Caturday All Year Long

Technically, there are not any cats in the old Al Stewart song, “Year of the Cat,” but its lyrics are evocative and elusive, so maybe there’s feline element to it after all. Even though I’m now old and jaded enough to roll my eyes a bit at its “mysterious exotic woman” trope, I still love this song, which I listened to incessantly back in 1976/77. (You can thank Al Stewart for jolting me out of my Barry Manilow phase.)

Since my vinyl is packed away in a box, I hadn’t heard the song in years and only rediscovered it through the magic of Facebook. This live version is heavy on crowd noise, thanks to a boisterous German audience (it aired on Musikladen, similar to Wolfman Jack’s “Midnight Special”) but its long virtuoso piano intro more than makes up for the noise.

We’re actually in the Year of the Cat right now, according to the Vietnamese calendar, which swaps out the cat for the rabbit. Nothing against the rabbit, but since it’s “my” year, I prefer to have been born in the Year of the Cat. Lucky me!

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The Boobs of Lake Wobegon

In my offline reading this week, I came upon an argument for the allure of big boobs. The writer stated that all men prefer large breasts – and that women with small ones risked being misread as men.

Well, I’ve never been mistaken for a man, even though I’m decidedly not one of those gals who – as Susan once said of Edie on Desperate Housewives – enters a room several minutes after her breasts. The only time I was taunted for looking boyish, I had short hair and was five years old. Most of us lesser-breasted girls endured some teasing in junior high and beyond, but we were teased very specifically as girls. (Of course, no one escaped: the busty girls just had to deal with other forms of harassment. And everyone’s bra strap got snapped, sooner or later.)

Now that I’ve reached an age where gravity is an irresistible force and the flesh no longer an immovable object, smaller breasts have some real advantages. Who’d have thought that in seventh grade?

As for all men desiring large breasts? I doubt that’s true, either, though I think it’s still a widely held preconception. It may well be that some college-aged men, having grown up with ubiquitous access to porn, really do expect DDs or more. Even back in my youth, some men were fixated on size: the “breast men” of yore.

But all men? I started to do the math, and I realized that if all heterosexual men insisted on larger-than-average breasts, half of them would be left without a partner. It would be worse than China! Men would have to discover a dude-bro version of Lake Wobegon – one where instead of all the children being above average, all the boobs would be bigger than a C cup.

Back here in the real world, though, most men ultimately seem more interested in whole women, not just their parts. At least, that’s been my experience and observation. Yours, too, I hope?

Echinacea in Berlin’s Tiergarten, July 2010; photo by Sungold

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Empty-Bubble Caturday

My Grey Kitty had a way of staring into space that might have been deeply philosophical. My husband, however, always suspected that if you could see a cartoon depiction of her thoughts, it’d be an empty bubble. Other cat-owned humans have likely seen this in (in)action. Those who knew GK will know precisely what I mean.

GK had white highlights on her face and more of a sprawling belly, but otherwise the likeness isn’t too bad.

(Philosopher kitteh from ICHC? of course.)

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Goodbye, Luna

When my little Bear was actually little, he loved the show “Bear in the Big Blue House.” Now my Tiger has discovered it, too. Yes, it’s aimed at preschoolers, but Muppets are ageless. Myself, I can’t stand the squeaky voice of Tutter the Mouse, but I’m utterly charmed by the big Bear and his little niece Ojo.

(Image borrowed from here.)

I’ve always loved the show’s music, too, even after logging thousands of miles with those tunes filling our car. The one that always struck a melancholy chord in me is “The Goodbye Song,” sung by the Big Bear in a duet with his lovely friend Luna the Moon at the end of each episode. Meant to help the child let go of the fantasy world and transition calmly back to reality with the promise of another day, it had an opposite effect of me, evoking fragility and impermanence and frank loss.

(Click here if you can’t see the clip.)

It’s partly the key change that would put me in a melancholy mood, but most of all it was Luna’s voice. Before googling the show yesterday to see if it’s still in reruns (apparently yes, but not where I live), I didn’t know that Luna was sung by Lynne Thigpen, an actress and singer whose career spanned the stage (Godspell), movies (Anger Management), and oversized Bear muppets.

Thigpen was struck down at age 54 when she suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage in early 2003. When she died, the show died with her. Her Wikipedia page says that “the crew’s hearts just weren’t in it anymore.” I had wondered why the show disappeared so abruptly and blamed corporate greed at the Disney channel. Wish I’d been right.

I never knew Ms. Thigpen, but I love her voice, and I love her work. I wish I’d known her name years ago. Her voice lent company and comfort in those topsy turvy, sleep deprived, sometimes lonely days of early parenthood.

Bear: Hey, this was really fun

Luna: We hope you liked it too

Bear: Seems like we’ve just begun

Both: When suddenly we’re through

Bear: Goodbye, goodbye, good friends, goodbye

Both: Cause now it’s time to go

Bear: But, hey, I say, well, that’s OK

Luna: Cause we’ll see you very soon, I know

Bear: Very soon, I know

Both: Goodbye, goodbye, good friends, goodbye

Bear: And tomorrow, just like today

Luna: (Goodbye – today)

Both:
The moon, the bear and the Big Blue House
We’ll be waiting for you to come and play
To come and play, to come and play.

She died too soon. Tomorrow is not just like today. It’s not OK.

So to Lynne: Goodbye, goodbye, good friends, goodbye. And to Luna: Thanks for the light.

(Photo of Lynne Thigpen from her tribute page at Muppet Central.)

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Tuesday Recipe: Howard’s Cream Candy

Howard was a singular figure: a gay man in a tiny mid-North Dakotan town in the middle decades of the previous century. Courtenay had just under 300 in-town residents according to the 1940 census (trend: declining). It had lady elders running the Presbyterian church (first and foremost, my grandma), a general store, and plenty of orderly, hard-working, meat-eating farmers. Courtenay had its own grain elevator. It had various misfits and outsiders, most of whom my grandma befriended; some she even took into her home as boarders. What Courtenay didn’t have: a mate for Howard.

Howard, you see, was the misfittiest of the misfits. He was the only gay man in Courtenay and – we believe – for miles around. He did excellent work at the store. In his spare time, he perfected various housewifely arts: knitting, crochet, sewing, candy-making. Still no mate was forthcoming. It goes without saying that my grandma befriended him warmly. (Today she’d make a fine fag hag.) I was the greedy beneficiary of this, because he was still stitching up snazzy Barbie clothes circa 1970.

Howard didn’t get such a sweet deal. He lived an unpartnered life, alone (except for a few friends like my grandma) and I suspect celibate, until late in his days, when he went into retirement and moved to the next largest town, Jamestown. There, he met another like-minded and like-oriented gentlemen. Together they enjoyed their golden years.

Whenever I think of the joy Howard found in his final years, I don’t know whether to smile or weep.

His cream candy just might make you do both. It’s simple to make, though it takes some time and patience while you’re cooking it.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups evaporated milk
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 stick butter
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla – be generous

Using a very heavy pot, melt the butter, sugar, and 1 cup of the evaporated milk until it reaches a boil. I needed to go pretty close to high heat to get the process started. Once you’re boiling, set a timer for 10 minutes and turn down the heat. You want to keep the candy at a boil for 10 minutes. If your heat source is too strong, you’ll see chunks of caramel begin to form at the bottom of the pot. That’s a signal to dial back the heat. (I saw enough of those chunks that I started frantically bailing them while stirring vigorously with my other hand.)

If you don’t already have a candy thermometer, an hour ago would be a good time to have bought one. If your candy is at a boil and you’re lacking a thermometer, corral a lover, roommate, or random wino on the street to buy you one.

When your ten minutes are up, add the second cup of evaporated milk, then go back to your stirring. You are aiming to hit a sweet space just above “soft ball” stage but still below “hard ball.” This will take a while – for me, perhaps 20 minutes? Once you think you’ve got the right temperature, remove the pot from heat. Let it cool for three minutes or so – not much longer or the candy will have reverted to solid. Beat it with a mixer on high, adding the vanilla and salt. Then smear into a pre-buttered dish. I used an 8 1/2 by 11 inch pyrex pan, but I don’t think this is critical. At this point, Howard’s candy will behave a bit like fudge. Let cool in the pan at room temp, cut, and serve! (If the pieces are super-sticky, you probably didn’t cook it long or hard enough. Expose them to air overnight.)

Serve to anyone who appreciate a good sugar confection with no nutritional value – unless you consider a good backstory to be healthy for the soul. Howard left this earth over a quarter century ago. If there’s an afterlife worth living, it surely includes his candy.

(I thought about trying to illustrate this post, but frankly, the candy is beige, and I’ve got nothing purty to decorate them.)

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Sittin’ Here on the Group W Bench

Best Thanksgiving song ever? “Alice’s Restaurant.” Hands down.

(Then again, I can’t think of another T-day song except for “Over the River and through the Woods,” which was written by another kick-ass American dissident, Lydia Maria Child, who fought for the rights of slaves, Indians, and women. Her song wasn’t political – unless I’m missing a subtext – but I do want to know more about her.)

If you don’t know “Alice’s Restaurant” – or if you haven’t listened in a while – here’s Arlo Guthrie playing it a few years ago, with scenes from the “Alice’s Restaurant” movie interspersed. (The original lyrics are here, but Arlo updated and edited them a bit for this performance.)

(Click here if you can’t view the clip.)

Astonishingly, my very Republican, anti-hippie, draft-dodger-deprecating dad loved this song. He used to play it on the piano all the time when I was a little kid in the early 1970s. My sibs and I would sing along and dance. Only later did I read all the spoken-part lyrics and wonder: what’s a father-raper? By then I was maybe twelve and able to plunk the tune out myself on the piano. I was also abundantly old to realize my dad was not a good person to ask.

“Alice’s Restaurant” has been running through my head the past week or so, and it’s not just in honor of Thanksgiving. I’m thinking it’s time for a new edit of its final lyrics (with apologies to Arlo):

And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, or maybe you’re just tryin’ to hop a plane without gettin’ all irradiated and nekkid-scanned. So if you find yourself inspected, detected, infected, neglected and seee-lected for a backscatter scanner,  just sing, “Officer, You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.” And opt out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t grope him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re batshit and they won’t grope either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends, they may think it’s a movement.

Maybe it’s not a movement. Maybe it’s just one guy who convinces a couple of other people to opt out.

Or maybe you don’t care about opting out in the airport. Maybe you’re okay with people viewing your, ahem, junk. (Geez, I hate that term as much as I hate “vajayjay!” Now we’re stuck with it!)

Isn’t there something in your life, though, that just has to stop? Isn’t there some occasion that demands you sing a bar of “Alice” and just opt out? (And no, I don’t mean an irritating relative at your Thanksgiving table … though I just learned that my sister’s husband’s father’s third wife conducts training (??!!WTF??!!) for the TSA, so perhaps it’s just as well I missed out on this years family gathering in California, even though I’m aching to be there.)

If you’re ready to sing a bar of “Alice” – well, I’ll join in on the harmony. And I might – just might – sing it solo at the Columbus airport a week from today.

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Regression – ahem, Reunions – Can Be Big Fun

I’ve been away from Kittywampus for over a week, but I haven’t dropped off the edge of the universe; I just dropped into my college band reunion. Come to think of it, there’s not much difference, is there?

This time (unlike the last reunion in 2007) I actually practiced beforehand. I had a lot more fun playing, even though the music still insistently raised that classic, pitiless question: “Is it art?”

In fact, I had so much fun playing that my soft palate hurt afterward. Stop thinking dirty thoughts, you. Yes, you! It wasn’t that kind of fun. But it was the next best thing.

Of course, the biggest fun of all was reconnecting with my friends from the band. Some shared their futons and cats with me, along with delectable tabouli, peanut butter cookies, and JD. (Yes, I’m lookin’ at you, reader and occasional commenter KRS, oh goddess among tenrz, who also found me a mellophone!!) Others shed feathers from their magenta and black boas far and wide. Yet others picked up a tenor sax for the first time in ten (or three) years and played as though it was yesterday.

Reunions raise a raft of questions about identity. Who was I then? Who am I now? Who were we then, collectively? And is there any straight line that can be drawn between then and now?

I like to think of the self as sedimentary. We all have layers. Some layers run deeper than others, and those low-lying veins of sediment hold up the rest. It’s a great gift to know others whose deepest layers run along a parallel course to one’s own. It’s a blessing. I am blessed.

Or maybe it’s just that every once in a while, we all benefit from a chance to pretend we’re 19 again. Never mind that every muscle – from quadriceps to diaphragm to lips – will remind us of our true age the next day. For a few enchanted hours, the world is new again. All possible routes remain open to us. We are unencumbered by Serious Jobs. We don’t yet have major family responsibilities. We soar through our upper register on the sheer force of will.

Or maybe that’s a simplification. We did have worries, after all, at 19 and 20. Parents divorced. Friends suffered psychological crises. We either had fraught love affairs or none at all.

Maybe, in the end, it just comes back to the music. It was always there for us, regardless of how joyful or crappy our personal lives might be. No matter what, the music told us that everything was, in fact, now and forever, “All Right Now.”

(Photos via Seth Snyder’s Facebook album.)

Update late on Thursday, 10/28/10: After searching high and low (mostly low), I finally found a version of ARN on Youtube where I’m playing. It’s from the last reunion in 2007, where my chops were more like ground beef. Be grateful that a few hundred other musicians were covering up my suckitude.

(Go here if you can’t see the clip.)

I am still tickled to have been part of a band whose “fight song” is a classic rock anthem about hooking up (though in ye olden daze, it was called a “pick-up”). Not a trace of “go team, fight team, rah rah rah.” This is the song I played over and over again on the drive back from Columbus a couple years ago when I finally go the all-clear on a suspicious boobalicious lump. Someday there will come a time when things are not okay. All the more reason to celebrate when things really are all right now.

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Playdoh – The Smell of Nostalgia?

One of the little pleasures of parenthood is the sudden surfaces of memories from deep within the body. Sometimes, when my kids were younger and I was trying to ease a snug shirt over a noggin, I’d flash back to how it felt when my own mother tried to help me out of a too-tight shirt. I’ve noticed, too, that Playdoh throws me back to my own childhood whenever I get a whiff of it.

Smell, it turns out, isn’t just the most potent trigger of nostalgia – an experience I’ll be you’ve noted too. The types of smells that short-circuit time are also generationally and geographically specific, according to neurologist Alan Hirsch:

We’ve also looked at geographic distributions of olfactory evoked nostalgia. While baked goods are number one, people from the East coast describe the smell of flowers as making them nostalgic for childhood. In the South it was the smell of fresh air, and in the Midwest it was the smell of farm animals. On the West coast it was the smell of meat cooking or meat barbequing. It also depends on when you were born. For people born from 1900 to 1930, natural smells made them nostalgic for their childhood—trees, horses, hay, pine, that sort of thing. People born from 1930 to 1980 were more likely to describe artificial smells that make them nostalgic for childhood—Playdoh, Pez, Sweet Tarts, Vapo rub, jet fuel.

(Hirsch was interviewed for Salon by Sarah Breselor; read the rest here.)

Jet fuel? Geez, were these folks the spawn of Tom Hanks’s character in The Terminal?

For me, it’s not only Playdoh that sends me back. I used to hide in our lilac bushes in front of the house in North Dakota. Another Dakotan association, hay – but also freshly cut grass – gives me the same feeling of transport through time, though cut grass also reminds me of band practice in college. As for Pez, the smell leaves me untouched, but the act of stuffing Pez into their dispenser does evoke a body memory.

What about you? What smell or other trigger puts you right back in your childhood?

Weirdly, the mild scent of petunias also makes me feel nostalgic, but for what? They weren’t a major feature of my childhood. These I photographed behind my house in Ohio a couple of weeks ago; they’re mixed in with flowering (non-edible) sage.

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A Little Pedantry

(I will forgive you if you’re asking: so what else is new at Kittywampus? Are we not already pedantic enough?)

First comes this recent New York Times piece on the proliferation of valedictorians like bunnies –  via Jesse at Pandagon, who observes:

they [high school principals] simply label each person who’s received honors a “valedictorian”, which is sort of like naming a Pro Bowl team in the NFL and then simultaneously declaring every qualified player the MVP.

(More here.)

Full disclosure: I was valedictorian in a class of about 400. The salutatorian – let’s call him Max – got a B in wood shop his freshman year. He was better than me in physics; I surpassed him in English. We still both earned A’s in those classes. Unfairly, my D (yes, D!) in swimming didn’t count. We absolutely should have shared the honors.

Neither Max nor I worked our asses off. We got good grades with pretty rudimentary study habits. There was none of this “5.0 points entered into the GPA for an A in an AP class.” There were no AP classes. The grade scale topped out at 4.0. We nonetheless learned about parallel construction in English, which fewer than five percent of my college students have even heard of. (Note: that’s fewer than, not less than.) Outside of school, I spent a lot of time tooting my horn (literally) and playing organ for the Christian Scientists (as a crass mercenary). Max played a mean air-guitar version of “Godzilla.” He and I each had a life. I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes and he idolized Jim Morrison, but neither of us were hopped-up overachievers. Much later, Max taught me how to operate a bong (purely on an theoretical, academic level, of course – oh, hai, DEA!).

I gave a speech that was pure pandering to shared memories. It was written in a few minutes after drinking beer all afternoon at Folsom Lake. This turned out to be good preparation for teaching – writing under intense pressure, that is – not quaffing a beer prior to lecturing.

As gladly as I would have shared the honor with Max, splitting it even five ways would’ve sucked. Some of my favorite stats from the Times article:

In Colorado, eight high schools in the St. Vrain Valley district crowned 94 valedictorians, which the local newspaper, The Longmont Times-Call, complained in an editorial“stretches the definition.” And north of New York City, Harrison High School is phasing out the title, and on Friday declared 13 of its 221 graduates “summa cum laude.”

William R. Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions at Harvard, said he had heard of schools with more than 100 valedictorians, and had seen home-schooled students praised as No. 1 — out of one — all of which has helped render the distinction meaningless.

Exactly! Despite my lifelong slackerdom (or maybe because of it?), I’d like to see my nanosecond in the sun (at age 17) retain its glitter. Folsom Lake glittered. The beer glittered. Quite possibly, I glittered.

But the issue here is really not about me. Since the 1980s, not only high-school GPAs but also the SAT and GRE have experienced major score drift. And yet the poor kids work ever harder. To me, it looks grim and joyless. What’s the help of grade inflation if everyone now must get an A?

Indeed, what happens when you dilute achievement to the extent described in the Times? You invite people to start gaming the system. You give extra points for honors classes, and so students pile on the honor classes just for the GPA advantage, not because a superhuman workload is good for them educationally. Or you don’t reward honors classes but count an A in home ec just like an A in physics, resulting in a pile-up of busy-beaver achievers in home ec. All of this is magnified by a cultural attitude toward college admissions that encourages kids to “build a resume” from preschool onward, rather than learning things they love, pursuing activities just for fun, and gently stretching their comfort zone.

And y’know, it’s possible to be both fun-loving and pedantic. Case in point: my love for this clip that Andrew Sullivan published a couple of weeks ago:

I have to admit, red-faced, that I’d never thought through the phrase “hold down the fort.” I’m a new convert to killing the superfluous “down.” But “I could care less”? Well, I’ve cared less about this abomination – a lot less, to no effect whatsoever – for a couple of decades now. Behold the graph. This is not Monty Python (although I did laugh out loud). This is logic. Bow down before it!

I wonder how many of those 94 valedictorians know the difference? Or couldn’t they care less?

Update, 30 seconds after I hit publish: Now you get to point and laugh at all of my typos in this post. I just found the first one and corrected it. Starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions and ending them with prepositions is not fair game; this is accepted Kittywampus style, as are split infinitives. Otherwise, fire away!

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Why, Some of My Best Friends Are Scientists! (And Some Are Even Girls, Too)

And I might have become one myself, had I not blown up some chemicals in a high school lab. (My best-friend-cum-lab-partner took that incident as a signal from teh Ceiling Cat to pursue a Ph. D. in microbiology, so go figger.) Throughout college, at least half my friends were in STEM fields, maybe because Stanford was so heavy on engineers. (Conspicuously few were premeds, though, as playing in the Band had a lethal impact on many folks’ GPA.)

I still really enjoy science – and scientists – and so even if there were no gender angle to it, I’d still get a kick out of this website, which features drawings of scientists done by seventh graders. Each has a before-and-after version, with the “after” drawn once the student had met up with a real, live specimen of a scientist at Fermilab.

The paired drawings handily expose all manner of stereotypes – and the students’ growth beyond them. Sometimes it’s terminal nerd-dom that gets swept away, as in these sketches by “Ashley“:

Not that nerdiness need be bad, mind you!  Disclaimer: I too cherish my inner nerd. Though I never really took to Heinlein, I still have a soft spot for the original Start Trek, and some days I like books a bit better than people. And I’m willing to bet that I’m not alone – that most humanities types harbor a little nerdy streak, though we try with varying success to cover it up. The most assertively hip and fashionable big academic shindig, the MLA conference, might be interpreted as a massive exorcism of the inner nerd. Surely there’s a paper in that: “The Return of the Repressed: Post-Freudian Perspectives on the Nerd Within.”

While Ashley’s drawing makes mention of women and men, some of the other girls actually shifted the gender of their “typical” scientist. A great example comes from Amy:

See, the scientist shifts from being obsessive and frankly unbalanced to … being hip circa 1972! A scientist may even be interested in racquetball! (And honey, I’m not snarking about the “even” – I had zero interest in the sport.)

And a scientist can be a gal. A fashionable gal, even, who’s friendly and open and has a sense of humor. A gal who likes to dance.

Now, go flip through the other drawings. They’re cute, they’re enlightening, and they show that Amy was not alone in her preconceptions, even if she did draw the awesomest green smoke.

So the next time someone starts spouting untested, Lawrence Sommer-esqeu theories about women being naturally less suited than men to STEM careers, we might recall Amy’s sketches. We might ask what happens when girls (and boys!) meet real-life scientiests. We might also ask how to make science careers more family friendly – but oy, that’s be a whole ‘nother post. We might wonder how we can offer encouragement to those girls who nearly blow out a ceiling tile in chem lab (ahem!).

In the meantime, I have a couple of scientist friends who I think would rock that turquoise blouse and matching oversized shades.

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Caturday: Basement Cat’s Inferno

A couple of days ago, Historiann linked to a hilarious quiz, “Dante’s Inferno Test.” It’s definitely a cut above the average Hello Quizzy offering, and I was tickled to see her seriously edumacated commentariat parsing the second circle of hell (for sins of the flesh) versus the third (gluttony!).

In light of yesterday’s post, I can’t even offer a prize for the best guess at where I landed. Y’all know, I’m sure:

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very Low
Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Or in other words:

Huh. Sounds like a fun crew, down there in the second circle.

Maybe this is a neurosis left over from grad school, but I can never just take a quiz once. I always have to tinker with it to see how it works (and, um, also to manipulate my results – good thing I didn’t go into the social sciences). Turns out that flipping the answer on the one question that was hard to decide – “Would you sooner go without sex than go without good-tasting food?” – bumped me up into limbo along with the virtuous non-believers. It also ballooned my gluttony score from low to moderate, which sounds about right.

But I’m gonna stick with my original score. I figure if I’m in level two, I can occasionally pop upstairs for good conversation with the virtuous non-believers – and then slide down to visit the gluttons foodies on three, in hopes of creme caramel.

What about you, dear readers? Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test and let us know how you did in comments!

Also: The following picture might just knock me down to level six, the heretics. I’m betting it’ll be full of LOLcats and their human minions.

Helter Skelter kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburgers?

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What’s in a Decade? (Or, Feminism’s Non-linear History)

Historians are awfully fond of saying “It’s more complicated.” For better or worse, I’m a historian by training and inclination. Consider yourself warned: pedantry ahead!

Even though it’s a decade old, Amy Richards’ and Jennifer Baumgarden’s intro to Manifesta- a quick tour through women’s lives in 1970, the year both were born – is still a great read.  I use that chapter, “A Day without Feminism,” every quarter to kick off discussion in my intro class. Courtney Martin, writing in TAPPED, updates it for the millennial generation:

A tenth anniversary edition of Manifesta, updated and with a new preface added, has just been released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. And in many ways, our last decade was also a baptismal moment of sorts for women (though it’s certainly been less covered by the mainstream media). To steal a page from Jen and Amy, consider the state of all things feminist in the year 2000: Birth politics is a niche issue. Gay celebrities are a scandal. Feminism is about women, not gender, and most U.S. feminists have never heard of child trafficking or female genital cutting. The notion of a woman, much less a black, president is still more pipe dream than actual possibility. There are no feminist blogs.

Courtney is wonderful. She spoke at my campus a couple of weeks ago, and the students really connected with her. Her youth is one asset in her ability to build rapport (though far from the only one; she’s just a really effective speaker). And it’s always a good idea to take stock of where we are in the flow of history. But here, I don’t think Courtney quite gives earlier waves of feminism their due. I’m not a partisan of any particular wave; generationally, I fall in the trough between the second and third waves. I just think it’s easier to move forward if we can avoid reinventing wheels.

And also, well, the past really is more complicated.

To start where Courtney ended: Yes, feminist blogs are very new, and they rock. The only blogs I knew of in the late 1990s were a few people’s personal online diaries. That was it. But by 2000, there were lots of online communities. For me, Salon’s Table Talk filled some of the needs that blogs now meet. I’d just become a mother, and I remember (for instance) lengthy discussions of Andrea Yates’ murder of her children that helped me place her act in a larger, political context of untreated postpartum depression and fundamentalist Christianity. Of course there were trolls on Table Talk, too, but it wasn’t the nightmare that Salon’s letter section is today. So, while blogs were the best invention since wine and cheese, they also built on existing forms of online community.

The prospect of a female president seemed pretty remote in 2000, but then again, democracy itself was under siege with Bush v. Gore and the foiled Florida recount. But if you rewind a little further, there was a moment way back in 1984 when we had reason to hope. I don’t know that Geraldine Ferraro would have been the right woman for the job, given her inexperience at the time and her racist comments on Obama in 2008. But her nomination did signal new possibilities. As for a black president, Colin Powell flirted with the idea in the late 1990, back before he disgraced himself by telling the UN we had hard proof of Iraq’s WMD. At the time, he certainly seemed a more plausible candidate than Obama did at the start of the 2008 campaign.

Child trafficking? This is an issue that feminists have taken up periodically for almost as long as feminism has existed. In the 1800s it was called the “white slave trade.” By the mid-1990s, there was lots of talk about sex tourism by men who wanted to exploit very young child prostitutes in Thailand. What’s new is that some of us are realizing that men, women, and children are trafficked for purposes other than sex, and that this is no less reprehensible.

Female genital cutting? In the mid-1980s, there was a huge flurry of attention when Alice Walker publicized the issue – and African feminists informed her that she should butt out. Ever since then, Western feminists have been upset about the practice but often unsure what, if anything, they can and should do to help.

“Gender” was a central part of academic feminism by 1990 at the very latest. Scholars like R.W. Connell and Michael Kimmel were studying masculinity. Historians of women were strongly influenced by Joan W. Scott’s 1986 article, “Gender: A Category of Historical Analysis,” which called for intersectional analysis along lines of race and class as well. Throughout the 1990s, most academic feminists continued to emphasize the study of women but also took a relational view, comparing women to men and examining femininity and masculinity. By the time a lot of us renamed our programs “Women’s and Gender Studies,” we were just formalizing a change that had been underway for many years.

As for the politics of birth, the main difference is that high-achieving women like Courtney who were college students in 2000 are now thirty-ish, with motherhood no longer such a distant possibility for themselves and their friends. But birth has been politicized ever since the Lamaze method was popularized in the early 1960s. When I first started studying the politics and culture of childbirth in the early 1990s, there was already a rich feminist literature. By then, hospitals had introduced birthing suites in an effort to compete with freestanding birth centers and midwives, which had gained strong support from feminist activism. Sure, Ricky Lake gave home birth a famous face, but the issues were already highly visible twenty years ago. With c-section rates skyrocketing past 30% and maternal and infant mortality a national disgrace, we’re arguably losing ground.

So what has really changed in the past decade? Well, homophobia has a much dimmer future than I would’ve imagined ten years ago. While it’s not quite true that “gay celebrities were a scandal” (Ellen had come out and was still loved), famous gay people were much more likely to remain closeted than they are today. But the biggest shift is in young people’s attitudes. Even my most conservative, religious students are apt to take a live-and-let-live approach, or at least they realize that homophobia is incredibly uncool.

Trans issues have also started to get the attention they deserve. Something similar is happening with issues of ability and disability. In both of these areas, blogs are helping render people and experiences visible. They’re still highly marginalized, but the winds of change are starting to shift.

Feminists are also more aware of intersectionality in general. We talked about it in the 1980s already (before the term “intersectionality” was even coined), but change has been slow in coming. Those of us with multiple privilege still fall short. It’s not just unexamined privilege that’s the problem, either. Analysis is a lot more complex when you’re looking at multiple dimension. Political alliances require more effort when you try to bridge and understand differences rather than just ignoring them. The resulting alliances and analyses are a lot richer, though, and I’m hopeful that those of us with relative privilege are increasingly catching onto that.

And yes, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made history. So did Nancy Pelosi. Their victories might have seemed remote in 2000. But 1970 – Baumgardner and Richards’ benchmark year – they were completely unthinkable.

So yes, history is complicated, often more so than we think. It doesn’t neatly repeat itself or develop linearly. Nor is there any guarantee of progress toward peace and justice. (See, for example, most of the twentieth century, with its nuclear weapons and genocides.) Sometimes there’s cause for celebration anyway.

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Yippee, It’s My Name Day … or Is It?

Just for the record, I believe today would be my name day, if I were only Catholic. Which, also for the record, I am not and never will be. Closest I ever came was taking Communion while attending Mass with a long-ago boyfriend. This was apparently quite a dire sin, as my Presbyterian cred didn’t transfer all that well. His family did a lot of hushed, shocked whispering, which tipped me off to the gaffe, and also hinted that he and I might not have a long and glorious future. I still think it’s funny that the Presbyterians wouldn’t blink an eye at Catholics joining them for Communion, but apparently endangered at least my immortal soul, and possibly their’s too.

Anyway, my long-term love is an ex-Catholic, so I guess we can celebrate St. Patty’s Day any way we choose.

Wanna-be leprechaun kitteh from ICHC?

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Feminists Are All Humorless …

… so why, then, did my whole Women’s and Gender Studies faculty laugh ourselves silly over this clip at today’s lunch meeting?

Seriously! It’s not just an inside joke, though it’s extra precious for us who recall the era of womyn-identified-womyn. If you’ve ever been involved in leftish politics, or lived in a co-op house run by consensus, or hung out with hippies in Northern California, or just survived the late 1970s and early 1980s,** this should tickle you. (Don’t be deterred by the 30-second intro.)

Trouble viewing the clip? Click here.

** All stuff from my personal history, by the way. That co-op house had 45 members, not counting the backyard chickens.

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Happy Blue New Year

Surely I can’t be the only one feeling a little melancholy at the start of a new year?

Rationally seen, I’m actually on a good trajectory. Last year was a doozie for me, with the onset of a mysterious ailment on Inauguration Day that continues to disrupt my life. I still don’t have a name for it – which is mostly good news, because I didn’t much hanker to call it MS or vasculitis or lupus – and I still feel lousy most of the time. I’m slowly getting better with more energy from month to month. I’m grateful that my cognitive capacities seem to have recovered, apart from minor trouble recalling names. My hope for 2010 is to get the upper hand over the remaining pain, tingling, and fatigue.

But the start of the new year always brings retrospection as well as hope, and I guess it’s inevitable that we grieve what we’ve lost.

For me, New Year’s Day is also the anniversary of the death of my dear cousin Jacquie, whom I lost to an especially aggressive form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She’s now a decade gone. If you’ve ever listened to Diane Rehm’s radio program and admired her gift for listening to her interviewees, then you’ve had a taste of Jacquie’s great gift, too, though she never made a career of it. She knew how to make people feel that whatever they were doing and thinking was just fascinating. I don’t believe it was ever fake, either. This deep, pervasive fascination was how she embraced the whole world. In midlife, she returned to college and completed a bachelors and master’s in anthropology. She was the one person in my family who understood the love of academia, and so she was my only relative who fully understood that part of me. A generation older than me, she was like a sister to my dad, and he still breaks into tears if he starts thinking too much about his loss. He’s not the only one.

And then, in a different register but still important to me, the anniversary of Grey Kitty’s death overshadows the next couple of days. She, too, died of lymphoma, to the best of our knowledge. She left us on January 3, 2001. I wrote about her last year on that anniversary, so I’ll stop before I get even more maudlin.

The days are short. The skies are dark. Holiday lights and baubles are going back into storage. The next ten weeks will bring the chaos of snow days and power outages, sick children and struggling parents. The North Dakotan in me says that I should be grateful to live in southeast Ohio. The Californian in me asks, WTF was I ever thinking when I left???!

The economy is still a shambles. Health care reform is about to shipwreck on the shoals of a mandate with weak cost controls. We’re still involved in Iraq and miring ourselves ever deeper in Afghanistan.

So let me tally up the good: George Bush and Dick Cheney are no longer our lords and masters. My kids are healthy, bright, and basically kind-hearted – well, to everyone but each other. None of my loved ones with a cancer history have had a recurrence. My niece’s serious arm fracture seems to be healing well, so far. Life is peachy with my dear mate; we’ve been watching the final season of Monk and remembering why we like each other. My teaching load should be slightly lower this quarter than last, giving me time for nature’s greatest tonic: sleep. I still have a job (at least until May) and my husband’s job is secure. My family loves me, and I love them. I have a community of friends who sustained me during the darkest days of last winter. We’ll do it again.

Also: tomatoes.

Here’s wishing you blessings, joys, and good health in 2010. Feel free to commiserate or celebrate – or both! – in comments.

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Happy Silly Halloween

‘Tis the season for the annual handwringing about Slut-o-ween – the “sexy” costumes that have become de rigeur for women and now, it seems, prepubescent girls, too. Trixie at The American Virgin posted a picture of Miley Cyrus’ nine-year-old sister dressed up as … a dominatrix? Hard to say, but as my own nine-year-old Bear likes to say: “It’s a little inappropriate.”

I don’t really care how bare people want to go, though tonight’s massive street party in Athens will be chilly, and I’m not at all sad to be home writing and filching my kids’ candy, instead. It becomes a problem when “sexy” costumes are virtually mandatory for women, while scantily clad men are both rare and liable to take abuse for it. One of my former students told me her boyfriend was harassed on the street when he wore a half-nekkid costume.

Also, hasn’t it all been done by now? Sexy nurse, sexy schoolgirl, sexy vampire, sexy Minnie Mouse? (Really! And Minnie is on sale, so stock up for next year, gals, before that link goes dead.)

This year, I went trick-or-treating with my kids as “sexy grapes.” I did all the sexed-up costumes one better: I didn’t have just two large, squishy globules on my chest, I had dozens of them! All over me! And people could squeeze them!!

Seriously, what if we decided that costumes didn’t have to be sexy or scary? What if we just had fun with them? Zippa writes that all the fun has gone out of Halloween for her since she grew up, and I get why she’d feel that way. Having kids is one sure way to put the magic back into the holiday (though I wouldn’t advise tossing the birth control for that reason alone). But what if imagination were more important than being sexy? Hmmm … a good imagination is actually sexier than “sexy,” any day, in my book.

Those grapes are a very fine vintage, by the way. I sewed them myself from felt and polyester batting my last year in college. I probably spent more time making that silly grapesuit than on studying for exams that quarter. The grapes sag a bit but they’ve held up pretty well. I guess 1985 was a good year for Merlot.

(Behind me: the tulip and lavender bed, done for the year.)

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Non-Jaundiced Memories of Newborn Days

My next-door neighbors, who just welcomed an infant daughter into their lives, had to make a trip to the ER today because she appeared jaundiced. She’ll be fine, the doctors said. She won’t need to be readmitted. They were lucky.

I was glad for my neighbors. But as I heard their story, I also flashed back on my Tiger’s first days. (This may be why parents sometimes seem overeager for their friends to reproduce: through them, we relive moments in our lives that might otherwise be lost forever.)

The Tiger, too, was slightly jaundiced as a newborn. But while today was a sunny, crisp slice of fall, he turned yellow in the late days of a golden June. The treatment was to take him outdoors, naked but for his diaper, and let him bask in the sun. The sky was cloudless. The air was dry and hot. I basked, too.

Medically, it worked. We, too, were lucky,. I was grateful. But what really sticks with me is the memory, etched into my flesh, of snuggling with him as he relaxed entirely into me, as if he were trying to approximate the warm watery cave he’d just left a few days before. In some ways, I felt closer to him than before his birth – maybe because he was now clearly his own person, and I didn’t take our closeness for granted. I no longer assumed a symbiosis. And that made the momentary  blurring of boundaries all the sweeter. Also, it surely didn’t hurt that I, too, was finally warm enough.

Sometimes I think it’s those body memories, intense but often buried under the sediment of visual and verbal memories, that make us who we are. I realize I’m privileged to have had lots of good body memories. I would wish that for everyone, because the habits and memories of the flesh constitute our deepest selves, and yet we are largely at their mercy.

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Caturday: Scary Clown Edition

My kids are more creeped out than amused by clowns. They must have got it from me. One of my worst childhood memories dates from when I was 10 or 11. I was in the church basement with my Sunday school class, watching a movie in which a white-painted, bald mime was pursued by a violent mob. The mime was evidently supposed to represent Jesus Christ, but the scene made me, too, want to run away screaming. I was haunted by it for years. Some of the other kids mocked me for nearly as long. No wonder I grew up a skeptic.

Lately, the Tiger has been having lots of bad dreams. He’s been chased by ravenous giant caterpillars and attacked by pteronodons, but the clowns have left him alone. So far.

Insomiacat from ICHC?

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Four-part Harmony Collides with Wookies; World Does Not End

Maybe it’s just ’cause I’m the daughter of a mother who has sung in barbershop quartets for the last quarter century. Maybe it’s because I remember Jaw, ET, the original Star Wars trilogy, and Indiana Jones from their big-screen debuts. Maybe I’ve got a secret Wookie fetish, but if so, it’s hidden even from me. Anyway, via Renee of Womanist Musings, here’s a tribute to all that. I am impressed – knocked flat on my  behind – by the creative arrangements and the singer’s kick-ass vocal range.

Enjoy!

Oh man. Upon hearing this for the fourth time, I’m starting to worry that I do have a thing for Wookies. Here I thought I’d moved up from Luke Skywalker to Han Solo as I grew up. But Chewbaca? This is very concerning.

Update, 10/20/09, 10:30 p.m.: In comments, Sugarmag pointed out that this video is lip-synched – so much for that Bobby McFerrinish vocal range! – and KRS posted a link to the (apparent) original version by an a cappella group called Moosebutter (if, indeed, the concept of “original” still exists on the Web). Here it is:

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Curse, Bless Me Now with Your Fierce Tears

Scenes from my front-porch idyll:

My mother calls me mid-afternoon from California, and her voice betrays that strained cheer I always hear when she’s about to deliver bad news. “It’s about your father. No, no – nothing terrible. It’s just that his forgetfulness is getting much worse.”

I said, “My sis already told me how he was driving his wife to work and stopped at Wal-Mart so she could quickly buy item. He was supposed to wait for her but he forgot all about it and ditched her there.”

“Well, yes, that wasn’t good. And now he’s having trouble recognizing his friends. [His wife] wants all you kids to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with them this year. Even if it means going to Mimi’s Cafe on Thanksgiving.”

“That’s okay, we can always make a real meal the next day, at your house.”

“You know, I’m starting to feel warm-ish toward [his wife]. Not warm, really. Just warm-ish.”

“More than that isn’t in your job description. [Wife #2 was the "other woman" in marriage #1.] But I have to say, I’m sincerely grateful that she’s there. It can’t be easy. Being so far away, I worry less, knowing she’s there.”

————

This isn’t how I pictured my dad growing old. He’s 77, true, and has lived with inflammatory bowel disease for the past 55 years. Otherwise, though, he’s been quite healthy. As he approached 70, he noticed that his friends who hadn’t already dropped dead suffered from more ailments than he did. He’s got some genes for longevity: His mother (my grandma) died just short of her 103rd birthday. She stayed mentally clear until she was about 98. She and her many sisters all lost her marbles sometime in their nineties. I figured my dad’s mind would stay clear until the rest of him gave out.

The first sign of mental fuzziness was the “damn iPod” story. About two years ago, he bought a new iPod. Soon thereafter, he accidentally knocked it off a shelf onto the floor, where it promptly went kaput. My dad got as much mileage out the story of its demise as he would’ve from actually listening to music on it. I heard him gripe about it 20 or 30 times. He’d go on autoloop – a trick I remembered from my father-in-law, who was already fairly confused when I first met him.

But the woeful tale of the iPod was still something we could laugh about.

Then there was the time when he was supposed to meet my sister for lunch. He called her from outside her house, livid that she was standing him up. “Dad,” she said, “it’s only 10:30.” He was able to laugh about that one, too.

He called me midday on April 19, wanting to wish the Tiger a happy sixth birthday. “Dad,” I said, “his birthday is June 19.” We laughed, chatted briefly (saying nothing about iPods), and hung up.

May 19, he called again. “Where is that little stinker? I want to wish him happy birthday.” “Um, he’s in school … and his birthday’s still not for another month.” We were still laughing.

But these latest incidents? And especially his growing inability to recognize people? Where there’s still laughter it feels forced.

My mom had to hurry off the phone to go play bridge. I held it together until she hung up, and then I sobbed right there on my porch, phone still clutched tight in my hand.

————

I’m my dad’s executor. This appears deeply illogical at first glance. I live in Ohio. California is a whole continent away. Sure, I’m the eldest, but both of my sibs have better financial skills.

“You know why he picked you for the job,” my sister said a couple of years ago. “It’s because he knows you won’t pull the plug. He saw how you kept that kitty of yours around to the bitter end.”

Now, to be clear, I did take Grey Kitty to the vet, intending to have her euthanized. I didn’t do it because the vet said that he wouldn’t if she were his pet; that she wasn’t in major pain, just thin and weak. I brought her home and she died within the hour.

It must also be said that I cleaned up gallons of poop, usually smeared into the carpet, during the last months of her life. Many people would have called it quits after a few weeks of 24/7 poop patrol. At that time, I had a toddler who was liable to stumble into her leavings.

If my dad wants to hang on, no matter what, I wouldn’t be the one to try and talk him out of it. He knows this.

————

But what happens if there’s no there there? What if his core self disintegrates? I think of the Dylan Thomas poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. …

I’ve always expected my father would be one to rage, rage. That’s what his mother did, for as long as she could. But he won’t be able to muster much rage if his sense of self dissolves before his physical health declines. I supposed that’s what I should wish for him, in some ways: a slow, peaceful letting go of this world.

But not at the cost of losing him even before he dies!

Thomas’ poem ends with a plea that I didn’t understand before. Now I do:

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Thomas isn’t describing his father as fighting death; he’s imploring him to do it. He’ll take curses along with blessings, if that’s the price for preserving his father’s life a bit longer.

My dad’s fierce tears are one of the things I love best about him. He is one of the few men of his generation who cries easily. He cries when he’s moved by music. He sobs at funerals. My mother always had to deliver the news of the death of a family pet (including my dad’s dogs, post-separation!) because he can’t hold it together long enough to get the words out. Recently, while I was talking to him on the phone, he started to cry at the mention of his beloved niece, who died ten years ago, and had to hang up. (And I’m very much his daughter; I’m blubbery just writing this, thinking back on that aborted conversation.)

It’s ultimately a selfish wish, isn’t it? The desire to keep our parents with us at all costs? I was slightly mollified when I spoke with my sister yesterday and she said it’s mostly neighbors whose names he’s forgetting. She doesn’t think he’s failing to recognize people who are important in his life. Yet, not long ago, he forgot the name of my husband.

And so I’m left to burn and rave at close of day, while my father settles into unnatural mellowness and the moorings of his being-in-the-world – his very personhood – slowly, inexorably come loose.

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