I guess I'm blogging a lot today (see: flu and sleet)...
Just wanted to share my favorite headline of the day:
US Urges Stronger Gaza Ceasefire
What, you mean one in which both sides stop shooting at each other?
C'mon, guys, don't you think that's asking a little much?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
p.s.
This is entirely unrelated to the last post in every way, except that it's another excellent example of fun time-wasting on the internet:
Yes. There is a whole website dedicated to Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers.
It's not a bad look, really. They could do a whole lot worse.
I wonder if that one guy who contra dances occasionally in Greenfield has his picture on here. I'm going to have to tell him about it.
Yes. There is a whole website dedicated to Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers.
It's not a bad look, really. They could do a whole lot worse.
I wonder if that one guy who contra dances occasionally in Greenfield has his picture on here. I'm going to have to tell him about it.
for the three people who read this blog who are not on facebook (hi mom!)
There's this thing going around Facebook, as many of you probably know, wherein someone writes a list of 25 random things about him/herself and then "tags" 25 people (meaning those people get alerted that someone tagged them and they're supposed to read the note) (that explanation was for my mother), who are then supposed to do the same and tag 25 more people, including the person who tagged them.
Yes, it's a glorified chain letter, but slightly less annoying because it doesn't clog your inbox, and nobody actually has to read (or open/skim/delete) it if they don't want. You can learn some interesting things about your friends this way, and it seemed like an interesting exercise to engage in for myself. We're each a collection of thousands or millions of random things, really, so what are the 25 to choose to put out there at this moment? Why those? Ahh, so much to ponder. Anyway, since I'm at home fighting something flu-like and listening to sleet bouncing off the windows, I wrote my list this morning and I'm posting it here too. Here you go...
1. I am fairly introverted.
2. My middle name is Harriet. It took me years to stop disliking and hiding it.
3. I played the flute for a year. I tended to hyperextend my pinky finger (still do, actually), which hurt a lot when I played, so I quit.
4. I could - and often do - eat kale every day.
5. I never understood why my mom had a huge collection of cookbooks that she enjoyed just reading, until suddenly I found myself doing the same thing.
6. When I was a kid I watched hours and hours of TV every day. Crappy TV. I could probably have so many more brain cells than I do.
7. I hope to someday own a rottweiler or pit bull/boxer. I love big dogs.
8. I have spent a fair amount of time looking for my third grade teacher, Mrs. Fillinger. I really want to tell her what a big influence she had on my life. Haven't found her yet.
9. When I was young I was fairly certain that I would become a veterinarian and live in Caribou, Maine. The latter because it was the location furthest north on the Weather Channel map, which held some mysterious appeal. This is funny because I also wanted nothing more than to live in a city bigger than the one in which I grew up (which Caribou is certainly not). I do not want that now.
10. I have visited 43 U.S. states (the exceptions are Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Alabama, and Louisiana) and 19 countries. I have lived in 5 states and 3 countries.
11. I am completely and madly in love with where I live right now.
12. I carry a small notebook absolutely everywhere. It would be bad if I lost it, though whoever found it would learn a lot (of mundane, boring stuff) about me.
13. I don't like writing on lined paper.
14. One of my kidneys doesn't work all that well, due to scar tissue from a number of infections when I was younger.
15. I am very much looking forward to being a crotchety, pithy, hilarious old lady.
16. I am aware that I may not live that long. A lot of people die before they're old. Such is life. I think that's why I want to do everything that interests me RIGHT NOW. Who knows if this is my only chance?
17. I know I lived a full and happy life before I found contra dancing; I just can't quite remember what I was doing with all my time back then.
18. The adjectives I most want to live up to are: kind, dependable, and low-maintenance.
19. I'll do almost anything once, just to see what it's like. This has led to some amazing and some amazingly difficult experiences.
20. I have never had any part of my body pierced, though I do have one tattoo.
21. I'm arachniphobic. It's pretty well under control now.
22. Part of me really wants to live in Nicaragua someday.
23. I have never smoked marijuana, not once. Very few people believe this.
24. I think good homegrown tomatoes are the tastiest food imaginable.
25. My eyes turn green when I cry.
26. I have always been totally fascinated by the idea of being a long-haul truck driver.
27. I don't follow rules (like "write 25 things") very well.
Yes, it's a glorified chain letter, but slightly less annoying because it doesn't clog your inbox, and nobody actually has to read (or open/skim/delete) it if they don't want. You can learn some interesting things about your friends this way, and it seemed like an interesting exercise to engage in for myself. We're each a collection of thousands or millions of random things, really, so what are the 25 to choose to put out there at this moment? Why those? Ahh, so much to ponder. Anyway, since I'm at home fighting something flu-like and listening to sleet bouncing off the windows, I wrote my list this morning and I'm posting it here too. Here you go...
1. I am fairly introverted.
2. My middle name is Harriet. It took me years to stop disliking and hiding it.
3. I played the flute for a year. I tended to hyperextend my pinky finger (still do, actually), which hurt a lot when I played, so I quit.
4. I could - and often do - eat kale every day.
5. I never understood why my mom had a huge collection of cookbooks that she enjoyed just reading, until suddenly I found myself doing the same thing.
6. When I was a kid I watched hours and hours of TV every day. Crappy TV. I could probably have so many more brain cells than I do.
7. I hope to someday own a rottweiler or pit bull/boxer. I love big dogs.
8. I have spent a fair amount of time looking for my third grade teacher, Mrs. Fillinger. I really want to tell her what a big influence she had on my life. Haven't found her yet.
9. When I was young I was fairly certain that I would become a veterinarian and live in Caribou, Maine. The latter because it was the location furthest north on the Weather Channel map, which held some mysterious appeal. This is funny because I also wanted nothing more than to live in a city bigger than the one in which I grew up (which Caribou is certainly not). I do not want that now.
10. I have visited 43 U.S. states (the exceptions are Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Alabama, and Louisiana) and 19 countries. I have lived in 5 states and 3 countries.
11. I am completely and madly in love with where I live right now.
12. I carry a small notebook absolutely everywhere. It would be bad if I lost it, though whoever found it would learn a lot (of mundane, boring stuff) about me.
13. I don't like writing on lined paper.
14. One of my kidneys doesn't work all that well, due to scar tissue from a number of infections when I was younger.
15. I am very much looking forward to being a crotchety, pithy, hilarious old lady.
16. I am aware that I may not live that long. A lot of people die before they're old. Such is life. I think that's why I want to do everything that interests me RIGHT NOW. Who knows if this is my only chance?
17. I know I lived a full and happy life before I found contra dancing; I just can't quite remember what I was doing with all my time back then.
18. The adjectives I most want to live up to are: kind, dependable, and low-maintenance.
19. I'll do almost anything once, just to see what it's like. This has led to some amazing and some amazingly difficult experiences.
20. I have never had any part of my body pierced, though I do have one tattoo.
21. I'm arachniphobic. It's pretty well under control now.
22. Part of me really wants to live in Nicaragua someday.
23. I have never smoked marijuana, not once. Very few people believe this.
24. I think good homegrown tomatoes are the tastiest food imaginable.
25. My eyes turn green when I cry.
26. I have always been totally fascinated by the idea of being a long-haul truck driver.
27. I don't follow rules (like "write 25 things") very well.
Monday, January 26, 2009
poetry monday
Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.
--From Tell Me a Story by Robert Penn Warren
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.
--From Tell Me a Story by Robert Penn Warren
Friday, January 23, 2009
on being two (or more?) people
I've come to the conclusion recently that I'm generally destined to live at least two lives simultaneously. It's not just that the things and people that feed my brain and my feelings of vocation are completely different than those that feed my soul. They also tend to be in totally different geographical locations.
Examples, there are many:
- Every significant romantic relationship I've had in my life has included an extended periods of living at long distances from the other person. I'm not kidding; many of those distances can be counted in thousand-mile increments. Not to mention that... OK, I'm officially saying this to the internet... and I don't know why that makes me slightly nervous... I just met Someone who I'm hoping to get to know quite a bit better, who lives, of course, several hours away.
- While living in New York City for a job I loved, I spent over a year driving one or two weekends a month up to western New England to contra dance and fall in love with a community in which I instantly felt more at home than I ever did in the city. Perhaps not so coincidentally, I began in earnest to divide my life between NYC and New England almost immediately after the end of one of those 1,000-miles-apart relationships.
- I have a whole community of friends and familiarity in and around Asheville, North Carolina. I pretty much know my way around, know my favorite restaurants and hangouts, and would most likely run into people I know walking down the street. I was there five times in 2008 alone. I have never lived in Asheville, and don't plan to live there in the forseeable future. Except I live there for a few days every couple of months, apparently.
- I madly love living in a small town in southern Vermont. So I'm planning to leave. And scheming ways to live in Boston during the grad-school-week and in Brattleboro on the weekends. Interesting side note: I say this to non-dance-community friends and they tell me I'm nuts (side side note: I'm not denying that). I say it to dance community folks and they say "oh yeah, lots of people do that, you can totally do that." (Side note II: you might be wondering whether Someone lives in Boston; the answer is: of course not. He lives several hours in the exact opposite direction. But I know you are not thinking of the implications of all this put together, no no, because that would be thinking WAY too far ahead. And you would not be that ridiculous.)
- 2 years and 2 months is the longest I've lived in one place doing one thing since my freshman year of high school. High school. 1996. I was in Minneapolis-St. Paul for closer to 2.5 years, but it doesn't count because it involved senior year of college and then the first year and a half of being graduated and employed (i.e. having free time and money), which is a whole other life than being in school. And those 2+ years were when I was "living in" New York City - see above. And it's not like I was a military brat. My parents still live in the town I was born in. I just felt the need to leave the country for long stretches every few years in high school and college.
And just for added fun, sometimes I wonder if I'm living multiple simultaneous lives not just in location but in personality. I recently discovered the blog of my friend, um, Stephen (his blogging, but not actual, name), who mentions this fabulous article to help explain being an introvert. That's me.
Except it's not. I am a total introvert in many ways. Needs hours alone? Check. Good social skills, not necessarily shy but also often uncomfortable in social situations and big groups? Check.
But wait, extroverts are those energized by others? They tend to be enthusiastic and talkative? Um, check. So what the heck am I? I talk this over from time to time with Froggoddess... are we introverts or extroverts? Introspective extroverts? Overly caffeinated hermits? All of those things at the same time?
I think it's just time to stop fighting it. I have never been happier than during the year and a half or so that I have fully lived here, that I managed to find really good work and a really good life all in one place, with enough time and opportunities to be very social sometimes and to stay at home alone sometimes. But then the landscape changed, and in order to deal with that, I'm resigning myself to the idea that I'm just not supposed to have all those things in one place. My sights either need to be much lower, or much broader. I don't know how to choose anything but the latter.
Conclusion: by the time I'm out of grad school, there had better be a lot more options for telecommuting.
Examples, there are many:
- Every significant romantic relationship I've had in my life has included an extended periods of living at long distances from the other person. I'm not kidding; many of those distances can be counted in thousand-mile increments. Not to mention that... OK, I'm officially saying this to the internet... and I don't know why that makes me slightly nervous... I just met Someone who I'm hoping to get to know quite a bit better, who lives, of course, several hours away.
- While living in New York City for a job I loved, I spent over a year driving one or two weekends a month up to western New England to contra dance and fall in love with a community in which I instantly felt more at home than I ever did in the city. Perhaps not so coincidentally, I began in earnest to divide my life between NYC and New England almost immediately after the end of one of those 1,000-miles-apart relationships.
- I have a whole community of friends and familiarity in and around Asheville, North Carolina. I pretty much know my way around, know my favorite restaurants and hangouts, and would most likely run into people I know walking down the street. I was there five times in 2008 alone. I have never lived in Asheville, and don't plan to live there in the forseeable future. Except I live there for a few days every couple of months, apparently.
- I madly love living in a small town in southern Vermont. So I'm planning to leave. And scheming ways to live in Boston during the grad-school-week and in Brattleboro on the weekends. Interesting side note: I say this to non-dance-community friends and they tell me I'm nuts (side side note: I'm not denying that). I say it to dance community folks and they say "oh yeah, lots of people do that, you can totally do that." (Side note II: you might be wondering whether Someone lives in Boston; the answer is: of course not. He lives several hours in the exact opposite direction. But I know you are not thinking of the implications of all this put together, no no, because that would be thinking WAY too far ahead. And you would not be that ridiculous.)
- 2 years and 2 months is the longest I've lived in one place doing one thing since my freshman year of high school. High school. 1996. I was in Minneapolis-St. Paul for closer to 2.5 years, but it doesn't count because it involved senior year of college and then the first year and a half of being graduated and employed (i.e. having free time and money), which is a whole other life than being in school. And those 2+ years were when I was "living in" New York City - see above. And it's not like I was a military brat. My parents still live in the town I was born in. I just felt the need to leave the country for long stretches every few years in high school and college.
And just for added fun, sometimes I wonder if I'm living multiple simultaneous lives not just in location but in personality. I recently discovered the blog of my friend, um, Stephen (his blogging, but not actual, name), who mentions this fabulous article to help explain being an introvert. That's me.
Except it's not. I am a total introvert in many ways. Needs hours alone? Check. Good social skills, not necessarily shy but also often uncomfortable in social situations and big groups? Check.
But wait, extroverts are those energized by others? They tend to be enthusiastic and talkative? Um, check. So what the heck am I? I talk this over from time to time with Froggoddess... are we introverts or extroverts? Introspective extroverts? Overly caffeinated hermits? All of those things at the same time?
I think it's just time to stop fighting it. I have never been happier than during the year and a half or so that I have fully lived here, that I managed to find really good work and a really good life all in one place, with enough time and opportunities to be very social sometimes and to stay at home alone sometimes. But then the landscape changed, and in order to deal with that, I'm resigning myself to the idea that I'm just not supposed to have all those things in one place. My sights either need to be much lower, or much broader. I don't know how to choose anything but the latter.
Conclusion: by the time I'm out of grad school, there had better be a lot more options for telecommuting.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
fair enough
As you may know, I have started feeling much more kindly toward Thomas Friedman in the last couple of years.
More kindly would not necessarily be a ringing endorsement, since it marked the difference between "The Lexus and the Olive Tree makes me want to throw up and throw things" and "I no longer find his writing nauseating." But much more kindly is a whole other thing entirely. I don't heartily recommend things to people to read all that often (What's that? I do? OK, yeah, I do, but just imagine how many times I've restrained myself! Really!) but I've recommended Friedman's column, um, this many times. And that's just on my blog.
However. It remains fairly clear that no one thinks more highly of Thomas Friedman than Thomas Friedman, and there are some incongruities in what he says and how he lives his life that are all the more significant because of his seemingly well-meaning diatribes, rather than in spite of them. Not to mention how swiftly he seems to change his mind and position on many a crucial issue. It's good to have other perspectives.
Especially when those perspectives are pretty hilarious.
"Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn't make them up even if you were trying -- and when you tried to actually picture the "illustrative" figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors."
And it just gets better from there (unless you're Thomas Friedman); take a look. I bet you didn't know about the convincing correlation between American pork belly prices and midgets' opinions of Australia.
More kindly would not necessarily be a ringing endorsement, since it marked the difference between "The Lexus and the Olive Tree makes me want to throw up and throw things" and "I no longer find his writing nauseating." But much more kindly is a whole other thing entirely. I don't heartily recommend things to people to read all that often (What's that? I do? OK, yeah, I do, but just imagine how many times I've restrained myself! Really!) but I've recommended Friedman's column, um, this many times. And that's just on my blog.
However. It remains fairly clear that no one thinks more highly of Thomas Friedman than Thomas Friedman, and there are some incongruities in what he says and how he lives his life that are all the more significant because of his seemingly well-meaning diatribes, rather than in spite of them. Not to mention how swiftly he seems to change his mind and position on many a crucial issue. It's good to have other perspectives.
Especially when those perspectives are pretty hilarious.
"Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn't make them up even if you were trying -- and when you tried to actually picture the "illustrative" figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors."
And it just gets better from there (unless you're Thomas Friedman); take a look. I bet you didn't know about the convincing correlation between American pork belly prices and midgets' opinions of Australia.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
dawn
Where am I? What day is today?
Oh right. It's the first day of a whole new world.
Yes, it's also the exact same world. Yes, President (President!!!) Obama faces some of the biggest challenges ever confronting a leader of this or any other country.
But did you notice? He's actually facing them. Naming them. Saying they won't be easily surmounted. That they certainly won't be surmounted by him alone. We must participate. We must work. We must make hard choices.
Never has "Hey folks, let's be clear: this will, in some ways, totally suck" been more hopeful and reassuring.
I thought his speech was tremendous, both the first time I watched it in the Montpelier City Hall (photos from the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus newspaper)...
(that's a life-size cardboard cutout of
...and the second time I watched it, back at home around 1:00 in the morning after driving home to Brattleboro, making a rosemary goat cheese cheesecake for the evening parties, driving down to Northampton for the first party, back up to Greenfield for the second party where I very nearly fell asleep in front of the woodstove, and back up to Brattleboro where suddenly I wanted much more to watch the speech again on YouTube than to actually go to bed. (Did I mention I started the day in Burlington, about 2.5 hours north of here? But that's a whole other story.)
And then to watch Obama's Election Night speech yet again. And to read all the inauguration coverage online that I hadn't had a chance to look at yet, and look at my brother's photos from actually being on the National Mall yesterday and attending festivities in DC all weekend before that. And look up the text of the poem, Praise Song for the Day, which I think was actually pretty gorgeous, though unfortunately not really well delivered.
I marveled again at the fact that we elected a president who speaks in complete sentences, much less knows how to turn a phrase to make my breath catch. Who has repeatedly used the word "humility" in his biggest and most important speeches. Who respects the Americans who did not vote for him as much as those who did, and respects those outside our borders as human beings of equal worth. It should not be revolutionary. But.
"And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."
(I know it's cliche at this point, but...) Yes, we must. Yes we can.
Oh right. It's the first day of a whole new world.
Yes, it's also the exact same world. Yes, President (President!!!) Obama faces some of the biggest challenges ever confronting a leader of this or any other country.
But did you notice? He's actually facing them. Naming them. Saying they won't be easily surmounted. That they certainly won't be surmounted by him alone. We must participate. We must work. We must make hard choices.
Never has "Hey folks, let's be clear: this will, in some ways, totally suck" been more hopeful and reassuring.
I thought his speech was tremendous, both the first time I watched it in the Montpelier City Hall (photos from the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus newspaper)...
(that's a life-size cardboard cutout of Obama to the left of the screen,
looking out at the crowd)
...and the second time I watched it, back at home around 1:00 in the morning after driving home to Brattleboro, making a rosemary goat cheese cheesecake for the evening parties, driving down to Northampton for the first party, back up to Greenfield for the second party where I very nearly fell asleep in front of the woodstove, and back up to Brattleboro where suddenly I wanted much more to watch the speech again on YouTube than to actually go to bed. (Did I mention I started the day in Burlington, about 2.5 hours north of here? But that's a whole other story.)
And then to watch Obama's Election Night speech yet again. And to read all the inauguration coverage online that I hadn't had a chance to look at yet, and look at my brother's photos from actually being on the National Mall yesterday and attending festivities in DC all weekend before that. And look up the text of the poem, Praise Song for the Day, which I think was actually pretty gorgeous, though unfortunately not really well delivered.
I marveled again at the fact that we elected a president who speaks in complete sentences, much less knows how to turn a phrase to make my breath catch. Who has repeatedly used the word "humility" in his biggest and most important speeches. Who respects the Americans who did not vote for him as much as those who did, and respects those outside our borders as human beings of equal worth. It should not be revolutionary. But.
"And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."
(I know it's cliche at this point, but...) Yes, we must. Yes we can.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
the shorter, lighter-hearted alternative
Forget everything I said (if you actually managed to read all the way through it to begin with) and just listen to my friend Pesach.
finally
I haven't read all of these yet, and I certainly do not agree with all of the authors' arguments, but this is some very useful reading. It's helped me find the people who seem like voices in the (Western media) wilderness on the story of what is happening in Israel and Gaza now.
Let me repeat (lest some of my relatives and friends never speak to me again): I do not agree with all of the points made in these pieces. But I must admit that I agree with most of them, at least thus far.
For one, I disagree with Chris Hedges that this is genocide. But I think he's absolutely right that Israel could not possibly do more damage than it is doing, not just to Gazans but to itself and the rest of us. He is totally right that Gaza has descended into complete chaos and that "out of that power vacuum will rise a new generation of angry jihadists, many of whom may spurn Hamas for more radical organizations" [emphasis added]. It seems inevitable that this slaughter will do more to popularize Hamas and to internally destabilize Israel's neighbors than any other Israeli action I can imagine.
I am stunned and nauseated by the willingness of most Jewish Israelis to support this horror. Yes, Hamas has been firing rockets. And I do not pretend to know what it's like to live under threat of rocket fire, or to have to comfort my children when they wake up screaming because they think a rocket is about to fall on their house, as my cousins in Jerusalem have to do these days.
But what seems to me a stark truth is that a rocket is not actually going to fall on my cousins' house in Jerusalem. Or at least, wasn't about to before Israel got a whole lot more people a whole lot more pissed off at it. That is, right now, an imagined threat. For Palestinians in Gaza, the threat is 100% real. That is the critical difference.
And there is no denying that Israel spent weeks leading up to this assault blockading Gaza so completely that gas, food, medicine, electricity, and almost anything else you might think of as necessary for basic survival were completely unavailable.
What would you do? I am entirely serious when I say that I would probably fire rockets too.
And we're supposed to believe that Israel is trying to avoid civilian Palestinian casualties? And that they are so smart and well-equipped as to be able to do so in one of the most packed urban slums in the world? The latter doesn't really matter when the former is such an obvious lie, I suppose, but if it did then one would wonder exactly how Israel today bombed the Gaza City United Nations headquarters. Way to expose your own lousy - yet shockingly effective - propaganda.
I'm not a believer in "an eye for an eye," but 1,100 Palestinian deaths (including ~300 children) vs. 13 Israeli deaths should give us pause, no matter how you slice it. Lots and lots and lots of pause. Especially when we consider the hell those 1,100 people and hundreds of thousands of their neighbors were being forced to live in even before Israel dropped bombs on them (see above: complete lack of basic necessities). It is not surprising to me that martyrdom, aka glorified suicide, has a strong attraction in such a situation.
Yet Israel and the United States have spun this incredible fairy tale in which submission to one's worst enemy leads to happyeverafter. Are we really supposed to believe - more importantly, are Palestinians really supposed to believe - that the answer to all their problems is to spontaneously rise up and overthrow their own government and then surrender to the people that are now attempting to obliterate the very foundations of their existence (I mean schools, hospitals and the UN at least as much as Hamas)? If that makes sense to you, I know this guy Bernard Madoff who has some great investments for you.
When I titled this post "finally" I was referring to finally finding some alternative voices on this subject, some writing that could help me think through and begin to articulate my own very muddled and anguished feelings about what is happening. I didn't realize it would also mean finally expressing those feelings in a long and angry blog post, but I'm glad it's turned out that way.
Not because I get satisfaction from any of this. I've been largely avoiding the topic here and elsewhere because my main reaction to it is, uncharacteristically, to want to cry. Sometimes it doesn't seem like there is any other logical reaction. So writing this out on my little blog that may a dozen people read regularly is somewhat cathartic, yes. But not satisfying.
I certainly don't feel like I am necessarily "right" or anyone else is necessarily "wrong." To think that would be to deny the massive complexities of a very, very old conflict and to shut out the possibility of hearing and understanding other perspectives. Which is, arguably, much of the reason we are in this mess.
I also don't feel really comfortable or confident about how the views I express here will be heard and understood by those dear to me who, I know, approach this topic very differently. Just how many of them read this blog, I don't really know. I hope this will help me find out, because I hope they/you will be in touch to talk about all this.
ASAP, in fact, because did I mention that I have a plane ticket to visit Israel in a month? Purchased a long time ago before it meant having to consider the political statement of a tourist trip under these circumstances, having to maybe change plans so as to avoid southern Israel where rockets are falling, having to figure out how or whether to talk about all this without offending and infuriating people I love. Which I sincerely hope I'm not doing right now. While some other people I love who feel similarly about all this may be offended that it's taken me this long to say something. Did I mention this is confusing?
"If you can't love those who don't love love, then you don't love. If you don't tolerate those who don't tolerate, then you don't tolerate."
-Shimon Green/Yitchok Meir
Let me repeat (lest some of my relatives and friends never speak to me again): I do not agree with all of the points made in these pieces. But I must admit that I agree with most of them, at least thus far.
For one, I disagree with Chris Hedges that this is genocide. But I think he's absolutely right that Israel could not possibly do more damage than it is doing, not just to Gazans but to itself and the rest of us. He is totally right that Gaza has descended into complete chaos and that "out of that power vacuum will rise a new generation of angry jihadists, many of whom may spurn Hamas for more radical organizations" [emphasis added]. It seems inevitable that this slaughter will do more to popularize Hamas and to internally destabilize Israel's neighbors than any other Israeli action I can imagine.
I am stunned and nauseated by the willingness of most Jewish Israelis to support this horror. Yes, Hamas has been firing rockets. And I do not pretend to know what it's like to live under threat of rocket fire, or to have to comfort my children when they wake up screaming because they think a rocket is about to fall on their house, as my cousins in Jerusalem have to do these days.
But what seems to me a stark truth is that a rocket is not actually going to fall on my cousins' house in Jerusalem. Or at least, wasn't about to before Israel got a whole lot more people a whole lot more pissed off at it. That is, right now, an imagined threat. For Palestinians in Gaza, the threat is 100% real. That is the critical difference.
And there is no denying that Israel spent weeks leading up to this assault blockading Gaza so completely that gas, food, medicine, electricity, and almost anything else you might think of as necessary for basic survival were completely unavailable.
What would you do? I am entirely serious when I say that I would probably fire rockets too.
And we're supposed to believe that Israel is trying to avoid civilian Palestinian casualties? And that they are so smart and well-equipped as to be able to do so in one of the most packed urban slums in the world? The latter doesn't really matter when the former is such an obvious lie, I suppose, but if it did then one would wonder exactly how Israel today bombed the Gaza City United Nations headquarters. Way to expose your own lousy - yet shockingly effective - propaganda.
I'm not a believer in "an eye for an eye," but 1,100 Palestinian deaths (including ~300 children) vs. 13 Israeli deaths should give us pause, no matter how you slice it. Lots and lots and lots of pause. Especially when we consider the hell those 1,100 people and hundreds of thousands of their neighbors were being forced to live in even before Israel dropped bombs on them (see above: complete lack of basic necessities). It is not surprising to me that martyrdom, aka glorified suicide, has a strong attraction in such a situation.
Yet Israel and the United States have spun this incredible fairy tale in which submission to one's worst enemy leads to happyeverafter. Are we really supposed to believe - more importantly, are Palestinians really supposed to believe - that the answer to all their problems is to spontaneously rise up and overthrow their own government and then surrender to the people that are now attempting to obliterate the very foundations of their existence (I mean schools, hospitals and the UN at least as much as Hamas)? If that makes sense to you, I know this guy Bernard Madoff who has some great investments for you.
When I titled this post "finally" I was referring to finally finding some alternative voices on this subject, some writing that could help me think through and begin to articulate my own very muddled and anguished feelings about what is happening. I didn't realize it would also mean finally expressing those feelings in a long and angry blog post, but I'm glad it's turned out that way.
Not because I get satisfaction from any of this. I've been largely avoiding the topic here and elsewhere because my main reaction to it is, uncharacteristically, to want to cry. Sometimes it doesn't seem like there is any other logical reaction. So writing this out on my little blog that may a dozen people read regularly is somewhat cathartic, yes. But not satisfying.
I certainly don't feel like I am necessarily "right" or anyone else is necessarily "wrong." To think that would be to deny the massive complexities of a very, very old conflict and to shut out the possibility of hearing and understanding other perspectives. Which is, arguably, much of the reason we are in this mess.
I also don't feel really comfortable or confident about how the views I express here will be heard and understood by those dear to me who, I know, approach this topic very differently. Just how many of them read this blog, I don't really know. I hope this will help me find out, because I hope they/you will be in touch to talk about all this.
ASAP, in fact, because did I mention that I have a plane ticket to visit Israel in a month? Purchased a long time ago before it meant having to consider the political statement of a tourist trip under these circumstances, having to maybe change plans so as to avoid southern Israel where rockets are falling, having to figure out how or whether to talk about all this without offending and infuriating people I love. Which I sincerely hope I'm not doing right now. While some other people I love who feel similarly about all this may be offended that it's taken me this long to say something. Did I mention this is confusing?
"If you can't love those who don't love love, then you don't love. If you don't tolerate those who don't tolerate, then you don't tolerate."
-Shimon Green/Yitchok Meir
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
home sweet shoebox
I guess I can see the appeal of a small, cheap, renewable house that could replace the hell-holes many people call home in the slums of the world. I also can't help but find it deeply offensive.
Tell me if I'm wrong here. I think I see where they're coming from, and I'm all for improving living conditions. Many, many people in the world live in true squalor. Especially in urban slums. A better home structure could make significant, meaningful improvements in health and wellbeing for millions of people.
But. $5,000? For 387 (.5!) square feet? I know it's probably average size for shantytown houses in many places. I'm sure many people are living in much less space. But that doesn't mean that 387.5 sq. ft. is a lot of space. It's nothing. And $5,000 is a lot of money for a shoebox.
And solidifying slums by giving them a shiny coat of whitewash and eco-friendliness seems like it would serve only to reinforce all the structural violence inherent in systems that have created and drawn people to live in them to begin with.
Even more dangerously, this would allow people at the top of these systems (those people look a lot like you and me, by the way) to convince ourselves that those problems have been mitigated by these nice clean purty new houses. It makes it seem like it's OK to live in a tiny paper (paper!) house packed in like sardines in sprawling slums, like it's just inevitable, just some people's lot in life.
It's pretty clear who loses in that scenario.
So, what is really the point of these things?
That's not a rhetorical question. What do you know that I don't know? What am I not understanding here?
Tell me if I'm wrong here. I think I see where they're coming from, and I'm all for improving living conditions. Many, many people in the world live in true squalor. Especially in urban slums. A better home structure could make significant, meaningful improvements in health and wellbeing for millions of people.
But. $5,000? For 387 (.5!) square feet? I know it's probably average size for shantytown houses in many places. I'm sure many people are living in much less space. But that doesn't mean that 387.5 sq. ft. is a lot of space. It's nothing. And $5,000 is a lot of money for a shoebox.
And solidifying slums by giving them a shiny coat of whitewash and eco-friendliness seems like it would serve only to reinforce all the structural violence inherent in systems that have created and drawn people to live in them to begin with.
Even more dangerously, this would allow people at the top of these systems (those people look a lot like you and me, by the way) to convince ourselves that those problems have been mitigated by these nice clean purty new houses. It makes it seem like it's OK to live in a tiny paper (paper!) house packed in like sardines in sprawling slums, like it's just inevitable, just some people's lot in life.
It's pretty clear who loses in that scenario.
So, what is really the point of these things?
That's not a rhetorical question. What do you know that I don't know? What am I not understanding here?
Sunday, January 11, 2009
going to the birds
I don't get it: neither the San Diego nor Pittsburgh football team is named after a bird. Clearly neither of them can win today's playoff game. Who will play the Ravens while the Cardinals play the Eagles?
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
random ice storm thoughts
- The fact that the CIA is advertising jobs in a huge ad on the NY Times homepage is a bad sign about the future of U.S. (so-called) intelligence services, don't you think?
- If Norm Coleman had won in Minnesota by a couple hundred votes, he'd be encouraging his opponent to accept the results and move on gracefully rather than pushing for a costly and time-consuming recount. He might even say repeatedly that if he were in his opponent's position, he'd do just that honorable thing, and allow Minnesotans and the U.S. Senate to move on and get down to business. Oh wait, that actually happened. Bummer for him that he's now down by a couple hundred votes, and pushing for a recount of the recount. Can't have it both ways, Norm. (OK, fine, I suppose you can, but do you realize just how much of a jackass you look?)
- Whenever, in the coming months, I need to be cheered up, I will look back on yesterday evening. Froggoddess owed dinner to Mr. Schoolbus for picking her up at the airport, so she decided to take him to the coziest, happiest restaurant around, and emailed a few others to see if we'd like to join. And we did, and then Froggoddess' pseudo-big-brother stopped by to have a drink at the bar, not even knowing we were there. So we pulled up an extra chair. And then the Pickle Man happened in, so we pulled up another chair. And we ate marvelous food, and toasted to everything we could, until eventually the nearby tables started toasting with us, because clearly there was so much to celebrate. Just your ordinary, extraordinary Tuesday evening.
- And thank God for my warm and wonderful community, because the world is so f*cked up. The fact that Israel will now hold a brief daily pause in bombing and shooting in order to allow a tiny bit of humanitarian aid through to Gazans before it resumes bombing and shooting at them is the ultimate illustration of the insanity of this conflict. I have been wanting to write something, something much longer than this and more thoughtful and descriptive of the absolute anguish I feel about what Israel (and the U.S., by proxy) is doing to Gaza and to itself and to the world through this assault. I still want to. And I still don't know where to start or what to say. Maybe soon.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
my future anthem
Jitterbug
I will not dance the jitterbug:
those trumpet sounds
and clarinets that once
could hold us in their grasp,
with syncopated blast,
are much too slow for me.
Too calm for my old aging feet,
that nineteen-forties beat –
its rhythms seem predictable,
bygone swinging sounds
inside a calloused ear.
Don’t spin me out and then
pretend to let me go,
or whirl me like a top
while keeping me in tow.
For now I am too fast
and wild with age –
the thinning hair in flight
while brittle arches trap new tones
within old dancing bones.
Burning air is underfoot;
I rise above the floor and fly.
You watch me from afar;
shake your head in disbelief,
lift a labored foot or two,
attempt a lindy hop,
in slow motion. But I keep on –
too filled with speeding time to stop –
too full of sound to act my age.
“Come, be old and really fast
like me,” I beg. I grab you
with a flying hand. “Come!
catch me if you can.”
– Joyce Holmes McAllister
I will not dance the jitterbug:
those trumpet sounds
and clarinets that once
could hold us in their grasp,
with syncopated blast,
are much too slow for me.
Too calm for my old aging feet,
that nineteen-forties beat –
its rhythms seem predictable,
bygone swinging sounds
inside a calloused ear.
Don’t spin me out and then
pretend to let me go,
or whirl me like a top
while keeping me in tow.
For now I am too fast
and wild with age –
the thinning hair in flight
while brittle arches trap new tones
within old dancing bones.
Burning air is underfoot;
I rise above the floor and fly.
You watch me from afar;
shake your head in disbelief,
lift a labored foot or two,
attempt a lindy hop,
in slow motion. But I keep on –
too filled with speeding time to stop –
too full of sound to act my age.
“Come, be old and really fast
like me,” I beg. I grab you
with a flying hand. “Come!
catch me if you can.”
– Joyce Holmes McAllister
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