality show not starring RuPaul, and means my slowly-developed habit of allowing anything with Housewives in the title to run while I was doing other things, because it really doesn't require watching, is over. It means Two Broke Girls, not something I can deal with for long given the idiot-plots and buzzy voices, is something I won't deal with at all anymore. Any dating show, ever, in which telegenic fodder proudly displays a profound lack of education or interest in it. Any appearance of Jessica Simpson, not so long ago one of the more powerful vectors of The Stupid Girl in pop culture.

Normalization - indeed, aggrandizement - of stupidity more generally. Not that I consume these things, but shows about Bigfoot, the Merovingian Heresy, popularizations of the ludicrous, demonizations of study and thought. This stuff is EVERYWHERE. It overwhelms critical thought and even taunts the very idea; and I grew up valuing critical thought, by way of being raised by a pack of relentless literalists picking me apart at every turn. (Bless 'em.) The Doctors, gleefully shilling for products they get sued for on a regular basis. Paranormal. Reality. Let that one sink in. Every dating show sustaining the (heteronormative) narrative that women ("girls", almost invariably, in these things) are desperate and stupid and need a sexual relationship to be valid. Hell, even HGTV shows with 30-ish couples featuring young women actively annoyed by homes not featuring granite counters and/or white cabinets, because Maud Knows paint is not something they are equipped to grapple with.

Normalization of all of the above: Archer. A show I ate up with a spoon a couple years ago when it was recommended to me, which I could NOT accept as reflecting - or influencing - actual, functioning human beings, but which so relentlessly flogs its edginess that ... I wonder whether it's edgy or actual, anymore. So much bigotry IS clearly actual, I can't skate anymore, I can't consume what I don't know is really free from harm.


None of my minuscule boycotts means a damn in the wider world, but it's one more attempt of this old lady not merely to woke up (no, that's not a typo) and quite honestly, just to feel better. Funny as Archer was to me, it's essentially mean. Not letting that inside my head eases the tiniest bit of psychic pain in my brain, just as not watching SVU has for so long, refusing to witness rape and cruelty as entertainment.

I watched one single episode of Walking Dead, found it extremely interesting, and will never watch it again, because I just can't take the violence.



Mr. X and I talked about this very recently (probably the birth of this blog post; you'd be surprised how often discussions with him get me writing), and he said, about his own viewing/gaming, "I’ve always been super-resistant to messages in the (non-news) media affecting my views. That probably engendered a certain insensitivity on my part to how others are affected or how views are perpetuated. ... your saying all this makes me wonder if I just didn’t find some of it distasteful and unworthy of support for conscience reasons."

I have always liked that boy for his brainmeats.



The whole basis of some of these entertainments gives new meaning to the term diversion.

I don't want to be diverted anymore.

November 9, 2016

Yesterday, almost from the moment I voted, I experienced a sensation of strength much the way voting always makes me feel. There was also a pretty sure happiness. This hideous campaign was OVER. Time to look forward.

What I was expecting, we do not have to look forward to after all.


The things this cannot take from me, though, are almost obsessively on my mind this rainy autumn morning.

Rainy autumn mornings, finally cooling down.

The tum of my sweet Pum, when I lean over her to hug her and wrap my arms around her middle. Gossamer's purr.

My health. This blessing, surrounded as I have been for ... years now, with people I love who do not have it, has come to mean a great deal. I am immensely grateful for my health. And the year or so I've been working out; how much *that* means to me, how good it makes me feel to do it.

My mom. My stepfather. My brother. My nieces. My friends - I have such ripplingly, gloriously, wonderfully fine and good friends. The mere knowledge these people love me. Nothing can take away what that means.

The city I live in. It isn't perfect, but its swamps, its architecture, its history, its beauty, its schools and universities, its people, so many such richly beautiful and interesting and good people. This home is mine, and I belong to the land I came from.

The little locket I wore to vote yesterday, that was my grandmother's and bears her tooth marks from when she was a little girl and tested it the old fashioned way, to see whether it was gold. The picture of my dad, inside. The family I miss, who are gone but are inextricably mine, my blood and my memory. The family I love, no matter how far away.

My talents. My writing.



Nothing can take from me these powerful, important blessings.

And, to my friends, nothing can take me from you. We have to have each other. I thought of so many people this morning, after a night of quaking in my guts, after a night spent fear-pooping through denial and horror. All the so-very-different people I love, who honor me back with their regard.

It would dishonor them for me to give in to despair. It would say the blessings I have are not enough.


I wore the bright, light clothes I laid out last night with different hopes in my heart. I wore the beautiful necklace Cute Shoes gave to me, and the stylish little shoes, and I brushed my hair and put myself together. Walked Penelope. Fed the babies.

My neighborhood is not less beautiful today than yesterday. What concrete things are mine are mine, at least today, and what ineffable things are mine remain in place: along with my gratitude.

You have to practice gratitude. It's like anything else - if you don't practice, you'll never get good at it. Ten thousand hours.

Today is my recital, and I have to nail it.

I am grateful.





I am afraid.

People Thought

This is what it was like in the early 80s. I was accepted to the very first class of the Governor’s School for the Arts, in the Theater program. We worked in a scene shop, with a dance master, and on an overarching production which had each of us developing a character through the weeks of the program. Graduation was our final production.

An ensemble piece being a necessity, and kids being what we were at that time, the semi-improvisational work had us as a gang. (You never saw a bunch so scary since Riff and Rita Moreno, man.) I remember a field trip we took wandering a few streets and then (why, natch) one of the oldest park cemeteries in America – in character, as our gang. I strongly associate the Peter Gunn theme with this day’s outing; presumably *someone* had a boom box and played it for us, to keep us in our personae as a bunch of street (I titter even to write it) toughs. Here we have Point the First. (Wait for it.)

Hashtag #AWW.

Thirty-plus years on, I am fascinated by the fact that I ended up as something like the romantic lead in this enterprise. I still remember my leading man, on whom I crushed very obediently both to the script and to my nature, and with whom nothing ever happened. I remember the climactic moment of the play – a gaggle of the girls, holding me back physically as I leapt toward him (why yes, he did call his character Riff, why do you ask? (mine was Josie)). I can recall the feel of arms around my belly as I fought to get toward my doomed leading boy at the moment the dooming crested and Got Real.

There were pics of us in the newspaper; I still have them somewhere. A whole piece on the Governor’s school; taking a look at the little white theater dorks playing at Scary Hoodlum Time – our process, our walk in the park too, I suppose.

One of the classes, as mentioned, was set painting. Each of us had a flat of our own, and we were to do brick walls. These were, you guessed it, used as the set for the eventual play. Mean streets of no-such-place-ever-existed.



This is pretty much the pinnacle and entire extent of my acting career. (About my earlier stint as Elvira DeSanto in The Brick and the Rose, *we do not speak*, though that went to State in the high school one-act competitions. Oh, please, Tommy. Get help. A play about hard life and drugs. Point the Second.)

And yet, I majored in Theater. Well, at my Podunk college, Theatre and Dance (sigh). Yes, I know, to all who have ever known me, virtually or in life, this has never yet surprised a soul.

It surprises pretty few that my college years are what drove me out of theater-of-any-spelling permanently. I joke sometimes majoring in theater was what made a writer of me, but truth be told that was JRW, and took quite some years.




So, Governor’s School.

Never mind that the play we were working on was a matter of well-off kids’ wish fulfillment: I was still at an age it meant a lot to me not to be privileged, though of course we hadn’t institutionalized that word for it quite yet.

One of our assignments in the scene shop was to do a flat of clouds. In 1986, to find a photo of clouds to grid and reproduce on a flat was not a mere matter of a Google search; I remember going home and tearing apart my parents’ Time magazines. We didn’t really have a lot of periodicals in the house, and using a newspaper was of course worse than pointless (though NOW, of course, I can think “that would have been edgy” – but then: the trick was to find a particular type of photograph). Pictures of, I don’t know, Reagan and Reeboks and whatever other 80s things we were immured with in what once passed for popular media. Okay, it was JOURNALISM, an thing no longer extant, but a bitch of a place to find usable color glossies of clouds.

I ended up with the plume off a factory smokestack. Of course.

The thing that’s funny about this is that people thought I was Being Edgy and Weird – making a STATEMENT – being cynical, political, in-your-face, angry about something maybe. Some perhaps delighted in the subversiveness of pollution-as-cloud.

But, really, I couldn’t find anything else! Southern Living is too deadly-closed-up focused on flowers, cakes, and oppressive décor to threaten any chance of finding a cloud anywhere. I already covered the problem with newsprint. And we didn’t have any other subscriptions.

Well, Science, but I was not ABOUT to be cutting up my dad’s Science issues – no, or National Geographic, either. Of course we had shelves loaded with those. We were Americans of A Certain Era. Duh.

So Time was really all I had. We were not an entertainment mag family, and infotainment really was in its barest infancy in those days anyway.

Smokestack. I was MAD it was my only option, and probably still cranky even though people thought I was being meta, before meta was a thing. Heck before “a thing” was even a thing.



So … people thought this thing about me.

I’ve gotten used to it, over the years. Being presumed to be saying something I am not. Being presumed to be angry, an ogre, in-your-face, pungently personalitized, a bloody monster, you name it.

I have a pretty indelible personal presence, even online I am often mistaken for a raging maniac, or at least a bull in a china shop. I see y’all clutching your pearls when I happen by, don’t you think I don’t know.


The funny thing is, living inside my own head, even my wayward heart – it’s a pretty quiet place, really.

Not only am I not exciting, I am not an especially passionate person. It takes rather a lot to engage me, to enflame me.

But people see what they see. Think what they think. I modulate where it’s necessary, know how I come across. With age, I sense less “MONSTER!” than “blowsy lunatic lady”, but the effect still has always felt, to me, out of proportion to the catalyst.

It’s always been fun getting credit for creativity I didn’t have. And inspires me to try and have some that is real. Is my own.

Delta'd

It's one of those "I was/wasn't supposed to be there" moments - like the time my uncle missed the massacre at the Dome of the Rock by hours because of a flight delay, or the eighty-year-old couple who never might have met but for one tripping in the park and the other coming to their aid ...

Originally, I had an American flight, on Sunday.

But American canceled on me, and booked me on the next-best option - which left the gate before I cleared security.

Dang.

They wanted to book me on the next flight, but that would not get me where I needed to be until 11:45 or something the next day! Horrors!

So I resolved to drive - 800+ miles, but I like a nighttime drive, and I'd be in control. Aces.

Along the way out of security, I sat down and called my mom to let her know what was up, then called my boss. "Use your best judgment" he said, but discouraged driving. I booked a 5:30 a.m. on Delta, it'd get me there HOURS before the American flight would! Yay!

And so, I went home to sleep just a few hours. The house fresh and clean so I could come home and not have that to think about, I didn't even sleep in my bed. Pulled up the couch, closed my eyes till 3:00 a.m.

I'd had a BAD night's sleep Saturday, and this was even worse, of course. For some reason, before the first planned trip out, I'd had butterflies constantly - not typical for me, for travel. I don't get *nervous* usually. Just sick.

I didn't wake up until 3:23 a.m. Ugh. Not the worst thing, honestly; my city's airport is much smiled-at for calling itself "international". It's not what you'd call the most challenging to travel through.

Still, I wasted no time. Brush teeth, braid hair, pull on clean shirt, get out. I was back and got a great parking spot before 4:00 a.m. easy.

I did decide to check in, so I could check my suitcase.

It was at this point, heading toward my gate, I realized: I'd left my phone charging at home. Clever girl. Our airport being what it is, I could have gone and gotten it, and I knew that, but ... sometimes, you just have to minimize your stress. How much do I need that phone, really? Not all that desperately. So home it would stay.

Gate. Sit. Relax.

After a while, they told us there was some sort of computer issue - worldwide. Hm. Oh.

... and there it began, fella babies.

I'll be honest, the flight out to Atlanta airport - my first leg - seems such a long time ago, I have no memory of how long it was delayed. Significantly, let's leave it there. But we got to Atlanta.

This was not, and did not feel like, a coup. Atlanta was every bit the cluster-festivity we expected it to be, and more. Everything you could dream of.

Initially, we did go to the assigned gate for the next flight out. Nobody imagined that would be the end of it, and it wasn't. Flight canceled of course, and then it was on ... to The Line.

The Line stretched down one of Atlanta airport's impossibly huge concourses. The Line was so extreme, all afternoon people walking by it offered condolences, were incredulous they'd have to be in it, recorded us on their phones, photographed us. I've seen news stories on airline outages before, and I can tell you, having my sweaty ass broadcast internationally was NOT on my list of things I was pleased to put up with that day.

Throughout our tenure on The Line, most of us made friends, chatted, smilingly rolled our eyes. We were a bit concerned about how fast The Line moved - because, in fact, it actually did. Not as reassuring as it might seem; we fully expected the end of The Line to be someone telling us we were up a certain excremental creek, thank you for playing, we're fresh out of paddles. (One suspects Delta might well have run out of paddles merely in the hopes nobody would turn them on any Deltoid fannies.)

It took about an hour and fifteen minutes or so to clear The Line. Throughout this time, I had my laptop on top of my carryon, kicking the latter along the way when we moved, typing on the former when we didn't. I emailed my boss, my mom, the hotel for our meeting this week, and a certain sports team, 67 of whose tickets I had for safekeeping on my person. "Can the tickets be reprinted?" Yes, for $5 each, but they'd cap that at $40. Whew. Hotel event coordinator was overwhelmingly lovely - she changed our lunch date to "what would you like waiting for you in your room?" and I may or may not have admitted a liking for hard cider.

The Line moved across a wet patch on the floor. My carryon is not wheeled. Ew.

Throughout the day, I reminded myself of two important things: unlike a friend of my family, who's been a part of our lives all of my own, I am not losing a foot today. And I don't work for Delta today.

As baselines for "how bad is  your day?" these things might seem almost extreme for comparison, but remembering our family friend honestly did keep me from turning into a freaking, stress-riding shrew. I prayed for her and meant it. I took NSAIDs for my headache and knew, whatever came, my problems would end - maybe even within just hours.

We came to the end of The Line around 2:30 I think. Maybe. One loses all sense of time, even dates, in an aiport, and that is of course very intentional. Can't have people aware of what's going on about them.

I got to the gate for the 3:32 flight before I really looked at the new boarding pass.

It was for August 9.

I was pretty out of it, but Monday, I was reasonably certain, was in fact August 8.

Two more compatriots from The Line appear. I ask them if they saw the date on their HOORAY, YOU REACHED THE END OF THE LINE release slips. They crumple when the realize our mutual mistake.

There is no going back to The Line and cutting it.

We turn to the nearest gate agent, and wait.

The problem being shared, so too is the solution. A 7:28 p.m. out of gate such-and-such.

We find gate such-and-such and settle in. It is a nice gate. Small, quiet, clean.

It is, naturally, too good to last.

There are three gate changes as the afternoon wears on. Atlanta is, by the way, the largest airport in the world. You need to catch a train to get from one concourse to another. You can, if you are especially sleep-deprived and castaway by Delta airlines (hometown carrier for ATL), miss the right concourse and have to get back ON the train again. These are things that can happen.

At last, I ended up at gate A1. I kept thinking about steak sauce, what it has that Worcestershire sauce doesn't, and that family friend. This gate is large, but crowded, ugly-lit, dirty - and low on seating. By this point in the day, my tailbone is hurting in any case. Air travel is hard on a fat lady's tailbone. Sitting too straight, sitting not straight enough. It's all very trying. Sitting on the ground is no better. I finally capitulate and try to lie down.

In that magical carryon - un-wheeled, as I have mentioned - what I have not mentioned is its very weighty contents. Apart from the laptop, it holds a presentation projector. Tiny, to be sure, but still. I'm hucking *equipment* all over G-d's creation, hung off my shoulder. It also holds my tablet computer.

Battery life still kicking, but sinking, on the laptop, I decide at last to fire up the Galaxy tab. It has updates. I let it update.

This takes roughly sixteen months, and renders everything on the tablet unusable. No email. No KINDLE. I poke at it listlessly less than half an hour, and finally just turn the thing off. I haven't so much as fiddled with it since. Some stress we tend to invite in. I was not feeling hospitable for tech issue frustrations, so. Shut it down.

The gate is moved again, but this time only across the way, to A2.

Right about here, for whatever reason, I indulge in that most heedless rashness: belief that this next flight is Going to Happen. It is from the chairs here, waiting, I say the most coherent prayer for our family friend. It is here I watch the most luminously beautiful lot of students, traveling together, laughing and finding their own flight has been canceled. They thread their way away, and the sun seems to be dipping slightly.

On the plane. It is a miracle.

I email my boss. My hotel. My mom.

And we sit at the gate an hour and a half. Some ticketing issue with a lady and her young son. They get on the plane very late in the game. They get off again. I can't pretend that my feelings at this point were completely charitable; whatever this lady needed to get to, or away from - she kept hundreds of others waiting, as if we hadn't all done enough of that by this time.

But wait. More waiting. Lady and son are long gone off the plane again, and it transpires; our weight paperwork is not right.

I don't know what time the plane pulled away - between time zone shifts and delays, I know it was well past the final delayed takeoff time for our flight. But we lifted away from the tarmac, and flew at long last.

I cannot tell you how good the beds are at the event property where my meeting was held.

I also still cannot tell you how Stella Artois cider tastes. (I most often drink Virginia cider.) There were two Stellas in my fridge; but no bottle opener. And none to be had with room service.

Just as well.



The thing about these massive airline outages is that they are genuine crises for too many passengers. As for me - I was on time for the meeting, it went well. I didn't get to the "rehearsal" session, I didn't get to tour the hotel nor the city, and I didn't get to test that projector I'd been hauling around - which turned out to be not bright enough for the room. So it goes.

But for some, computer outages like this lead to real-world consequences that matter. I'm inevitably reminded of Douglas Adams' character Trillian, who hitches a ride and gets the adventure of her life. But who, in another scenario, misses the flight as it were. This Trillian meets a group of aliens who've lost their brain. Literally - the master mission module for their spaceship is lost in space, and they have no memories, no mission, nothing to do ... but to settle on a distant planet(/oid) and monitor Earth.

I felt a bit like that Monday. After an initial surge of "I want to quit and go home" frustration, I fell into the day and went where it took me. Call that a buffeting - it might have been - or me being flexible - if I was, it was more from exhaustion than Zen-like philosophical limberness ... whatever it was, at some point relatively early on, I abdicated action and succumbed to passivity. There can be ease in that, and I needed all the ease I could get on Monday.

My time card runs from about 3:30 a.m. Eastern time to 11:30 p.m. for Monday. Yes, I am paid hourly. So two hours on Sunday for the aborted American enterprise. Twenty more Monday. Unlike most folks, I will be paid for this debacle. Whatever Delta chooses to do may not be super relevant to me, in time. A $200 voucher for future use - with Delta - is not as attractive as one might like. But they have their own problems.

And, as in politics, so goes travel. We have little choice - Delta will live on.