Cat-Came-Back Caturday

About three weeks ago, I informed the Sungold universe via Facebook that I was in love. No, not that I was in a relationship. Not that I’d gotten divorced. (Indeed, my dear mate and I were enjoying a local high point.)

It was, um, far more complicated. I was smitten with a kitten. And my husband is allergic. Like, asthmatic allergic, which is cruel, since he loves him some kittehs.

On August 11, a thin orange cat with stunning mackerel markings walked up to me as I was pulling scuzzy weeks from my driveway. He said, plaintively, “Meow?” as cats tend to do. Of course I answered in kind.

Within moments my kids informed me that this little guy could be Little Lion, a much-loved cat their friends had lost earlier in the summer. I held on to Orange Kitty until Little Lion’s family confirmed that we hadn’t found him. We then checked to make sure OK wasn’t an escapee from our friends across the street, who at one point had had two orange/ginger cats. No luck.

That night, Orange Kitty drifted off to sleep in the comfort of our porch furniture, seemingly secure in the knowledge that these silly humans who’d fussed over him all evening and provided stinky fishy cat food would carry on their tuna-scented gravy train in the morning.

But (cue Dragnet music or Darth Vader’s theme): The Ditch Witch arrived sometime between 7 and 8 the next morn. Despite the absurd, even cutesy name, this digger is the H-bomb of the construction world. It commenced to tunnel under roads and sidewalks, preparing the way for 21st century gas delivery. (My town is the poster child for the urgency of infrastructure repair.)

By the time I checked on Orange Kitty, he had vanished, like any intelligent kitteh would. And he stayed vanished for a full four weeeks.

This very last Thursday night, I spotted him in our backyard at 6:20 p.m., evidently hot on the trail of a mouse. He broke off his hunt to issue his trademark pathetic meow and allow us a whisker rub. I was elated. He greeted me! He came trotting up to me! He begged to get in the back door! But my kids were about to be late to music lessons, so I couldn’t dally. By the time I sped back home, the only orange was a streak in the sunset.

But hey, at least we knew he was alive.

Yesterday, Friday, he appeared in once again in the early evening. I was sitting on my front porch – just in case – as I’d done faithfully all those weeks before.And yet he took me by surprise. (Which is actually not surprising, in light of the dozens of porch-hours logged in vain hopes of finding him.) He came meowing up to the porch, instantly seizing my attention.

We were ready this time. We wined and dined him like the prodigal kitten. (And no, we didn’t overfeed him – he’s very thin and we want the food to stay inside him – plus the wine was for me. Obviously.) He again fell asleep on our porch furniture after a few longing glances toward the living room.

Today, I went onto the porch around noon to call him. No kitteh. I slipped back into the house and commenced a samba-esque rendition of “Just the Way You Are.” I got to a rest … and heard “meow! meow!” in the key of G#. A Billy Joel fan?

We’ve spent the rest of the day with this charming pumpkin. I bought him toys and food and worm pills. Two of the three were a grand hit. I figure I’ll need to take him to the vet this week, which will take care of the de-worming. I’m fully aware the vet visit could bring heartbreak. (I notice Orange Kitty is breathing too fast, though his gums look pink to this rusty observer, and he doesn’t seem to be sneezing or coughing, nor is he evidently in pain. He eats well and likes to play.)

We need to ascertain, too, that no one has lost him. Surely, he was once loved and fed with kindness; otherwise he’d be skittish and feral instead of sweetly social.

But my heart can’t help but leap – nay, pounce! – at the hope that we might have ourselves a part-time kitty, one who could live outdoors due to my sweetie’s allergies, yet enjoy lots of mutual love. And feeding, which would be a whole lot less mutual unless he starts sharing his mice (ugh). (Ideally, I think cats belong indoors, but when the alternative is life as a stray, an outdoor gig might be a decent compromise.)

Whatever happens, I take the appearance of Orange Kitty as blessing in my life. A mitzvah. An arc of grace (at least until he falls off the porch furniture; it seems I still attract rather clumsy cats).

Oh, and my statement that we might just have us a part-time cat? Scratch it. We all know who “owns” whom – on whatever temrs he chooses.

Night-night, sweet Orange Kitty. May you please favor us with your presence tomorrow, the next day, and all the days thereafter.

And it not: Well, the cat came back. Not once, but thrice. Reason for hope, even if – as one of my friends has suggested – OK is just one of those “nonmonogamous” kittehs.

(Click here if you can’t see Laurie Berkner singing “The Cat Came Back.” Yes, she’s a “kids’ singer,” but not only – not in the least.)

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The Opposite of Oppositional Sexism

Yesterday, the Tiger asked me: “Mama, what’s the opposite of ‘boys and girls’?”

Me: “Do you think there has to be an opposite? Well, some people think boys are the opposite of girls, but are they really?”

Tiger: “No! They’re all just people.”

Leave it to a seven-year-old to dismantle oppositional sexism.

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My Mother’s Day Wishlist

The kids are asleep, as of 11:55 p.m. EDT. I’ve got candles burning in the same tealight candelbra that did a job on Grey Kitty’s whiskers, lo those many years ago. I sit on the front porch as the rain cascades around me, letting me and my candles burn.

Oh, and I’m wearing a bathrobe, just to confirm that most hoary of prejudices against bloggers.

The kids will wake soon, and when they do, I’ll be presented with offerings. One involves dirt. Or earth. Or something that requires earth. I’m all for it, though I nearly managed to kill my ‘mater seedlings this weekend through a deadly combo of drought, too-close grow lights, and lack of fertilizer. (When my own fumbling incompetence rains down, I do wonder how my children continue to thrive. It helps that their CNS trumps the tomato’s defense mechanisms. I guess opposable thumbs don’t hurt, either. At any rate, my earth mother cred is shot to hell; just ask my ‘maters.)

I will tear up at my children’s sweet offerings, no matter that they felt obligated or spurred by a class assignment at school.

I will hug them and kiss them and keep their presents forever.

And yet, I still have a wishlist.

1) Can we get beyond the idea that women are uniquely suited to multitasking? Cordelia Fine just bulldozes this stereotype in her book, Delusionas of Gender. And more: Kevin Drum marshals the evidence that multitasking is folly for everyone, irrespective of gender. No wonder I still have a florid scar from the time when I tried to pull a baking sheet from the oven while ensuring that the mini-Tiger (aged not-quite-three) wouldn’t get burned. (Guess who got schorched instead??) I keep multitasking, I’m liable to lose that opposable thumb. Picture a dog watering a tree. Picture a dog baking a souffle. The intersection of that? Um, that would be me. Multitasking. The combo of onions and knives is a particularly foolhardy ideas.

2) Can we please just “be excellent to each other,” as Bill and Ted would say? The one thing I truly want from my beautiful boys is kindness. Toward each other. Toward me. They have mad skillz with their friends, so can we please bring those skillz home? Because, y’know, rudeness is a neurotoxin, especially when rudeness is spread among peer or near-peers. I’m well aware that another camp of researchers regards sibling arguments as healthy, spurring on their verbal development. May God, or some benevolent goddess, or my pal the Ceiling Cat save us from further precocious verbal development. We’re already at a point where the least bad outcome could be a Amero-Germanic version of Alan Dershowitz. But back to the neurotoxins. My kids appear to bee more than fine. They chat; they argue, they wear me down. But my brain? It’s in acute danger of rotting! Neural termites and mad-cow disease could hardly hollow it out any faster than the daily squabbles! No wonder the Red Cross recently rejected my blood on suspicion of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease, aka mad cow for homans. (True story.)

That’s just my very personal list. I know theere’s ooodles more to say about what other kids and mamas need – not to mention daddies. I realize that my personal wishlist is very much formed by the concerns and privileges of educated, middle-class mothers.As for what less-privileged mothers need – well, Katha Pollitt pretty kicked it into the goal with her commentary on the “Tiger Mother” flap.Please read what she has to say about class,mothering, and solidarity, and I’ll just leave it at that – with the injunction that we should all be excellent to each other, to our parents and our children, tomorrow and always.

Happy Mother’s Day to you all, be you bio-mother, step-mother, adoptive mother, other-mother … or just another exhausted multitasker of any age, gender, or species. May your day be crowned by candles, flowers, champagne, and the survival of your opposable thumbs.

And on those days when excellence turns to flatulence? Well, you’ll still be welcome here at the Kitteh, where we recognize that being a child or a parent or just a fallible hooman is simply who we are. Welcome to the club. I’d light a candle for you, but I must admit it’s rather perfumed, and you might just prefer eau de methane.

(Next up: our local Mama Robin, if I can manage not to terrify her.)

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The Easter Bunny Stoops to Potty Humor

Dear Bear and Tiger,

The Bear baskets are on the left. The Tiger baskets are on the right. The presents not in baskets are to be shared.

If you fight over Hello Kitty I will only bring you vast amounts of bunny poop next Easter. Seriously.

Love,

Your Easter Bunny

This missive was left by the Rabbit, gracing (?) baskets full of sugar and plastic crap that will probably condemn my children to tooth decay and type-2 diabetes.

Kindly note the pastel colors. For all her turdly threats, this is a high-class rabbit who respects Easter traditions. (She also knows that the Tiger loves any poop reference. She further realizes she’lll regret this cheap poop joke a thousand-fold as the Tiger compares each and every chocolate egg to … well, ’nuff said.)

The aforementioned Hello Kitty product is a bubble-blowing set. The Bunny is weary; she has lost all photo-taking capability and merely wishes to sleep until the rain ends in southeast Ohio. (That might be late December, at the rate we’re going.) This blog will not feature a picture of said plastic-crap bubblicious Kitty. You will therefore have to use your florid imaginations. Suffice it to say that the HK product looks incredibly ineffective, as you would expect from a Kitty without a mouth. I mean, how else should she blow bubbles?

Perhaps we’d best not answer that question.

Instead, here is a thing of beauty from the Bunny’s garden. It was not toothsome. That is why we could capture it in a picture, which was taken a few days ago, before the Bunny and her handler committed to a good nights’ sleep. The rain clings to the blossoms. Its fragrance makes us believe in magical rabbits, unearthly and perfect. If only blogs offered scratch-and-sniff functionality!

Happy Easter – or belated spring solstice – or whatever blessed moment you choose to celebrate as the earth awakes from its too-long slumber.

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The Kitty Lives (and She’s Been Delightfully Lazy, Like Any Good Cat)

Long time no meow. Earlier today, longtime reader Euchalon Grandy commented on this blog’s unfortunate radio silence:

Oh No!  I’ve killed Kittywampus with my angry rant!  Please, Sungold, Oh Please come back!  I’ll never post after midnight again!  Nothing but kittens and pink, puffy unicorns from now on…

First: Euchalon, if you bring puffy unicorns onto this blog, they will be driven away by the fierce sound of hissing. (I am honored that you missed me, though!

Second: The blog went dormant because I went on spring break. Even as a student, I never did that! (Too broke.) Then, once I got a teaching job, either my husband or I had too much work (usually both of us). This year, I felt squeezed between winter-quarter duties and spring-quarter prep. I’m still not sure when I’ll get to filing my taxes. Yet I ever-so-maturely decided: SCREW THAT. And so, we were off to the beach. Hilton Head, South Carolina, to be precise, which turned out to be a delight.

The drive south was long indeed (and rains threatened to wash us clean off the mountainous West Virginia Turnpike), but it was also a curious compression of space-time. We left Ohio in sodden winter; by North Carolina, the redbuds were bursting forth; and as we plunged deeper into South Carolina, spring wrapped its green tendrils around us and refused to let loose. It was as though we’d driven three weeks into our future. (Well, the palm trees won’t come to SE Ohio anytime soon, I’m afraid, but the redbuds will soon catch up.)

If you want to view vacation instrumentally, there’s emerging scientific evidence that play is good for us, as Jonah Lehrer reports at Wired. Studies are showing that not just preschoolers benefit more from unstructured play than from direct instruction; even young adults learn better when they have time for play. I’m here to testify that it works for the, um, no-longer-quite-so-young adults, too. As Lehrer notes,

Nietzsche said it best: “The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of the child at play.”

And so I finished my grading from last quarter on the beach, then launched into some reading and brainstorming for a new class that began yesterday already. It was all pretty painless with the salt breeze wafting in the window and the tides whispering and roaring. Nor was it all work. I read a novel for fun and started Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. (I’m not far enough into it to comment yet.) The kids dug such deep holes in the sand that they could practically disappear underground. They scampered after shells and flied kites with their dad. Most days, we were treated to weather in the upper 70s, balmy enough to sit and read a book (my favorite beachy activity) even with kite-brisk winds. One day I had a cocktail on the beach – a Funky Monkey – another experience completely novel to me. Evenings, we dined with other families who’d traveled with us and played board games next to the pool. When everyone was sunburned and avoiding the peak sun, we putt-putt golfed amid semi-tropical bougainvillea and palmettos.

Instrumental thinking? Oh, screw that too!

It was my first trip to the Deep South, apart from New Orleans, and a few things jarred. At the resort where we stayed, black men took care of security, while Latina/os cleaned. The guests were overwhelmingly white, with a few Spanish-speakers in the mix. More than one business establishment called itself a “plantation” of some sort. At the same time – perhaps because we’re steeped in white privilege – we met unfailingly warm, friendly people, from the (black) security guards who used humor to spice up their day, to the (white) elderly lady who informed my husband that she once lived in Ohio, but the good Lord brought her back to the South.

Now we’re back home. I was greeted by my unfinished syllabus and the tragic crayon-in-the-clothes-dryer incident that exploded 10 minutes before we were due to leave on break. I’ve thought more than once: Why are we not still at the beach? and our friends who went on the trip are querulously asking the same. But just this one thing: When we rolled into town again, weary from an 11-hour drive, we were saluted by a stand of daffodils welcoming us home in our front yard. Even the snow that frosted our yard the first night home couldn’t drag them low.

(The pictures below are all courtesy of my husband.)

Two crispy-burned kids in the surf.

The beach, backlit by sunset.

Sungold turning toward the wind.

A friend and I, casting long shadows framed by palmettos.

Just the beach. That is all. It is enough.

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After Mubarak: What Roads Lead to Democracy?

As glad as I am that Hosni Mubarak is gone, and as happy as I am for the Egyptian people, I can’t help but think that the road to democracy is still long and perilous, riddled with potholes, and – hardest of all – unmarked with signage. Yes, Mubarak has fled, and good riddance. What about Vice President Omar Suleiman, the CIA’s go-to guy for extraordinary rendition? So far his role is unclear, but at least he did not take the reins from Mubarak. And thank God, because he is a torturer. The fact that he’s “our” torturer makes it sicker, not better. But though Suleiman is still on the scene, he’s not running the show. Power is held by a military council.

What comes next? I have zero expertise on Egypt; I’ve just been reading and trying to learn from those who do. But at least two people with a real clue see reason for hope.

Paul Amar at Jadaliyya argues that the military council favors stability. He sees a merging of the military with “national capitalism” in opposition to the neo-liberal cronyism espoused by Mubarak. Amar is reasonably optimistic that the sheer amount of energy in the youth movement, in the internationalists and pro-democracy forces, will prove tempting to the military leaders, opening possibilities for real democracy.

KufiGirl, an American Ph.D. student now in Boston with experience living in Egypt, explains that the army’s leadership was by far the least-bad option. It avoided a Tiananmen-style bloodbath while removing Mubarak from power and clearing the way for new leadership untainted by association with the old regime. KufiGirl makes the important point that in most military coups, the army actively seeks and seizes power. That’s not what happened in Egypt. The army had leadership thrust upon it with the consent of the people. Like Amar, she, too, is hopeful:

Most importantly, the Supreme Council is a group, not a person, and it has no political ambitions the way a single individual would. They announced this morning that they would be meeting the demonstrators’ demands, including the formation of a transitional government and holding free elections to form a civilian government. They also said they will honor all existing international treaties, including peace with Israel. Of course these may be modified by whatever new government comes in, but it’s a positive sign for now because it shows the military understands its place isn’t to be making political decisions.

(Read her whole post here.)

It’s still a long road to true democracy, which is so much more than just “free and fair elections.” After 30 years of brutal repression, civil society will need a chance to grow and flourish in Egypt. That doesn’t happen overnight. But the Egyptian people are demanding real democracy. They deserve democracy. I am humbled and inspired by the words of this protester, who spoke on camera in the early days of the uprising, when every outcome – including the worst – was still possible.

I wonder how many of us US-Americans would be so brave, so willing to risk all, in defense of democracy? I honestly don’t know if I could do it. But we are not called upon to risk our lives in Tahrir Square. We face no real danger if we protest the gutting of civil liberties and the coddling of dictators like Mubarak. The rule of law is under siege in the U.S., but it is still intact enough that we can defend it loudly and without fear of reprisal. Shame on us if we instead choose silence.

Update, 2/13/11, 7:45 p.m.: Corrected to note that KufiGirl is not Egyptian but has spent time living there – thanks, KufiGirl, for the correction in comments!

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Hope for Change in Egypt

Usually I try to blog on topics where I can offer a smidge of expertise or experience. On the Middle East, I have neither (beyond the Iranian exiles who befriended me at my first post-college job, and a rudimentary knowledge of their history). Tonight, I write only because I am moved by the courage of the people taking to the streets, first in Tunisia and now in Egypt and Yemen. I am frightened for their safety. I am awed at the transformative potential they are unleashing for their countries and for the entire Arab world.

Perhaps Iran circa 1979 isn’t such a poor comparison? In a lot of ways, the situation in Egypt reminds me of the Iranian Revolution that brought the Ayatollah to power. A dictator long supported by the United States is challenged by mass uprisings. A people long yearning for self-determination takes to the streets. Islamists waiting in the wings. A substantial secular opposition.

Will the U.S. learn from our mistakes in Iran?

Back in 1979, Jimmy Carter openly professed American loyalty to the Shah. Obama has not done the same for Mubarak, though Joe Biden has proclaimed Mubarek “not a dictator.” I suspect Biden was running off at the mouth with about as much forethought as when he called Obama “clean and articulate.” Thoughtless pronouncements could cost lives. Might this be a good time for Biden to be called up for jury duty again?

As for what the U.S. should do, Goldblog’s take seems about right to me:

President Obama would be standing for American values if he encouraged Hosni Mubarak to leave office now. Mubarak (and his son, it is almost needless to say) have no credibility, and the U.S. will have no credibility if it doesn’t support the aspirations of these frustrated protesters. Will the Muslim Brotherhood follow in the wake of Mubarak’s downfall? Not necessarily. But the U.S. will make that possibility less remote if it doesn’t stand with the people now.

I’m not downplaying the threat the Muslim Brotherhood poses, to America or to Israel. And I fear for the future of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. And there is a chance this regime could survive, for a while. But these facts are overwhelmed by the reality on the streets.

I’m not sure it would be prudent for Obama to call publicly for Mubarak to step down. I’m queasy with fear that the protestors could be massacred, Tiananmen-style. But couldn’t the U.S. quietly arrange for Mubarak’s safe passage out of Egypt to a friendly third country? Not to the U.S., please! Iran convulsed with rage after the Shah was allowed to come here for medical shelter. We don’t want to embolden the theocrats in Egypt. It’s bad enough that they can rally just anger against the U.S. for its thirty-year policy of supporting Mubarak despite human rights abuses. It doesn’t help, either, that the tear gas canisters used against the protesters are labeled “Made in the U.S.A.” Mubarek also can’t just emulate the Shah, whose first and last station in exile was … Egypt.

But surely we still have no shortage of despots among our friends? One or the other ought to be open to a bribe for harboring Mubarak. We can just call it, y’know, foreign aid. If the U.S. eased Mubarak’s departure , we could then provide succor to the more secular and democratic-minded protesters. As long as Mubarak remains, open U.S. support for the protesters risks triggering a crackdown.

On a less analytical note, I was floored by the fact that the Egyptian government could just shut the whole damn Internet down. I thought the distributed nature of the net was supposed to prevent such centralized censorship? Evidently an oligopoly of ISPs existed, which enabled the Internet to be shut down by taking those ISPs offline. The proximate cause was apparently government intimidation of the ISPs. I still don’t claim to understand it fully, but the graph of Internet usage in Egypt is stunning:

(Via the Daily Dish.)

The sun is rising on Cairo, Suez, Alexandria. I hope that Egyptians – and Tunisians and Yemeni – are waking up to a day when no protesters will be gravely harmed. A day that brings them a little closer to democracy and self-determination. A day that repeats itself until it becomes months and years. May it someday be remembered as the dawn of a new era.

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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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Bringing Santa (and His Myth) in for a Gentle Landing

People go to such lengths to keep the Santa myth alive! Kenneth Rapoza, writing at Salon, details the lies he spins to preserve the magic for his children:

We send letters to the Santa Claus Main Post Office in the Arctic Circle in Lapland, Finland. A real place. We even got letters back from them two years ago.

That tradition began after my daughter, at 5, discovered in school that the North Pole had no land mass and didn’t support life, except for an occasional polar bear in the winter months. I pointed out that Lapland was a hot spot for actual Santa activity and told her that the North Pole was just one of many Santa stories: not real. It was a nice recovery, but year after year, it’s getting harder to trick her.

What she doesn’t get is the logistics. How can Santa deliver toys around the world in one night? It’s not one night. It’s two because of world time zones and dates, plus the story that Santa flies through the sky on reindeer is just a story. Years ago, he delivered toys in his hometown by sled, pulled by reindeer. But Santa has a big staff now. The Santas you see, including those in the fake beards who are trying to dress like Santa, represent Santa in other cities and towns and — upon receiving your letters to Santa — fill in your wish list with small presents that Santa makes. This is reality, dear. Santa may not be as magical as you think. But don’t ruin those stories for others, I say. She’s cool with it.

Maybe his kids are in for a gentle landing. Maybe it’ll be more like a brutal crash, with reindeer blood and tears despoiling the winter wonderlandscape. That’s sort of how it went for my ten-year-old nephew this year. Everyone had assumed he was in don’t ask, don’t tell mode for fear of losing the loot. But when his seven-year-old sister learned the truth and immediately spilled the beans to him, there were histrionics. I wasn’t there, but I hear it involved oceans of tears and at least a half-hour in the fetal position. He’s fine now, but to judge from Salon’s comment section, there are adults walking this earth who still suffer the aftershock of disillusionment.

My mom has long said she hated lying to us kids about anything, even Santa and the Easter Bunny. I shared her qualms (even though I hadn’t been terribly traumatized, myself) and so I vowed to keep the lies to an absolute minimum. Yes, Santa comes to our house, but their dad and I never told the kids a lie when their budding scientific minds began to deconstruct the Santa myth .

The Bear, age five: How does Santa get into houses without a chimney?

Me: I don’t know. What do you think?

Bear: I bet he uses the door.

Not long thereafter, the Bear determined that the Easter Bunny couldn’t be a real rabbit; he had to be a person. A few days later, he announced, “And I know who he is! It’s Santa Claus in a bunny suit!”

By the time the Bear solved the puzzle, he had a lot of pieces in place: the impossibility of making all those deliveries in one night, the absurdity of flying reindeer, the fact that all the elves’ handiwork was “made in China,” the presence of familiar handwriting and (oops) wrapping paper on Santa gifts, and the small can of blue paint in our garage that perfectly matched the base of the fish tank Santa brought him. The Bear was proud to have done the detective work and thrilled to guard the magic for his little brother. He was a perfect co-conspirator; not once did he let the secret slip.

Over the past year, the Tiger – now seven – would ask occasionally whether Santa or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy was real. I’d always counter, “What do you think?” He would respond, “I think he’s real.”

Earlier this month, he raised the question again:

Tiger: Is Santa real?

Me: What do you think?

Tiger: I think he’s not real.

Me: Why? What made you decide that?

Tiger: Because magic is not real.

Me (with a slight pang – knowing that when magic dies, the whole world is disenchanted): What would you think if you knew it’s me and your dad who are Santa?

Tiger: That would be nice!

I couldn’t have wished for a softer landing. In general, my parenting is pretty imperfect, so I’m reluctant to claim any special wisdom here, either. But if you’ve got young sprogs on Santa’s delivery route, it might be worth trying our approach. Let them decide what they want to believe and how much of the myth to question. Follow their lead. (Hmm, that’s starting to sound like my philosophy on sex ed, too!)

I’m curious how other parents handle this, as well as what went right or wrong in your own falling away from a world enchanted.

Happy holidays to all, whatever you celebrate or believe!

Illustrations are a few of the cookies that my family and I made during the last run of snow days – photos by me, Sungold.

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Smug Kitteh Sez: Take That, Faux News!

I’ve been so serious these past two weeks, it’s time to take a brief break to gloat. As my long-time readers know, neither of those modes is my usual. I’m not typically a single-minded terrier, and I try not to be too smug. But sometimes The Kitty just has to pounce on an injustice when it’s fresh and new and potentially reversible. The TSA debacle pushed all of my buttons: Possible harm to my kids? Check. Sexualized violence? Check. Creating novel forms of bodily experience? Ugh – check. Trampling the rule of law? Checkmate!

So let this be my “Moment of Smug,” to paraphrase Colbert. Over the past few days, my post debunking the right-wing meme of TSA favoritism toward Muslim women drew thousands of hits – with this result:

In case you can’t quite read the graphic – and even if you can (because hey, I’m gloating!) – my post, “Not Exempt,” is the first listed on Google after the breaking news links. The first. Number one. Nummer eins. Woo hoo!

Starting tomorrow, instead of all-TSA all-the-time, I’ll be going back to a broader mix of posts. But for a few sweet moments, I’m going to savor my ascendancy over Fox News. Yes, I realize my post floated to the top of Google mainly because 100,000 other posts all regurgitated the same right-wing distortion, while I offered a fresh view. In spite of this, I know many readers merely sought to confirm their wingnutty views. (From my comment spam folder: a commenter with the clever handle “fuck you” tells me to “get fucked.”)

Never mind the haters. I’m still tickled that my information rose above the scum of Islamophobic disinformation. I guess I assumed disinformation always wins because it never fights fair. Some of us feel an inconvenient obligation to the truth, which hobbles you in the fight. It’s lovely to see that sometimes the truth does rise to the top. I’m happier yet that my post might have planted a few seeds of awareness in the minds of people who were sincerely questioning.

Thanks to my readers – old and new – for hanging with me! I’m not dropping the TSA story. You can expect updates when I feel moved to provide them, but they’ll be jumbled in with my usual mishmash of sex, feminism, parenting, kittehs, and any stuff that catches my fancy or pisses me off. For those playing along at home, I’ve put together a list of my TSA posts to date:

• My initial outrage at the new policies
• Do “enhanced” patdowns = sexual assault?
• Hearing the grope-down victims’ voices
• Might the TSA be violating child porn laws?
• What do we know about the scanners’ safety?
• Not everyone is affected equally: on kids and trans people
• Privacy is not a partisan issue!
• The unfair impact on people with disabilities
• The TSA abuses and the long shadow of Abu Ghraib
• Action you can take (as of mid-November 2010)
• And a little comic relief

Also, if you’re not reading Cogitamus, do pop over there. Lisa Simeone has been covering the abuses of the security state in depth for years. Her co-bloggers are excellent too – among them litbrit, who like me wants Sarah Palin to explain her “wild ride.”

It remains to be seen if the TSA will really be forced to revamp their policies. So far, they seem terrified of losing face. In the meantime, though:

(Smug kitteh from ICHC?)

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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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I Am Queen of the Howl Younavers

Today was crap. I caught a student plagiarizing (off Conservapedia, no less!) and that’s the least of my concerns. I’m wound up, worried, and sad about a bunch of things I can’t write about here.

But this? It warmed even my shriveled soul.

(Click to enlarge.)

In case you’re having trouble diciphering:

Dere MaMa

I love you mama you are the best mama

in the howl younavers

you ar betr than the howl werld.

His signature follows (I blanked it here), along with maps of the werld (I am doing a backfloat on it – which sounds about accurate for today) and a diagram of the younavers, which consists of pointy houses that look like mountains – and me.

Of course, I cried when he gave this to me. Who wouldn’t?

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Nightmare Come True: Tornado Strikes My Town, Athens, Ohio

Longtime readers of Kittywampus may recall that there are just a few things that viscerally scare me:

• Wasps.
• The meth dealer in Pine-Aire Village (and the Cerberus hounds surrounding him).
• Tornadoes.
• Not being able to protect my children.

Almost all of these things enter into the story from Thursday night, through I don’t believe any wasps were involved. But honestly? I wouldn’t know; I was holed up with my kids. As I was cleaning up the dinner mess, I heard the scream of an emergency siren. I knew that the university was planning to test its emergency system – on Friday. So I flew out to my front porch, straining to hear the announcement through its bullhorn-distortions. All I picked up was “take shelter,” along with the oppressive air on my porch, and that was good enough for this North Dakotan-bred gal. I yelled upstairs, “Tornado warning!” The Tiger yelled, “Tornado warning!”

He and his brother, the Bear, tore down the stairs. I followed them into the basement, laptop and phone in hand. (Why, oh why, didn’t a flashlight even occur to me?) Minutes later, I chanced the upstairs again just long enough to rescue a few treasured stuffed animals and the cord for my laptop. I was alone with the kids. Mmy husband was at a meeting in the country, out of cell range, which was a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because he holds the theory that tornadoes never strike Athens, and that warning aren’t worth heeding. A curse, because I couldn’t be sure he was in safety.

For a good half hour, the biggest challenge was keeping the Tiger’s whine of “I’m bored!” from driving the rest of us around the bend. I let them watch a couple of silly YouTube clips (this one cracked them up again). I was hoping we could go back up once the warning expired at 7:15. The Bear would be about to go to his music practice, and we could try to track down their dad.

But then we heard the emergency siren again. And again. Soon sirens were wailing every minute or two. I still couldn’t catch the message, but I was certain it wasn’t “all clear.” I’d have guessed, oh, “prepare to die.” The next day, a friend said he’d heard “Tornadoes are surrounding Athens!” which I’m sure was close to the truth.

Here’s what it really said:

Looking around our basement hideaway, I started toting up the hazards. The small window. The bookshelves. My French horn (hey, that would be deadly if it went airborne.) I gave each kid an oversized pillow to shield their noggins and necks. At that, the Tiger’s boredom tipped over into terror. He would not be consoled by how silly it was to have a lumpy Winnie-the-Pooh chair over his head. I nixed YouTube so I could hear, and the LOLcats just weren’t cutting it as a distraction. Even the Bear was fighting tears. Heck, I was working hard to act brave. It didn’t help that the National Weather Service was starting to report multiple sightings of a twister touching down. Or that I was frantically hitting refresh on their page.

When we finally emerged from our secure underground location after an hour and a half (without ever sighting Cheney, I might add), we were all rattled. So were our neighbors and friends. We’d kept our power while most of the town and county had lost it. An acquaintance had actually seen the funnel cloud moving merrily down his road. Afterward, he had to take his chain saw to the large trees that had fallen across the road, trapping him and his family.

News filtered in only slowly. It seemed clear that Athens and its environs had been struck by at least one tornado. Rumors started to spread that the high school had been hit. One of the first reports noted that Pine-Aire Village had suffered damage and had to be evacuated due to a gas leak. The tornado had duked it out with the achingly poor mobile home park where I went canvassing in 2008. As usual, the tornado won. As usual, Pine-Aire Village lost. People who are trying their damnedest just to eke by now have new worries.

I haven’t taken a look at Pine-Aire because frankly, I’m still scared of the meth dealer and the vicious, unleashed dogs. But I did see how similar trailers were flipped and squished nearby in The Plains, the closest thing Athens has to a bedroom community. These mobile homes were located right next to Athens High School, which for bizarre reasons relating to government pork funds is located in the Plains.

This picture (and the next) was taken by my husband the next evening, as dusk was closing in. The woman next to the trailer is a Fox News local reporter. (They just lapped this up.)

Note how someone has scribbled “NOT SAFE” in big red letters. I’m not gonna argue.

The rumors about the high school turned out to be true. It was full with soccer and volleyball players and their families. The morning after the storm, a good friend of mine – the mother of the Bear’s best friend – responded to my worried email. She’d been working in the concession stand when some prescient soul yelled that a funnel cloud was approaching. She sprinted up the long steep hill to the high school and took shelter in the bunker-like locker rooms. Other adults, perhaps thinking they’d be safer sheltering in place (the hill is pretty daunting), remained in the concession stand. At least two of them were injured, though not seriously. One was taken to the hospital, the other treated on the scene.

That’s the inside of the concession stand.

That’s its exterior.

Meanwhile, the students on the field had sought shelter from the rain in the press box. Someone ushered them down to a locker room that’s located right on the edge of the field. Good thing. The press box blew clean off the top of the bleachers.

Cars were crushed as the press box collapsed behind the stands.

My friend had a bad half hour before she was reunited with her son. The fear of another strike hadn’t quite abated enough for everyone to be released. My friend was in cell contact with her son, but the wait was hard, especially as the smell of gas indicated leaks. When they were finally permitted to leave, they found a moonscape: mature trees snapped like sticks, debris everywhere, and a stadium that won’t host games anytime soon.

The scoreboard is whacked.

The football goals stand at jaunty new angles.

The wreckage in the foreground used to be a stadium light. (Those to the right and left remain standing, but their lamps have been turned 90 degrees.) The wreckage in the back – well, that was the visitors’ bleachers.

Structures to the right and left of the locker room were decimated. And yet, the kids sheltering there stayed safe.

School is called off until further notice. The high school suffered damage to some classrooms.

It also lost its two 1000-pound AC units, which blew off the roof.

It is a miracle that no one was killed. I heard one chopper take off Thursday night, and the next day a colleague confirmed that one person was injured badly enough to require transfer to Columbus. On the whole, though, injuries appear to be few and minor. Property damage is much more significant.

The tornado also touched down in Athens proper, leaving its main mark on Autotech, an automotive servicing and towing company at the edge of town. The only two buildings farther out along that road are the Super 8 Motel and the clinic where I had my colonoscopy. Those facilities survived with only minor damage (mostly missing shingles). Just a few yards away, Autotech was damaged beyond redemption.

The view from the highway.

Note the Coke machine encircled by corrugated metal. (I took this photo yesterday morning, and the machine was liberated by evening.) Note, too the wads of insulation. We saw them everywhere. All those years growing up in North Dakota, and I never imagined that the hallmark of a tornado could be oodles of rogue insulation.

Of course the impaired Coke dispenser adds credibility to the conspiracy theory …

… that this tornado was brought to us by Pepsi. (Photo from the high school.) Yes, I’m being flip. Black humor is one of the ways I deal with the world’s horrors.

I’m grateful that my family didn’t suffer any harm beyond the shock and fright. Today the Tiger has been playing with Lincoln Logs. Every once in a while a tornado comes and knocks them down. It’s spookily reminiscent of boys I knew who were 10 after the Twin Towers collapsed. They built mega-towers out of legos, which were level by terrorist flying planes. I shudder. Yet our kids seem to need these reenactments in order to come to grips with destruction that none of us can really fathom.

I’m grateful that all of the neighborhoods in Athens proper were spared, and that the elementary schools (except the Plains?) seem to be fine. (I still expect them to stay closed on Monday, given the track record of my boyfriend, the superintendent. We’ve now burned through a full third of our three calamity days.)

Ohio University got very lucky. It appears undamaged. Nor will the Darwin Award go to any of those students who went outdoors to watch the storm “cause I’ve never seen a tornado!”

Tonight, my thoughts are with the people of The Plains, the families of AHS students, and (further afield) the people who did succumb to the storm: a man in West Virginia as well as those killed in Queens in a separate, even freakier storm.

And I’m grateful for the rescuers, pictured here in an extraordinary photo by Spencer Heaps, taken the same evening as the storm:

Spencer Heaps has several other stunning photos at his blog. Please do pay him a visit.

The Athens News also has info on Athens County being declared a disaster area and on the confusing scene at the high school. They offer a photo gallery, too.

There’s no really good footage of the tornado itself, thankfully. (I don’t want people putting themselves in harm’s way!) The next closest thing is this clip, taken by college students living on a hill on the south side of town, which to my knowledge was not damaged.

Photos by me and my husband except as noted.

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Zen Caturday

What is it about Japanese cats? They seem to span the most athletic (Maru, of course) to the most contented. The reigning Zen master of Japanese felinity is Shironeko. I love how he’s often smiling.

The commenters at I Can Has Cheezburger accused Shironeko and his humans of photoshopping, but I’m not so sure. Lots of cats like to squeeze into tight spaces. Not all cats appreciate having stuff placed on top of them (see: Stuff on My Cat). Shironeko is so relaxed you could probably park a twenty-pound turkey on his head. Fortunately, his humans have subjected him to nothing worse than eggplants and lettuce:

(Kitteh with stuff on his head from I Can Has Cheezburger.)

If you need more Shironeko, check out his blog. It’s all in Japanese, but when you’ve got a sunflower on your head, it really doesn’t matter. There’s also a nice selection at the Love Meow blog.

Just for the record: The photo showing a slug-like form on Shironeko actually depicts some sort of seedpod. I feel much better knowing that.

See also: Stuff on my Cat. Be forewarned, though, that most of these kittehs are pissed.

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Art Gish Is Dead at 70: A Terrible Loss for Peace and Justice

This isn’t news for my local readers, but I want to say a few words in tribute to Art Gish, who was killed in a tractor accident earlier this week. Art was a fixture around Athens, Ohio, selling his organic produce at the farmer’s market, often including such exotica, by American standards, as dandelion greens. You’d see him on campus if a progressive speaker came to town. You’d see him and his wife Peggy in front of the courthouse, demonstrating and holding vigils.

But sometimes you wouldn’t see him, or Peggy, because they were somewhere in the Middle East delivering a message of peace and compassion that was inspired by their Mennonite faith. Peggy, who was once taken hostage, was in Iraq when Art was killed. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to get such news while far from home. Neither she nor Art ever fliched because something was hard. Still, my heart aches for her.

There’s a terrible irony in his own tractor causing his death, on his own land, after he had stood up to tanks and bulldozers far from home in the West Bank. Here’s an AP photo of Art facing down an Israeli tank.:

(Source: Phil’s Clippings)

Art’s life and work were honored on Democracy Now yesterday; I can’t embed the clip, so go here and then fast-forward to about 9:35. Last year, DN interviewed Art and Peggy here about their work with the Christian Peacemaker Team. (It’s also impossible to embed, so I’ll include the transcript at the end of the post.) But Art was no publicity seeker. To the extent that the AP and DN recognized his work, he would want us to direct our attention to the work yet to be done, the peace yet to be made.

Art was just 70 – no longer young, to be sure, and with a full life behind him, spanning all the way back to his work in the civil rights movement of the 19960s. I didn’t know Art well – just to say hi to him – but I know his work was not done.

It seems almost trite to wish him eternal peace, and to wish his family peace in the here and now. But that’s what Art stood for, and that’s what he and his loved ones deserve. Peace – and the living memory of the work to which he dedicated his life.

————

The DN interview, fall 2009:

AMY GOODMAN: Five years ago this month, in April of 2004, the first photographs from inside Abu Ghraib appeared in the US media. The photos showed Iraqi prisoners being tortured, abused and humiliated by US forces and private contractors.

While the first photos were broadcast on 60 Minutes and published in the pages of The New Yorker, the initial reports of torture actually came months earlier. Beginning in 2003, members of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq began documenting dozens of cases of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners inside US military facilities.

We’re joined right now, here at Ohio University in Athens, by two local peace activists, longtime members of the Christian Peacemaker Team, Peggy and Art Gish. Peggy Gish has worked in Iraq with Christian Peacemaker Teams since October of 2002. She helped document the first reports of abuse inside US prisons in Iraq. She’s author of Iraq: A Journey of Hope and Peace. Her husband, Art Gish, has been part of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in the West Bank since 1995. He’s the author of several books, including Hebron Journal: Stories of Nonviolent Peacemaking.

Thank you so much for being with us. It’s wonderful to have you with us. Peggy Gish, let’s being with you. President Obama just took a surprise trip to Iraq. You, yourself, were kidnapped there in Iraq.

PEGGY GISH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Just talk to me.

PEGGY GISH: I’m sorry, I’m not hearing you right.

AMY GOODMAN: Oh, just listen to what I’m saying, just as I’m talking to you here. What happened to you in Iraq?

PEGGY GISH: What happened in Iraq?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

ART GISH: What happened to you in Iraq?

PEGGY GISH: In Iraq, yes. Well, two of us were traveling to a very impoverished area in northwestern Iraq, and there were groups of people who wanted to work nonviolently to deal with the struggles there. And two of us were abducted on the way home. I was kept only two days, and my—

AMY GOODMAN: Where?

PEGGY GISH: In the compound out in a desert. And my colleague was kept for another six days. Then we were released unharmed, which we think has something to do with them hearing about the work of CPT and the kind of work that we were doing.

AMY GOODMAN: Of the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

PEGGY GISH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about that, and your work being seminal in getting out the photographs of Abu Ghraib.

PEGGY GISH: Yes. We started this work in the summer of 2003, and what—it grew out of just helping the Iraqi families that had people detained among their family. And then we began discovering gross abuse in all of the prisons of Iraq, not just Abu Ghraib. And there was a lot of brutality from the very beginning of the house raid in the middle of the night, where soldiers acknowledged that they had thirty seconds or forty seconds of absolute terror to subdue the people, and then brutality in the questioning, the interrogation process, torture going on in that process, as well as in the imprisonment time. So we were hearing stories from men and women who had been in Abu Ghraib and other prisons, and we compiled a report on seventy-two prisoners that became part of a pool of evidence, and we were one of several organizations, Iraqi and international groups, that put tremendous pressure on the system to make it public.

AMY GOODMAN: Why have you chosen to live in Iraq for so many years under the gun, I mean, in the midst of the US attack, why you’ve chosen to live in Iraq?

PEGGY GISH: Yes, why do I go back? I go there because I’ve been given a deep love for the Iraqi people, and love is really what has overcome the fear that I have to struggle with when I go there, but also because I am from a country that has done tremendous damage to their society, to the people, devastated the lives and culture of a people, and I want to do some small part in trying to help the people of Iraq, but also to let the people here know what is really happening there. So part of our work is just truth telling, witnessing what the occupation has done, what that has meant for people.

And it has been a horrible thing for the people of Iraq. It has meant up to a million people killed, a continued physical devastation of the country. There’s still very little clean water or electricity, very poor medical care. People have been traumatized. Friends tell us that they are so despairing and depressed and do not see much hope for the future of their country, at least not for generations. And so, it is a devastated country. And people say, “I don’t feel like it’s getting better.”

AMY GOODMAN: When were you last there?

PEGGY GISH: Two weeks ago. I just came back.

AMY GOODMAN: What was your reaction to President Obama’s recent surprise trip this week and his calling for troop reductions in Iraq?

PEGGY GISH: Yeah, I didn’t catch all that question.

ART GISH: What was your reaction to Obama going to Iraq this week?

PEGGY GISH: Yeah, I wish that Obama would be speaking out clearly, acknowledging the harm that the US has done there more clearly. And what we see and what Iraqis see is that Obama is just following in the same policies concerning Iraq that Bush has. The timetable for withdrawing is very similar to what Bush had put on the table. And they—I guess I’m afraid that he’s just being sucked into it, being pressured into a kind of aggressive military policy for dealing with the struggles of the world.

What’s happening with Iraq is now being transferred over into the work with Afghanistan, so we’re going to take troops from Iraq, but we’re going to increase the war there, the war on terror. And that is what we ought to be addressing, is our whole foreign policy, the way we are dealing with this whole problem of terrorism in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Peggy Gish. Her husband Art Gish, also a Christian Peacemaker. Art, you spend your time in the West Bank, in the Occupied Territories.

ART GISH: Yes. Since 1995, I’ve been going to the West Bank every winter for three months. And I just came back from spending another three months there.

AMY GOODMAN: Why? Why have you chosen to go there? And explain how the Christian Peacemaker Teams developed.

ART GISH: Christian Peacemaker Teams came out of the peace churches, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, out of the idea that if we’re really serious about peace, we ought to be willing to take the same risks as soldiers take and go into a nonviolent—into violent situations and be a nonviolent presence there. What if people who want peace made the same kind of commitment that soldiers make?

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?

ART GISH: That we go there, and we take risks, and we stand in the middle, and we work for peace in there.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you’ve done in West Bank.

ART GISH: OK. The most important thing we do is listen. And we listen to all sides. We act as international observers. I like to say we have the grandmother effect. There are things nobody would do if their grandmother is watching. So, in any conflict anywhere in the world, it’s really important to have outside observers there who are a presence there, and the people know they’re being watched, and that will reduce the violence.

And then, third, we also engage in nonviolent direct action. If the Israeli military wants to demolish a Palestinian house, we’ll sit on the roof of the house. We stand in front of tanks and bulldozers, and our slogan is “getting in the way.”

AMY GOODMAN: We just passed the anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie on March 16th.

ART GISH: Yes, I knew her.

AMY GOODMAN: A few days before the invasion of Iraq—

ART GISH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —she was killed in Gaza by an Israeli military bulldozer. She stood in front of a house—

ART GISH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —just like you, standing to prevent it from being crushed. How did you know her?

ART GISH: I did some work for ISM. That’s the group she was working with, International Solidarity Movement. And I led the training for two days of nonviolence training for her, so I trained her to stand in front of bulldozers.

AMY GOODMAN: And your thoughts, your reaction after she was killed?

ART GISH: Well, that touched me very deeply, since I have some responsibility in that. But she’s one of my heroes, of course. And, you know, I think of the times I stood in front of tanks and bulldozers, and it could have happened to me.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened in those cases? Explain exactly what you do. For example, talk about your experiences in Hebron. Did it happen there?

ART GISH: Yes. There was—in the main central produce market in Hebron, I saw two Israeli bulldozers, two Israeli tanks smashing the whole area. And a big tank came toward me, and I stood there, and it stopped, right in front of me. I didn’t realize that day that maybe I saved my wife’s life that day, because while she was kidnapped, she showed a picture of me standing in front of the tank to the kidnappers, and they were quite impressed and said we’re going to let you go.

AMY GOODMAN: You were in the West Bank. But you, when you were kidnapped, in Iraq.

PEGGY GISH: I was in Iraq, yes.

ART GISH: She was in—yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And you had this photograph with you?

PEGGY GISH: I had the photo with me and the photos of my family, my children, right, and showed that to them. And then they went out with it, and ten minutes later the guard came back in and said I would be released the next day with our translator.

AMY GOODMAN: What drives you to devote so much time to this kind of activism? For our radio listeners, your white hair, Art, your white beard. For kids who might think, what on earth are you doing? You live safely here in Athens, Ohio, but you’re constantly going off to places where you put your own lives in danger.

ART GISH: Well, first of all, it’s a privilege and a gift to be able to stand with the victims, with the oppressed of the world. That’s a privilege. I wouldn’t want to give it up for anything. What motivates us is our religious faith, our faith in God. And as Peggy put it so well, it’s love. It’s our love for the people that drives us.

AMY GOODMAN: Where were you born, Art?

ART GISH: Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

AMY GOODMAN: And Peggy?

PEGGY GISH: I was born actually in Nigeria. My parents were working there when I was very young. And then I grew up in Chicago.

AMY GOODMAN: And what got you involved in this peace work, Peggy?

PEGGY GISH: Ah, what got—well, we started our activism with civil rights work, and it a just opened the door to all kinds of other issues for us. Then we became involved with the anti-Vietnam War protests and draft resistance, death penalty abolition. And so, we began to see the interconnection with so many oppressions and problems, economic problems, with the war machine. And then we heard about a group that had a different kind of response, one that would be of standing with people and working with them nonviolently within their countries in those situations.

And so, as we worked in Iraq, we looked for those creative people who were interested, and we did a training with a group of Shia Muslims in Karbala in 2005, and they became known then as the Muslim Peacemaker Teams. With them, then we went into the city of Fallujah seven times during the year of 2005 to work for reconciliation between Sunni and Shia. So that’s the kind of thing that we do. And it’s exciting because we’re a part of a movement of the local people who are doing that and building that up for their country.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you planning to go back to the West Bank, Art? Peggy, to Iraq?

ART GISH: I hope to.

PEGGY GISH: I hope so.

ART GISH: Insha’Allah.

PEGGY GISH: Yes, we hope.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both very much for being with us, Peggy and Art Gish.

ART GISH: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: They’ve written a number of books. Peggy’s book,Iraq: A Journey of Hope and Peace. Art Gish’s book, Hebron Journal: Stories of Nonviolent Peacemaking and At-Tuwani Journal: Hope and Nonviolent Action in a Palestinian Village.

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The Goodest Thing about Being a Parent

I periodically vent here about my squabbling offspring, but I need to pause now and celebrate a moment of pure glory.

A few days ago I crashed into a major professional roadblock. I was fretting about looming unemployment after next May. Feeling bitterly rejected. Trying to act brave while actually, literally crying into my ice cream at the edge of a busy Berlin street. (It was good ice cream, too: creme caramel gelato. It deserved better from me. As did my kids in that moment.)

After I wiped away my tears, I explained to the kids that I’d just gotten an email with some very disappointing news about my future job. They listened quietly. For once, no one interrupted.

We finished our cones and proceeded down the street, one child on either side of me. Each of them inserted their ice-cream-sticky hands into mine. Breaking the silence, the Tiger said: “Mama, the goodest thing is that you’ve got me and [the Bear].”

A child is not a job. Kids and paid work are not fungible – and what a mercy that is. But the Tiger is absolutely right. I got teary again for a whole ‘nother reason. And I remembered – I knew – I’ll be okay.

(Happy mama kitteh from ICHC? not intended to essentialize this post to bio-mothers; loving, engaged parents of all stripes and spots can be blessed the goodest thing, too.)

Update, 11:55 p.m. CET, 7/16/10: Not to leave anyone hanging: If you want details on my career roadblock, I don’t want to air them on my blog but am happy to discuss them in private with people whom I trust: sungold85 [at] gmail.com.

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Dog-Days Entertainment for the Bird-Brained

Since the intense heat is keeping us partly apartment-bound, I’ve been grateful for any and all kid distractions. A few days ago, I came upon a wonderful set of bird pictures by photographer Andrew Zuckerman (via Andrew Sullivan and the Daily Telegraph). The Bear and I had a great time looking at them. The Tiger enjoyed them too until he started to complain that the site was woefully short on tigers.

Zuckerman’s site includes multiple views of the birds, all photographed in intricate detail against a white background. There are even recordings of their calls. The various macaws are especially stunning. Here’s a hyacinth macaw …

and a blue-throated macaw …

and finally, in honor of my blogging pal Badtux the Snarky Penguin, and because the Bear obviously enjoyed read its name out loud, the jackass penguin:

Go here to enjoy the whole set!

All images here are obviously copyrighted by Andrew Zuckerman; I will take them down if anyone objects, but I hope they’d be seen in the spirit of friendly promotion. He’s got a book with the set of photos, called Bird.

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Deutsche Fussball Philosophie … Where Fun Is a New Virtue!

Traditionally, German soccer teams have purportedly embodied “German virtues” (die deutsche Tugenden): a tough work ethic, discipline, organization. They’ve been made to sound much like a Mercedez-Benz. At their best, their performance indeed resembled German engineering. Otherwise? As Swiss National Coach Ottmar Hitzfeld recently described the German virtues: “Not necessarily play well, but win anyway.” If you’ve never lived in Germany as an expat (or as a German!) there’s no way to convey what a basic article of faith the German virtues have been. There’s gravity. There’s the fear of draughts. And then there are the German football virtues. All these are fixed elements of the German universe.

In that spirit, the old-time German stars tended to take themselves pretty seriously. The legendary Franz Beckenbauer, for instance, is one of those guys who makes you worry his whole face might crack and shatter if he smiled too warmly. His skin looks that much like brittle leather (perhaps it’s an antique ball, circa 1927?). Luckily, Beckenbauer doesn’t crack a smile often. Sure, it’s a stereotype – the humorless German – and even some of Beckenbauer’s contemporaries, the stars of the 1970s and 1980s, broke the stereotype on occasion. Still, they didn’t break the edifice of “German virtues.” Why, they helped build it higher, brick by brick.

Monty Python had their own take on this, with their Philosophers’ World Cup:

(via Cookie Jill at skippy the bush kangaroo; go here if you can’t see the clip.)

So maybe Marx wasn’t the most promising footballer. (Note Beckenbauer, however, in the lineup of philosophers. They’re not quite shittin’ you.)

And yet, the revolution did come, ushered in by none other than my alltime favorite soccer star, Jürgen Klinsmann. My Klinsi** coached a young, inexperienced team to third place in 2006. The German football-nation danced in the streets. Everyone in Berlin forgot how to be humorless (possible exception: those yippy little dogs that poop everywhere). Upon Klinsi’s departure, he handed the baton to Jogi Löw, who’d provided the tactical brains of the operation.

And today, the revolution in the “German virtues” burst onto the world stage. The boys (and they’re mostly still boys, many too young to drink legally in the U.S.) didn’t just win 4:0 against Australia. They didn’t just pass the ball like magicians, with the grace and style of Otto the Goalie Kitteh. Above all, they looked like they were having a blast!

ABC has snagged my Klinsi as a commentator. His verdict? “They’re having fun with the ball.”

Sounds like a real improvement on the old virtues to me! And oh, were those young, pass-happy Germans ever fun to watch! “Fun” is a virtue I can gladly get behind.

I lived in Berlin for just shy of a decade. I stepped in a lot of the aforementioned yippy-dog-doo. I figure I’ve earned the right to prognosticate. Sungold’s magic 8-ball sez: Germany might just make it to the finals! And if they do, it’ll be with virtuoso command of their passing game and a huge dollop of fun! Oh, and I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of Klinsi now and again – always my idea of fun fun fun.

** I say “my Klinsi” because back in 1996, I appointed myself president of the American women’s Klinsi fan club. Since no one has stepped up to depose me, I hereby appoint myself president-for-life.

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Hazarding a New Definition of Virginity?

So I’m purple with envy (yep, that’s one stage beyond green) at the folks who were lucky enough to attend the Rethinking Virginity conference at Harvard last week. I’m no longer a practical expert – why, my virginal days lie deep in the previous millennium – but I’d be a virgin at this sort of conference, one that straddles the academic, activist, and bloggy worlds. Oh, and it’s not just that I’d be mildly starstruck, though I’d love to meet Shelby Knox. The less famous folk had equally smart things to say. If you too want to feel mopey about staying home, Therese has got a very nice link farm from the conference.

Anyway, I’ve been mulling over those posts and triangulating them (hexatulating?) with Hanna Blank’s marvelous essay on process-oriented virginity in Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape. I’m basically on board with Blank’s suggestion that the world wouldn’t end if each person demarcated their virginity on their own terms. I especially love her idea (going back to St. Augustine, I shit you not!) that a rape survivor can define for herself whether she still wants to claim the title of virgin.

But part of me wants to say, Fuck virginity! What did it ever do for me, anyway? And can we cut out all this silly rhetoric about “losing” virginity? Grooving on my newfound sexual experience was pure win for me. I’m leaving out a few messy stories, sure, but on balance: pure fucking win.

And maybe we could just ditch virginity. Let it go up in smoke. Maybe we could talk instead about desires and acts and those particular people who set us humming.

But there is something important about “coming of age” sexually, and I wouldn’t want to lose that. Lux Alptraum’s wonderful Jezebel post on her conference panel provides the killer argument for why we still need “virginity.”

During the queer virginity panel, we examined how the notion of virginity—traditionally correlated with penis-in-vagina intercourse—transforms when mapped onto a queer identity. Though one panelist felt that the idea of virginity lost its meaning outside of a heterosexual relationship, I still feel that the experience of one’s first sexual relationship (however you define that) is significant enough to transcend gender, sexuality, and identity. In fact, in a queer space, loss of virginity can sometimes be more significant, as its that first sexual experience that solidifies an identity that might initially have been considered “questioning” or “curious.”

(More goodness here.)

My own coming-of-age story was relentlessly heterocentric, yet I totally get what Lux is saying about the formation of identity. Our first really significant sexual encounter shapes our sense of self – not immutably, but importantly. And it’s not just a matter of sexual-orientation as identity, though that’s obviously a huge deal. The demise of virginity can also be about claiming adulthood, learning a serious new way to play as an adult, relating differently to one’s body, moving a relationship to a deeper level, realizing that sex isn’t always linked to love. And that’s a short list of how our early sexual experiences may mold our identities and body-mind loops; maybe you’ve got more? If so, please bring ‘em up in comments.

So how would I redefine virginity? As much as I like Blank’s model, I think it’s too purely personal. We also need a more interpersonal way of understanding virginity. That is, unless we want to say masturbation counts as unravelling virginity – but I don’t want to go there, not least because I value the interpersonal dimension. Masturbation also opens the door to virginity loss among the under-three set. This seriously squicks me. The small people need to freedom to discover boyparts and girlparts without the baggage of innocence and experience. (Baby Jesus, for instance!) Let’s just stipulate: no virginity loss for the sippy-cup crowd.

For the rest of us? Well, I sort of like the idea of seeing a “first orgasm” (also from Blank) as the watershed. But for some of us, the orgasm gap could mean we’ll be in our forties when we shed our virginity. Great for Hollywood, just not what I sought at age 20.

So how about this: Virginity ends the first time you engage in partnered sexual activity and have an epiphany – either during or after – with orgasm or without – when you suddenly know: “Oh, this is what all the fuss is about!” This needn’t be penetrative sex; anything that makes you seriously swoon could count.

Alternative definitions, refinements, personal stories – all are welcome in comments!

Every sex post deserves a tulip, wouldn’t you say? I’m sure I’ve already recycled Luce Irigaray’s pun on “two-lips” (that meet as one). Photo from in front of my house about ten days ago.

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Imposter Syndrome Vanquished (for Now)

You’re in front of the classroom. First day of school. You’re late for class, and then – suddenly – you realize you’re the teacher, not the student. Who the hell made that decision? And – oh, ooooops! – you’re teaching calculus.

Calculus!?! Which you passed with a shining A! Back in 1982!

Somehow, inexplicably, you’re outside the classroom again. You’ve got four hours to prepare. Then two. Oddly, the hours glide by as you bicycle up endless hills, ride circles on public transit, do anything to avoid cracking a book.

Finally, you arrive at the classroom. Thirty fresh-scrubbed faces turn to you, waiting for you to initiate them into the mysteries of the derivative.

You think: X axis. Y axis. You gulp.

Did I mention: you’re buck naked?

————

Every teacher has experienced some variant of this dream. Maybe you have, too, even if you don’t officially “teach.” Maybe your kids catch you out. Or maybe, like my mom, you’re years retired (in her case, from a career in teaching English), and you dream you still haven’t learned your lines for the play. Maybe in your nightmares you’re giving a major presentation to to the muckety-mucks at work – unprepared and, naturally, wearing your birthday suit.

Way back in February I started dreaming about the first day of class for the Nazi Germany history course I was scheduled to teach in the spring. Dreaming? Oh, no. These were wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat nightmares. Yes, German history was my major field in grad school, but I’ve taught women’s and gender studies unabated since 2002. I love WGS. I love being a historian, and I’ll forever think like one. But could I still teach history? And where did I leave my clothes, anyway?

The scenario repeated with variations: I’d stumble into the classroom, utterly unprepared. (That part never varied.) I’d start ad-libbing my worst impression of a cartoon women’s studies instructor: “So, how do you feel about Hitler?” “Certainly some aspect of your experience might resonate with women in the Third Reich! Can you imagine a sisterhood with them?”

————

Flash forward a few weeks, and it’s the first day of class. The wretched projector does not work. I am planning to show some maps, insurance that I will not start to mimic a demented group therapy leader. The maps will not project.

My clothes are on. They appear to be staying on. I call classroom services (cursing my colleagues who didn’t bother to fix this earlier in the day). Ted the tech guru shows up, the same Ted who knows a remarkable amount about the Albigensian heresy. I know Ted from my stress management class. I think “what would the Buddha do?” I breathe. The Buddha remains remote. But in my head, my instructor Bonnie says calmly, “This is just how things are right now.” I breathe. Ted tinkers. He  breathes the projector back to life.

————

Jump to the end of the first week. The students appear to be developing carpal tunnel – all 150 of them. I get the hint. I start to slow down.

Oh, the irony! I know too much! I’m trying to say too much! I’m amazed at how much I recall from 20 years ago. When I don’t know it, I know where to look. I’m thrilled at how much I’m learning along the way.

I’m not quite fully dressed after all, because the classroom tops out at 98 Fahrenheit the second week. My skirts are thin and rumpled. They’re suboptimally professional (but then again, my preferred look is nouveau hippie anyway). The main thing is: I’m not naked. And I realize I really know this stuff: the fatal conservative resentments of modernity, the violence of the SA men, the brutal logic of racial “science.”

Now I just need to hit my stride and hold a pace that works for everyone. I need to hold it even though I’ve been sick most of the quarter and my kids have soccer four night a week. I need to keep it up even when I occasionally burst into unscheduled tears while preparing a lecture. If you teach about the Nazis and never feel your soul split in two, you need to either cultivate compassion – or consider a career at Halliburton.

————

This class, this history of Nazi Germany, is a work in progress. So too am I. I spend a little too much eating marzipan at 1 a.m. while tinkering with my next lecture. Imposter syndrome lurks around every corner. But momentarily, at least, I really have conquered fear. I know I can do this. I know I know enough. I’ve delivered 18 lectures, with just 11 to go. And that will have to be enough – even if one day I appear in class and discover I’m utterly naked, after all.

————

I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s had to climb the cliffs of self-doubt. If you’re willing to share you similar story (naked dreams and all) I’d love to hear it.

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