what happened when we went camping:

What happened when we went camping: 

(Not all camping. Just this particular camping.) 

We forgot the dog. It's not our dog, but J. was supposed to dog sit for some neighbors and the days got mixed up. We were already out of network and 90 minutes out of town in crazy Friday afternoon traffic when he saw the text asking if they could drop the dog off Saturday morning. He sent a response on the wifi at the ranger station, but we didn’t know until later whether they would be able to find someone else.

We forgot the rain fly for the tent. The weekend before, a tree dripped sap on it camping out at B.’s parents’ house, so we left it out to clean it, and there it stayed, uncleaned, during a busy week and while we packed everything for this weekend. I thought of it soon after we left the ranger station, and J. and E. and I speculated on whether this would mean sleeping in the car or curled up on the floor of E. and B.’s tent. 

Fortunately, when we got to the camp site, we found that B. had packed a 9’x9’ tarp that E. picked up once on sale at rei, and when tied just so over the tent, it blocked all the rain and gave a beautiful view of the lake. It was more exposed to wind, but the wind didn’t get that bad in the trees. 

We forgot to fill the car up with gas. This we also remembered around the ranger station, having passed many, many gas stations between Gone West and the depths of the woods. We were headed two hours up into the mountains, with the nearest gas station 30 miles away on dirt roads. It was risky.

We planned to drive back out through State City so we could stop at the nearest gas station (adding an hour to the drive), but when we hit the intersection on the way home, the car said we had 70 miles of gas left, and the sign said we had 47 miles to the first town on the direct route back to Gone West, so we chanced it and headed straight toward home. B. and E. followed us in case we ran out of gas.

It turns out that when a Subaru says 70 miles of gas left after driving 30 miles of dirt road, it still has many miles of lovely paved road left in it, especially when that lovely paved road is mostly downhill. The gauge still said it had 70 miles to go after the 47 mile drive. 

And then, to top off the weekend, B. stepped in a hole that turned out to be a rusting culvert and it gouged a 2-3 inch long gash in his leg, about half an inch deep. I tried to wash it out, and someone who works as a medical assistant in an orthopedist's office (and, more importantly, is a mom of teenagers) came from a neighboring campsite came to look at it, and the consensus was that we needed a real doctor, not butterfly bandages and tap water. 

The nearest urgent care was 2.5 hours away in State City, and it was closed. The nearest emergency room was 2 hours away.

Math problem: if you leave your campsite at 6 pm to drive to an emergency room 2 hours away, and it takes 3.5 hours to be seen and cleaned and stitched at the emergency room and you still need to fill up on gas and snacks because no one has eaten dinner, and it takes 2 hours to drive back, what time will you get back to your campsite?

The answer is 2:12 am. 

Meanwhile, sitting in the waiting room in a little country hospital, we read about what happened in Charlottesville. 

There are actual Nazis marching unashamed in our streets, making KKK and Nazi salutes, and the president of this country can’t bring himself to denounce them. He says there are “two sides.”

Let’s be clear: what happened in Charlottesville is not the fault of people who oppose Nazis and the KKK. There are not two equally justified sides. There is one side that espouses hatred, and that is one side that opposes hatred based on race, gender, or religion. 

Pick your side.

right

I'm going on record here: I am horrified that this country elected Donald Trump. To me, racism and sexism and xenophobia are deal breakers. It's like saying, "My boyfriend is really great, except he hits me." Not hitting you is the bare minimum. Not being overtly racist and sexist and xenophobic is the bare minimum in a president. I am horrified that overt racism and sexism and xenophobia are not deal breakers for 47.5% of this country.

We are all racist and sexist and xenophobic to some degree. We were all raised in a society that told us that black people are a little scary and don't have good intentions, that told us that women are bitchy if they stand up for themselves, that told us that people from somewhere else have weird, unpleasant ways that would bother us if we had to experience them.

But we have to fight that. We have to fight it. If we don't fight it, we are part of the problem. When we vote for someone like Trump, we are saying, "Racism isn't important to me. I don't feel the effects of it in my life, and I don't care that other people do." 

So don't tell me that people who voted for Trump aren't racist. Don't tell me that they aren't sexist. Don't tell me that they aren't xenophobic. They accept these things in other people. They don't speak up against them. They don't, above all, reject them in their leaders. 

I hope, I really do, that our institutions and law are strong enough to prevent Trump from becoming Hitler. I hope that social pressure is enough to keep Trump from becoming Hitler. But there is a very real chance that this is Germany in 1934, and we just elected Hitler. 

I grew up in the Midwest. I understand why people vote Republican. I will never understand why anyone voted for Trump, especially not anyone who claims to be a Christian.

Because I will tell you this: Jesus would have utterly rejected a man who stereotypes black people and calls them "the blacks" to other them. Jesus would have utterly rejected a man who treats women like objects and grabs them without their consent. Jesus would have utterly rejected a man who threatens to make Muslims carry ID cards (sound familiar? see Germany in the 1930s, Rwanda in the 1990s, just prior to the start of genocide in both countries). 

If you voted for Trump and are reading this saying, "But, the Supreme Court! He didn't mean those things!" let me tell you this: the man would say anything to get elected. He would tell you anything about the Supreme Court and Obamacare and immigration and how he's going to bring jobs back. But you have literally no idea what he will actually do. He changed his story every time he blinked. He denied statements that he made days earlier, that were on tape. He will do what is best for himself, not for you. He cares about no one but himself. 

And more: he pandered to the racism and sexism and xenophobia in some (hopefully small) segments of our country. He gambled on the fact that most people wouldn't stand up against that. And he won. Most people didn't stand up against that. They accepted it. If this is 1934 Germany, 47.5% of the country voted for Hitler. If this is 1964 Alabama, 47.5% of the country voted for the white supremacist governor. Trump lost the popular vote, but he won enough people in my home state and others like it that he won the electoral college. 

I don't know what my Oma would do if she were here, but I know this: she stood up against Hitler when the Netherlands was occupied by the Nazis. I can't imagine what she would have thought when her party elected a man who read Hitler's speeches for inspiration. She couldn't even stand the sound of German being spoken. I am so glad that she never knew that some of her children and grandchildren voted for a man who used Hitler's strategies to get elected, who talks about minorities  as if they are the source of white people's problems just like Hitler did, and who, I fear, may turn out to treat minorities the same way Hitler did. 

I worry now, speaking out about these things. I worry that I will have to stand in the gap and risk death to stand up to Trump. But I'm doing it, because it is the right thing to do, and because my Oma did no less. 

better

I went to put fuel in my car last night (it was either give in and fill the tank or test just exactly how much fuel I have left after the fuel light starts to come on intermittently), and the guy working at the gas station was young, friendly, and black. He was wearing a lumberjack hat with flaps down over his ears that flopped around when he turned his head. 

I was struck, again, again, again, by the fundamental unfairness of the world. 

It is not fair that this nice young man (I feel old) should have to worry when he goes out into the world that he will be stopped by the police for things that I can do without concern, and that after he gets stopped he has to worry that if he doesn't keep his hands in exactly the right place and act exactly the right level of compliant, he might be arrested or shot. It is not fair.*

It happened again today. I read this article in the New York Times about how black girls in school are punished more harshly than white girls, and darker-skinned black girls are punished more harshly than lighter-skinned black girls. It is not fair. 

Sometimes I just want to go out into the world and show people, and say, "See? It isn't fair." I want to believe that everyone would see that if I showed them, and everyone would want to fix it.

It isn't fair. 

And it should be.

...

* Note that this is not a criticism of police officers. It is a criticism of institutional racism that permeates all of us, including police officers. See, for example, this article on How Our Brains Perceive Race. In order to change things, we have to fight the patterns with which our brains have become comfortable. We ALL have to fight the patterns with which our brains have become comfortable. 

And the thing about comfortable patterns is that it is hard to break out of them. It is hard even to want to break out of them because, well, it's uncomfortable. But we have to do it, if we want to make this world better.

I want to believe that we all want to make this world better. 

[25] and also to live as a person of color

I can hear the helicopters hovering over the city, watching over the protests downtown. 

I should write some impassioned post about racism and justice, but it's too much. On top of everything else, it's too much. 

Then I try to imagine what it would be like to have everything else, all the pain and heartache and stress in this life, and also live in this country as a person of color.

I worry about my clients. 

So many people in this country worry about their children. Their children, who are the kid I saw today staring up in wonder at a living statue who was juggling balls. Their children, who are the teenagers jostling each other good-naturedly on the train. Their children, who are the student coming home and demanding that his mom buy bottled water because he doesn't trust the tap water after what he learned in one of his college classes.

None of that matters if they slip up for one split second. There is no room for error if you are a young black man in this country. There is no room for one second of making a stupid teenage mistake. There is no room for being in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time.

It's no wonder people of color are less healthy than white people in this country: to live with the weight of that additional fear and stress, on top of everything else life can throw at you? It can only wear away at your soul and body, when it doesn't kill you outright. 

Jon Stewart said it, months ago, to the Fox-type pundits: 

“Do you not understand that life in this country is inherently different for white people and black people? I guarantee you that every person of color in this country has faced an indignity, from the ridiculous, to the grotesque, to the sometimes fatal, at some point in their … I’m gonna say last couple of hours, because of their skin color.” 

“Race is there and it is a constant. You’re tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it.”

http://www.salon.com/2014/08/27/must_see_morning_clip_jon_stewart_finally_gives_fox_the_takedown_weve_been_waiting_for/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

issue-y again

Trigger warning for sexual assault:

I was going to write about something inane, as one does, but I'm mad now, so I'm going to write about something else, and this is it:

I read a blog post recently where a woman said, about sexual assault and a girl dressing in scanty clothes, "If it looks like a duck..."

I am going to rant about this for a moment, because the rage, it is still strong.

THERE IS NO DUCK. 

There is no way that a woman can possibly dress that suggests that she wants to be sexually assaulted. 

None. 

Woman is walking around in a tiny skirt? Doesn't mean she wants to be raped.

Woman is walking around in a skimpy bikini? Doesn't mean she wants to be raped.

Woman is walking around topless? Doesn't mean she wants to be raped.

It does not matter what a woman is wearing. 

She might be wearing that short skirt because she enjoys the feeling of the breeze on her skin. She might be wearing that bikini because she enjoys the feeling of the sun on her back. She might be topless because it's just too hot out to put a shirt on (let alone a bra. those things are sweaty.).

But more than that, she might be wearing that short skirt because she likes her legs and feels sexy when they are visible. She gets to do that.

She might be wearing that bikini because she loves her boobs and they look good in it. She gets to do that.

She might be topless because she likes her whole body. She gets to do that.

She might even be wearing whatever she is wearing because she wants to attract attention from a person to whom she is attracted and she may want to engage in consensual sexual activity with that person. She gets to do that.

It. Doesn't. Matter.

There is no clothing that says, "I want to be raped."

When a man goes without his shirt, he may want women (or other men) to admire his abs. He may want to attract attention from a person to whom he is attracted, and he may want to engage in consensual sexual activity with that person. Yet I don't hear anyone saying, "He asked to be raped, wearing just those shorts."

A woman should be allowed to wear clothing that shows off her body. 

She should also be allowed to have consensual sex with whomever she wants. 

There is a key point that seems to get missed here, which is that she gets to pick. 

A woman saying, "I want to have sex with a person with whom I choose to have sex" is not the same thing as her saying that she wants some other person to force her into sex. 

WHY IS THIS CONCEPT SO HARD?

It seems to me that the key problem is that women still are not seen as the same kind of people as men. 

Look, I read that California shooter guy's manifesto (ok, I skimmed it. it was tedious in the manner of all self-involved assholes' writings). That guy? He considered women to be animals unworthy of choosing their own partners. Now, he clearly had some other self-aggrandizing delusions going on, but I read the internet too, and the principle is there: there are angry young men out in the world who think that women owe them sex.

There are non-angry men out in the world who still kind of think that women shouldn't quite get to make their own decisions about sex, like maybe it's better if someone else polices it for them.

There are women out in the world who think that other women should dress a certain way in order to "keep their brothers from stumbling."

This is all, quite frankly, bullshit.

Teach your daughters to wear what feels good on their bodies. Teach them to stand up for themselves. Teach them that they control their own bodies.

Teach your sons that no woman owes them anything.* Teach them that the societal line that says that men cannot control themselves is a lie. Teach them that they control their own bodies.

Teach all your children the same thing, actually: to wear what feels good on their bodies, to stand up against injustice, that no one owes them anything but human decency and respect, that they control their own bodies.

I am really tired of women being responsible for policing what men think, and men being responsible for policing what women wear.

There is no duck.

...

*  I know that it sounds like I am being heteronormative here, but the reality is that even gay men are affected by this expectation that if they want to touch a woman/advise her on her clothes/tell her to smile, they can, by virtue of being men.

money

I gave a homeless girl $5 today. 

I used to not give money, not ever. T. and I have even discussed this before, and with all the stuff I have seen, I felt like I couldn't bear to throw my money into the void of the drugs that eat up the lives of so many people.

Then I heard someone talk about how long he panhandled to try to get money to feed himself and his wife, and how hopeless it felt.

Today I came upon a girl crying on the sidewalk. "I'm just so worn out," she said, when I asked her what was wrong. "The [denomination] church gave us permission to sleep in their doorway last night, but it turned out that the doorway we were sleeping in didn't belong to them and the cops came at 6 am and kicked us out, and I'm so tired. I've been asking for money all day and all I got was $9, and I need to buy food for my dog* because all of the places that give dog food out for free give out the kind that has grain in it, and my dog's skin gets all scabby when I give him that food. This is all I have left." 

She pulled out a ziplock bag with a bowl or so of dog food. 

Is she going to buy dog food with the $5 I gave her, or is she going to buy drugs?

I don't know, and I can't really worry about it. I helped someone who seemed to need help. Hopefully that counts for something, whatever the result. I'm letting go of the result.

* For everyone who is thinking, "DOG FOOD? You gave her money for DOG FOOD?" let me just mention that if I were a woman living houseless on the street, I would want a big dog, too. There is no one to protect you but yourself, unless you have a dog. A dog is companionship, yes, but it is also some little measure of safety.

space

I got on the bus today, and a middle-aged/older white guy sat down next to me.

It is worth noting that this was a row of three or four seats facing inward. I was on one end, and the rest were empty. He did not have to sit right next to me.

I had my legs crossed, as women do, and he spread his knees apart, as men do.

Every time the bus moved, he bumped into me. 

This superfluous touching started to really irritate me. I am usually the calmest person on the bus with regard to the fact that yes, people bump into each other on public transportation. Yes, there will be jostling. But this guy was taking up more than his fair share of space, and his unnecessary invasion of my space bothered me.

I had headphones on, and I was leaning away from him, looking out the front window of the bus.

When other people got on, I glanced toward the back of the bus, in the space-encroaching guy's direction, to confirm that there were many other places he could sit. 

He leaned too close to me and said something derogatory about the driver.

I could have let it go. It wasn't that big a deal, right?

But then I thought about the very many ways in which men expect to be able to take over the space around women - spreading their legs wide into women's space, leaning in too close, telling us to smile - and I thought, "If I, with my degree and career in taking-no-bullshit, can't say something when I feel like someone is creeping past my boundaries, who can?"

And so I held up my hand and said, "Just... give me some space," and turned back toward the front.

"Oh, sorry," he said. He didn't change seats, but he stopped leaning in so close.

I had to fight the urge to apologize, to tell him that it was okay, that he could take all the space he wanted, that I might have misjudged him. Women are told, aren't we, that our job is to make life comfortable for men?

I didn't apologize. He made me feel uncomfortable, and I refuse to accept that his comfort is more important than mine. I get to have space on the bus, too. Maybe I helped the next woman, who isn't feeling brave enough to say anything.

1: November/rage

It's November.

Yup. Sure is. 

Last night it took me more than 45 minutes to complete a 10 minute commute home, for the second time this week.

On Tuesday, I gave myself a break and drove to work, which turned out to be a Very Large Mistake. 

Some, I don't know, water main broke, and one of the major arteries through downtown was closed. This was a minor inconvenience of about ten minutes delay in the morning. 

I left work at 6 pm, expecting to dash home, eat something, and have a few minutes to chill before my skype Spanish lesson. 

38 minutes later, I had driven an eight block circle right back to where I'd started, thanks to one-way streets and no right turn intersections and the fact that the street I started on was the one that was closed at its intersection with the major artery through downtown with the broken water main.

I took a different route across the river and I was home 10 minutes later.

Last night, I got on a bus that was already full, and I stood in the little open space in front of the back door so that I wouldn't have to hold on a pole, because that hurts my gimpy hands. (Gripping anything for too long does: a pen, a bag, a book.)

Half an hour and 9 blocks later, I noticed that a women standing in front of me in the aisle had one arm in a sling and a bandage on her other hand, and she was holding onto the pole with the bandaged hand, wincing every time the bus moved and she had to hang on.

Everyone ignored her.

Look, I've been there. I know how it feels to stand there desperately hoping that somehow, some way, someone will notice that you have this invisible pain (or in her case, not invisible) that no one wants to notice because then they'd have to give up a seat.

One day, I was stuck up at the front of the bus where you have to hold on to a bar above your head, and that is the worst for my nerve issues, and when the bus emptied at the back, no one moved back and I finally had to push past people to at least hold on to a pole at waist level. It hurt.

We are not supposed to stand up for ourselves. We are supposed to suck it up and take it. 

By we, I mean women. I mean everyone in polite society, but I especially mean women.

Even more, if you are a poor woman, you are supposed to suck it up, because the world assumes that probably you brought it all on yourself, and this woman was poor.

(And frankly, that infuriates me, because people are so deliberately blind to the part where WE DON'T ALL START OUT IN THE SAME PLACE and it's so f*cking unfair to expect people to overcome things that NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO OVERCOME and to judge them if they can't. Shouty voice.)

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I leaned forward over the seats in front of me, and I asked her, "Would you like to come stand back here where you don't have to hold on? It might be easier on your hands."

And then I was just angry at everyone else on the bus and their unthinking selfishness and I said, louder, "OR SOMEONE COULD GIVE YOU A SEAT."

"I might just get off at the next stop," she said softly. "Maybe the next bus won't be as full."

The woman who gave her a seat was herself in her 50s, and I wanted to smack all the young, healthy people who didn't.

I had another 20 minutes on the bus to sit with my righteous rage, too.

nothing to fear

One of the things that happens when you move around the world is that you meet people who don't fit the framework you were given in your little hometown in your little home church.

One of the things that happens when you move around the world is that those people you were always told about are now the coworker in the office next to yours who tells those funny jokes and the new friend from the cafe down the street.

I grew up in a place and time where we were told that it was okay for a person to have feelings of attraction to the same sex as long as that person didn't sin by actually acting on the feelings.

That always seemed fundamentally unfair to me, even at my most conservative. How could you ask a person to go through their entire life without even the possibility of a romantic relationship? If I couldn't survive without that hope, how could someone else? Was my straightness all that spared me from a life that seemed to require horrific loneliness? Why would anyone think a good God would ask that of people? How could I ask it of people when I knew, had it been me, I couldn't have done it? It just seemed mean.

But because of that teaching, for a long time I didn't know how to act around people who were gay, even as I stopped believing that there was anything wrong with gay relationships.

It wasn't until I was in law school and a good friend told me over a good cup of British tea that she had decided to become an equal opportunity dater and oh by the way that girl she introduced me to in the elevator was her new girlfriend that I realized exactly how one does react when a friend tells you the truth about herself: you react with joy, because she is closer to who she is meant to be. You react with excitement, because she is excited about her new love. You react with gentleness, because she trusted you with who she really is, and that is what friendship means: that we are gentle with the real version of each other. We love the real version of each other even more than the facade we first encountered.

Where I live now, I have friends and coworkers who are gay couples, men and women, married and just starting out, childless and raising kids. I have friends and coworkers who are bisexual and transgender and fluid in their sexuality.

A wedding between two men or between two women makes me cry with the joy of it in a way I never do at a straight wedding, because in a gay wedding I see hope deferred and finally realized, and it is beautiful.

The funny thing is that I realized that the gay men and women, the transgender men and women, the bisexual men and women, they were all around me the whole time. They were around me in my little hometown. They were around me in my home church. They just had to hide, in a world that told them that their full beautiful selves were wrong, and many of them are hiding still: from themselves, from their families, from their churches.

I have long joked that the thing Christians are most afraid of in this country is that their son might be gay or their daughter might get pregnant before she is married.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: there is nothing to be afraid of.

People are beautiful and wonderful and mysterious, and the more they can be their real selves, the more beautiful and wonderful and mysterious they are. When we ask the people we love to be real, when we ask them to be gay or bisexual or queer or transgender just as they really are, when we ask them to trust us enough to let us love who they really are, then the fear disappears, and all we have left is love.

We just have to keep being honest and gentle, with ourselves and with the people we love. There is nothing to fear.

...

I wrote this in honor of a friend, who was brave enough today to share with the world the fact that he is transgender. Friend, you were a beautiful woman, and you are a beautiful man. Love always.

...

http://notalllikethat.org/

race

A couple of years ago, an acquaintance told me that I needed to be more like him, and be colorblind, and I almost lost it. (See also, this article: Colorblind Ideology is a Form of Racism.)

I sputtered for a minute, because what the f*ck? Yes, I know. Swearing. But I feel like this situation deserves it. (Sorry, Aunt Lisa. And Momma.)

I had just come back from the Mitten, from the D., in fact, and someone asked me how it was, and I said, "It was really nice to be in the Mitten, where not everyone is white. And I feel like white people and black people interact more comfortably there."*

Later he said to me, "I couldn't believe that racist thing you said," and I had literally no idea what he was talking about.

It turned out that he believed that my statement about it being nice to be in a place that was not all-white was racist against white people.

I was irate. 

On the inside.

On the outside, I told him that I disagree. I told him that I think that diversity is an objective good, and we all need the perspectives of people with different backgrounds than ourselves. 

I told him that racism is fundamentally a structural issue, and even if a person had negative feelings about white people as a whole, that is not the same thing as the structure of racism that has given benefits to white people at the expense of people of color for centuries. 

I told him that no one wants you not to see the color of their skin, they just want you to value and respect them for who they are, including the color of their skin.

He laughed at me and pointed at me (literally) and said, "Yeah, yeah, you are racist against white people."

And look, this is NOTHING. I know that. I am white, and I live in the privilege of that. I am comfortable in Gone West, in Universe City, in these almost all-white cities, because of the color of my skin. I don't have to think about it.
 

But what scared me the most about that conversation, what still makes me feel sick to my stomach, is that there are white people in this country who still feel that way. Even one of my friends, when we talked about it later, essentially told me that I should back down to keep the peace.

I won't.

It is a lie to say that the real racism is seeing race and appreciating diversity.

It is a lie to say that we should be colorblind.

It is a lie to say that we are past racism.

As long as a white man who considers himself liberal and accepting believes that to see race is to be the problem, we are not past racism.

As long as all the loss prevention officers in a store are white while most of the shoppers are black, we are not past racism.

As long as we assume that affirmative action means that an unqualified person gets a job because of their race rather than the truth that sometimes the racist structure of our society has taken away opportunities to such a degree that a perfectly qualified person of color hasn't been able to prove their qualifications quite like a white person has, we are not past racism.

As long as a prosecutor offers a long prison sentence to a black man involved in a DUI where someone got hurt when we all know that he would have offered probation to a white man with the same lack of criminal history, we are not past racism.

As long as we have stereotypes of the "angry black woman" and the "welfare queen", and use the phrases "ghetto" (to mean black and bad) and "white trash" (because people of color are assumed to be trash? or because white people have to be a special breed in order to be trash?), we are not past racism.

As long as nearly every young black man in New York City is stopped and frisked at some point while young white men go about their business, we are not past racism.

As long as 17 year old black young men can't walk home with a hoody over their heads against the rain without being stalked and killed** by men who carry white privilege based on their appearance, name, and language (whatever their parentage), we are not past racism. 

We are right in the middle of it. We all of us are right in the middle of it. To deny that is to deny the truth.

It's time we stopped denying the truth.

(Someone asked me what I think, as a lawyer, about the case itself. This post from the Atlantic pretty much says it all: Trayvon Martin and the Irony of American Justice.)

* It may or may not be true that black people and white people interact more comfortably in the Mitten. There are problems there, too. I guess what I was trying to say that it felt really good and familiar to be in a place where a black woman walking into the train station said to me, "I love your dress!" and I said, "I was just going to say the same thing to you!" I don't think that would happen in a place as white as Universe City, or even Gone West, because people of color just can't be as comfortable when there are so few of them amidst the sea of white people. Then on the train, the conductor was an older black man who gently flirted with me in that way that I specifically associate with older black men, and it made me happy. I don't think that would have happened in Universe City, either, although I think it's slightly more common in Gone West, being a bigger city.

** Even if you believe George Zimmerman's story in its entirety, this is still true.

dollars

I did my taxes today. 

Please note the date: March 6. This is the first time I can remember, other than (maybe?) when I was living in Rwanda, that I have done my taxes on a day other than April 15 or later. (Was it last year that April 15 was a Friday and a federal holiday, so tax day was the 18th?) In general, I am that person googling the post office hours on tax day and driving across town to get to an open mailbox. My first year in Gone West, I took the bus downtown at 10:30 pm to mail my tax return. 

(Side note: YAY! I am moving back to Gone West! Reading things like that reminds me how much I love it there, impending move notwithstanding.)

I am getting money back on my taxes, assuming I did the math right. Last year State of Happiness sent me a letter that said something along the lines of "You used the exemption for head of household, idiot. Please to send us $38." And I put a check in the mail, practically instantly, out of gratitude that I only made the one mistake. 

Money back is handy. I can use it, right now, with the move and all. 

I do my taxes myself every year, because my head spins when I have all the publications in front of me, but it spins even more when I just have to input numbers without knowing why, a la the online programs. (I had the same problem with physics in college: I couldn't learn it because the professor of physics-for-premed-students wouldn't tell me the calculus behind it. I loved calculus, and physics made no sense without it, and I find it impossible to learn things that do not make sense. I am not a memorize a formula sort of girl. I need to understand the reasons why.)

After I did my taxes, I realized that I paid about 20% of my salary in taxes last year, which seems high (including Medicare and Social Security, the second of which I do not expect to see any of when my day comes, the way things are going). I'm not complaining about how high it is, not at all. In fact, I'm pretty excited that I make enough money to pay that much in taxes, and I'm pretty excited to look at those numbers and think, "Hey! I'm finally making a real contribution!"

Maybe someone got food stamps every month this year from my tax dollars, and that thought makes me quite happy.

peace

Nearly twenty years ago, I woke up one night because one of my parents was putting a little girl into my bed. My sister and I shared a room at the time, but I had a full bed and she had only a single, so I was the one who had to share my bed whenever someone at church had a crisis and their daughter stayed with us.

A. stayed with us for a few days, and then went back with her mom, but we continued to pick her up for school in the morning at one of the apartment complexes that my middle class friends would have been afraid to enter. She was almost my second little sister for a while.

Years later, after things had begun to look up for her mom - a better house, a better job - I rode with them to a nearby town every morning one summer. I didn't really look forward to the ride. It bothered me that A. knew all the words to the dirty songs, and I didn't like it when her mom asked me for advice about parenting. I was only 18, and A. was 13. "Should I put her on birth control?" her mom asked, and I didn't know what to say.

I saw A. a few more times, after that summer. I saw her at church, and once in the pool at the Y.

I went to Rwanda, and then to law school. My parents moved to a suburban neighborhood, and a suburban church. I nearly forgot that we once lived in a world where people threw guns into our backyard while they ran from the police. I nearly forgot that we once lived in a world where a (different) girl with blood dripping of her face after an encounter with drug dealers might knock on our door at 4 am.

And then, one day, I heard that A. had been arrested for the shaking death of her baby girl, and then convicted and sentenced. I can only imagine how alone she was with a drug problem. I can only imagine how alone she was with a crying baby, the only one of her three daughters still in her custody. I can only imagine how alone she was with the men who paid her for sex with money or drugs.

That was two years ago. Every few months I have thought to myself, "I should send a letter to A," but I never knew what to say. How do you say, "I'm a lawyer, with a happy life," to someone who was once almost a sister but whose path went a different way those many years ago?

Today I heard that she committed suicide in prison.

Guilt doesn't change anything, nor apologies, now, but A., I am sorry. I wish I had talked to you that summer instead of trying to tune out on every car ride. I wish I had been there for you those years after your mom gave up on you. I wish I had sent that letter.

I wish you peace.

"hell," apparently

I was randomly clicking around on the internet the other day when I came across this photo essay in Foreign Policy. The link that I clicked was something about the Failed States Index, which is the sort of thing that interests me. But lo! I had stumbled upon the perfect example of how the U.S. media turns the Rest of the World into Bad and Scary.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? The title of this photo essay is Postcards from Hell. Postcards from Hell. You're kidding me, right? This cannot be real. Who let this article go to press with such a pejorative title? I can tell already, from the title, that the person who wrote this 1. doesn't travel much, and 2. buys into every stereotype of the Rest of the World.

At this point, I've mentally mostly discarded any words that are going to appear in the essay, because they are clearly going to be ridiculous, but I did read the first caption, below a picture of smoke in, probably, Sudan. Smoke! Where there is smoke there is fire! Fire means death and destruction, right?


Or, you know, that people need to cook food. There are both children and adults in that photo, and they all seem to be going calmly about their lives. They don't look particularly pained or upset. If that is hell, it doesn't look so bad. Am I to assume that every time someone lights a fire, they are in hell? Because we build a fire every time we go camping, and it's pretty great.

Here's my favorite line in the entire thing, right underneath that photo: "...as the photos here demonstrate, sometimes the best test is the simplest one: You'll only know a failed state when you see it." My mouth gaped open in astonishment. Apparently you can tell, from one single photo, selected by a person whose biases are pretty glaringly obvious, that a country is hell. An entire country. (I am so irritated that I am overusing italics.)

I looked through about half of the essay, just for the pictures. Let's see a few examples of what "hell" looks like, according to Foreign Policy:

1. Somalia:

Apparently, hell looks like a beach, and a boat with a big motor. OOOh, you mean you are worried about the guns? If you haven't noticed, those men are not pointing those guns at anyone or shooting anything. Presumably, in hell, they would be. Hell depiction? No.

2. Chad:

Apparently now hell is... getting old? That seems mean. This woman actually might be laughing, if you look closely, and the people behind her don't seem at all upset. So maybe hell is sitting on the ground? Getting old and sitting on the ground? Doesn't seem so bad to me. Hell depiction? No.

8. Central African Republic:

This one wins for sheer stereotypicality. The CAF has had a civil war and some rebels from Uganda have hidden there. But no, the photo is of FIRE. A fire, I might add, that was set intentionally to get rid of snakes and scorpions. It has nothing to do with the war. But it looks like hell, right? So let's use it! Even though it's a perfectly legitimate use of fire. Hell depiction? No.

I could go on, but I will illustrate with just one more, my personal favorite, for many reasons -

33. Liberia:

So, we have a market street, with things for sale. We have healthy kids wearing nice clothes, with their hair braided and one of them even carrying a school bag.* This is supposed to be... hell?

No. I refuse to accept it.

Other pictures show: A man pushing a bicycle of bananas to market! Kids drinking from a water pump! A man with blood on his clothes! (That looks, frankly, like he works as a butcher, not like he is hurt.) A kid next to an abandoned mud house! The sign for a national park! Women lined up to vote! So scary.

I have been sarcastic throughout this entire post, but I am actually pretty disturbed, because this article told me that I was supposed to see hell in these pictures, and all I saw was people going about their lives. Is it far too cynical to say that I worry that the only thing that makes them "hell" in the minds of the people who chose them is the fact that, well, the people in so many of them are black?

...

* I should say, regarding this picture of Liberia, which I love, that it was taken by Glenna Gordan, who keeps this blog: Scarlett Lion, which I also love. Her pictures are beautiful and real, and nothing I am saying should be taken as a reflection on her work. I am only annoyed that FP chose to use her lovely photo as a depiction of hell.

Photo credits:
First photo - Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Somalia - Mohamed Dahir/AFP/Getty Images
Chad - Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images
CAF - Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Liberia - Glenna Gordan/AFP/Getty Images

violence

I really don't deal very well with violence. I went to this movie last fall with a group of friends, and I came out shaken and drained. "Why would such violence be entertainment?" I asked. I couldn't sleep that night. I do fine, though, with real photos of an actual murder scene. I can look at real autopsy photos, even of babies.

I do not do fine with the violence of the war in Liberia. I used to. I used to read every book, watch every tv show, while the war was still ongoing. But lately, I have watched a couple of videos of Liberia that included footage from the war, and I can hardly make it through them. I watch them - how can I not? they are of Liberia, oh Liberia - but it takes me weeks, sometimes, to watch a twenty minute video in thirty second intervals.

It's different, somehow, here, to see an individual person making a choice, however tragic, to kill another person. To see little kids, probably high on drugs, shooting indiscriminately in Monrovia, all those years ago, is a completely different thing. And maybe that's it: I can interact with people, on both sides of violence, as individuals, but I cannot deal with the anonymous violence or the entertainment violence.

One might wonder - and I have - whether it is Liberia and Rwanda that have given me this abhorrence for violence, or whether the fact that I keep ending up in pre-, current and post-conflict zones is just some awful joke the universe is playing on me.

connection

We sat across the table from each other, across a world from the little pizza place in Lalibela, Ethiopia where she and her two friends were sitting when I walked in. I met them by accident. I would have chosen a table and sat alone, but the server took one look at me and motioned around the corner to their table. "Here are the people who match you," she seemed to be saying., although we didn't share a language. "Sit with them."

So I sat with them, and we ate pizza, and found that we had, as usual, only two degrees of separation. I knew someone who knew one of them. N.'s family took me in when I got back to Addis Ababa, and I slept in a narrow little bed in a tiled house full of an expatriate family and the friends they've picked up and invited in. It was so familiar, even in a whole new country, that I felt a physical ache in my stomach and my chest from my desire to stay in Africa. L. and N. and I stayed up late one night, talking about everything in the world: politics and religion and love and travel.

Fourteen months and three continents later, I dropped everything to meet N. for coffee on a few hours notice. We sat in this coffeeshop, here, in my boring new life. We talked the way global nomads talk, with all the immediate intensity you can share when you have an unusual shared experience. We talked about why we left, and what we miss, and what we don't.

"You need people here who you can talk to about these things," she told me. "You have to find some friends who understand when you talk about not making eye contact, or about never being anonymous. Otherwise, you start to feel like you are crazy."

She's right. I do.

bus stop

One morning, waiting for the bus, I stood inside the bus shelter to avoid the wind. While I was standing there, an older man pulling an old suitcase piled high with all his worldly possessions walked up. It was early morning and I was half-asleep with my iPod on, so I just moved aside to give him space to stand out of the wind as well, but he did not come into the shelter. He stood outside and said to me, "You shouldn't stand in there. Sometimes the bus won't stop if you are in there. They just keep going because they think you are smoking dope."

I smiled and thanked him as we both got on the bus, grateful for his considerateness, but as I sat down I felt deeply sad, because I know that the bus will still stop for me, even if I am in the bus shelter. I am young and white and clean, and he is none of those.

on race and politics

I realize that I have an, eh-hem, mixed crowd here, politically at least, and so I probably should move on from the amazing fact of the amazing President Barack Obama (tears), but I can't. I just can't. Right up until Tuesday morning when he walked out of the Capitol onto that stage, I thought I was going to wake up and find that it had all been a wonderful dream and that some old white guy had stolen the election away.

Here's the thing about that moment, when he walked out there. The reason that it meant so much to me was that the two Marines standing on each side of the doorway were black. Did anyone else notice that? And I watched them saluting President Obama, and I felt the weight of 233 years of everyone, whatever their race, always saluting some white guy. I know that some (white) people will say that it doesn't matter, as long as the president is a good guy and has the right politics (whatever you think those are; let's agree to disagree).

But the fact is that it DOES matter. It does matter because it has ALWAYS, up until Tuesday, been a white guy. It hasn't been a white guy one time and a Hispanic woman another time and an Asian guy another time and a black woman another time. It has always, always been a white guy, and the rest of us have always had to salute him, literally or figuratively. And for members of the Armed Forces, who are disproportionately not white, and who are commanded by the president, who has always been white, it matters even more.

Given that I am white myself, I know that I can't feel the fullness of what this means for people of color in this country, particularly African-Americans, but I know that it matters, and that it is the reason why I wept rather than lept and screamed at the election and at the inauguration of President Obama. I have spent 13 years of my life living in places where the leaders are black, but most black Americans have not. This is the first time.

Every person who walked through that door, between those two black Marines, was white. Until President Obama. You may disagree with his politics and mine, but you can't tell me that the race of our new President doesn't matter or that you "don't see race." It matters, and it changes everything, for the better.

still the tears

I have, once again, been crying every time I see anything related to the new President. Michelle and Barack dancing? Tears. Photo of Michelle fixing Sasha's shoe in the White House? Tears. The President signing proclamations? Tears. I'm in love with all of them.

Do you think they need another member of the family? Like maybe a 29 year old white girl? I could babysit...

Right, they already have a Grandma for that. Well, if you hear of any Obama family openings (human roles only, please), let me know. I want in.

...

Isn't it beautiful to have a black First Family? I just keep looking at that family, at the two adorable girls and the elegant parents, and thinking how wonderfully they fill the White House.

A black, biracial man is the most powerful person in the world. (Assuming the US is still the most powerful nation in the world, which it might not be. Actually, maybe a Chinese man is the most powerful person in the world.) But regardless, Barack Obama is so perfectly presidential after eight years of watching Bushie bop around desperately.

I cried in Liberia the first time I heard a woman introduced as President, and I suspect that I will be crying for a while every time I hear Barack Obama introduced as President. This has been such a long, long time coming. So many years of slavery and Jim Crow and civil rights - and so much work left to do - but for just a few days, I want to enjoy this victory.

And funny, it really does feel like my victory, and the whole country's victory. I read something, somewhere today that said that the reason we love Barack Obama is not because he will fix our country but because he gives us the confidence that we can fix it. I agree, and I suppose we had better get started. Right after we all repeatedly watch this video of the President and First Lady dancing last night, singing to each other. I plan to cry every time I watch it.

Number 44

I feel some kind of obligation to write about President Obama, but the truth is that Inauguration Day felt anticlimactic to me. We elected this man MONTHS ago. Where have you all been? Why hasn't he been running the country since then? He's been my president since about 8:30 p.m. on November 4, 2008.

It also felt anticlimactic because, well, it was a normal work day. Funny that, how the world does not stop so that I might watch the inauguration. I missed the moment. I caught the "so help me God" at the end, but I missed the very moment. I missed history.

I should be more upset about that. I am sad, a little, but I'm not upset. This is how life goes. On. And as I said, I have thought of him as our one and only president for over two months. (George WHO?)

The transition was accomplished, for me, when President Obama walked out onto the platform. His face, calm and resolute, made it all real to me. He is exactly the President I want and we need.

...

Five things I want to remember:

1. "I, Barack Hussein Obama..." - We have a President whose very name links us to the rest of the world, instead of dividing us.
   
2. The Chief Justice saying, "Congratulations, Mr. President."
   
3. This quote from the front news page on my yahoo email: "A jubilant crowd of more than a million waited for hours in frigid temperatures to witness the moment as a young black man with a foreign-sounding name took command of a nation founded by slaveholders." (I don't know about that "young" part, but I suppose that, comparatively, he is pretty young.) "A nation founded by slaveholders..." I almost believe, today, that we may someday overcome the past that cripples us.
   
4. The tears in the eyes of Bakary Kamara, an immigrant from the Gambia, in this photograph in the New York Times.
   
5. A campaign sign in the window of an apartment on my way home from the store tonight that read, "President Obama." It's finally true.

Congratulations, President Barack Hussein Obama. I am honored to call you my President. Officially, at long last.

groups

I am the only white person at the table. The other girls are Jamaican and Ugandan and Liberian and Cambodian and African-American, and we are shouting above the music to talk about turning thirty and the pluses and minuses of various types of grad school. When we go down to the dance floor, I am, stereotypically, the worst dancer, but I happily dance anyway, until we slowly all stop dancing and stare at one another and wonder aloud, "Who thought this song was a good idea? You can't dance to it at all!"

Someone comments that she is tired of holding her purse, and I drop mine into the circle of dancers. Everyone follows, and we laugh at the way we dance around our stack of purses. "Does anyone have a camera?" someone asks, but no one does, except for phone cameras without flash. A guy pushing past laughs, "Look at that pile of purses!"

It is awkward, sometimes, to be the only white person in a group here in this country. I am much more accustomed to being the only white person in a group in Africa, but in this white city, it is less familiar. It's a good awkward, though. It is only fair, in a place where my friend often has to be the only non-white one at a party, that I should take my turn. It is not and cannot be the same, but it's fair that I should be uncomfortable sometimes, being the only one, as some people must be the only one much of the time. I'm not even bearing my share of the discomfort, not in my occasional evenings.