Help feed doggies and kitties in need: www.savepups.com.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
2 Wednesday Haikus
Back from an "illness"
Called being in Las Vegas,
Partying it up.
"Sorry for the mess."
"Yes, why is it so?" he asked.
"Because I'm messy."
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
A take me out to the ballpark wednesday haiku
Sunburned from slacking.
Beers, fries at the game; good thing
I was with the boss.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
thoughts
Letting relationships develop organically is annoying. Whatever happened to the good old way of getting drunk and hooking up and letting everything sort itself out in the morning?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
three day weekends always screw me up
This is just to say
Your callousness angers me
Into moving on.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
In my email today:
"THE WORLD'S SHORTEST FAIRY TALE!"
Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl "Will you marry me?" The girl said
"NO!". And the girl lived happily ever-after and went shopping, dancing,
camping, drank martinis, always had a clean house, never had to cook, did
whatever the hell she wanted, never argued, didn't get fat, traveled more,
had many lovers, didn't save money, and had all the hot water to herself.
She went to the theater, never watched sports, never wore ' lacy
lingerie that went up her ass, had high self esteem, never cried or yelled,
felt and looked fabulous in sweat pants and was pleasant all the time.
The End!
Actually made me laugh despite my morning stupor...
Per Jon Carroll in today's SF Chronicle:
"And I'm not that crazy about Valentine's Day. I know it's a bogus invented holiday, but that doesn't bother me so much - every holiday is bogus and invented, one way or another. The arcane solar/lunar formula for determining Easter is just as artificial. Not everybody signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4. Some patriots said, "You know, I'm going to have my people kick this around, and I'll get back to you." Only they said it with all their s's looking like f's."
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
Vote
GOODBYE TO ALL THAT (#2) by Robin Morgan
“Goodbye To All That” was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting women.
During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and contemporary women’s movements, I’ve resisted writing another specific “Goodbye . . .”. But not since the suffrage struggle have two communities--the joint conscience-keepers of this country--been so set in competition, as the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.
Goodbye to the double standard . . .
--Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who’s emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.
--She’s “ambitious” but he shows “fire in the belly.” (Ever had labor pains? )
--When a sexist idiot screamed “Iron my shirt!” at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted “Shine my shoes!” at BO, it would’ve inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
--Young political Kennedys--Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.--all endorsed Hillary. Sen. Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort “See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him.” (Personally, I’m unimpressed with Caroline’s longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.
Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?
Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .
The women’s movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments (www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC’s Tim Russert’s continual sexist asides and his all-white-male panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN’s Tony Harris chuckling at “the chromosome thing” while interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And that’s not even mentioning Fox News.
Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male and all women are white . . .
Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations, ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages--not only African American and European American but Latina and Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab American and—hey, every group, because a group wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t given birth to it. A few non-racist countries may exist--but sexism is everywhere. No matter how many ways a woman breaks free from other oppressions, she remains a female human being in a world still so patriarchal that it’s the “norm.”
So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?
Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which whites—especially wealthy ones--adore), while she has to pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and then found unforgivable). If she were black or he were female we wouldn’t be having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn’t stand a chance—even if she shared Condi Rice’s Bush-defending politics.
I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on African American women deciding on which of two candidates to bestow their vote--until a number of Hillary-supporting black feminists told me they’re being called “race traitors.”
So goodbye to conversations about this nation’s deepest scar—slavery—which fail to acknowledge that labor- and sexual-slavery exist today in the US and elsewhere on this planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.
Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience the world differently from men--though not all the same as one another--and can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran for this high office and barely got past the gate—they showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists so famished for a female president they were even willing to abandon women’s rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)
Goodbye, goodbye to . . .
--blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys--though unlike them, he got reported on). Let’s get real. If he hadn’t campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.
--an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it’s “cooler” to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.
--the notion that it’s fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.
Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts “entitled” when she’s worked intensely at everything she’s done—including being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my state.
Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their own fears, failures, fantasies.
Goodbye to the phrase “polarizing figure” to describe someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the women’s movement that quipped, “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” She heard us, and she has.
Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands, because Hillary isn’t as “likeable” as they’ve been warned they must be, or because she didn’t leave him, couldn’t “control” him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn’t bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement. She is running to be President of the United States.
Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries’ history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our “land of opportunity,” it’s mostly the first pathway “in” permitted to women: Reps. Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Sen. Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here.
Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous “Obama Girl” flaunting her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it wasn’t her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and dictated the clothes, which she said “made me feel like a dork.”
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.” Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”
I’d rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young women who do identify with Hillary, and all the brave, smart men—of all ethnicities and any age--who get that it’s in their self-interest, too. She’s better qualified. (D’uh.) She’s a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail, ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping on. (Also, yes, dammit, let’s hear it for her connections and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was awfully glad about those when she raised dough and campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)
I’d rather look forward to what a good president he might make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned by practical know-how--and he’ll be all of 54. Meanwhile, goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually he’s an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who’ve worked with the Kennedys’ own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson. If it’s only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run. But isn’t it about getting the policies we want enacted?
And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to rouse US youth from torpor it’s useful to triage the single largest demographic in this country’s history: the boomer generation--the majority of which is female?
Older woman are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age—and we are the generation of radicals who said “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace yourselves: we’re back!
We are the women who brought this country equal credit, better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a family-focused workplace; the women who established rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and environmental movements; who insisted that medical research include female anatomy, who inspired men to become more nurturing parents, who created women’s studies and Title IX so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography, who put child care on the national agenda, who transformed demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years, won us the vote.
We are the women who now comprise the majority of US voters.
Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There’s not a woman alive who, if she’s honest, doesn’t recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media’s obsession with All Things Bill.
So listen to her voice:
“For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.
“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.
“Women’s rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to speak freely--and the right to be heard.”
That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the US State Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing.
And this voice, age 22, in “Commencement Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government Association, Class of 1969”: “We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.”
She ended with the commitment “to practice, with all the skill of our being: the art of making possible.”
And for decades, she’s been learning how.
So goodbye to Hillary’s second-guessing herself. The real question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves? “Our President, Ourselves!”
Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in furious energy--as we did when courageous Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the US Senate, as we did when desperate Rosie Jiminez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly, with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money, argue, rally, march, shout, vote.
Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she’s the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she knows how to get us out of Iraq. I support her because she’s refreshingly thoughtful, and I’m bloodied from eight years of a jolly “uniter” with ejaculatory politics. I needn’t agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama’s—and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she’s already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, and because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.
As for the “woman thing”?
Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman--but because I am.
RM
February 2, 2008
New York City
[Also posted on www.womensmediacenter.com]
“Goodbye To All That” was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting women.
During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and contemporary women’s movements, I’ve resisted writing another specific “Goodbye . . .”. But not since the suffrage struggle have two communities--the joint conscience-keepers of this country--been so set in competition, as the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.
Goodbye to the double standard . . .
--Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who’s emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.
--She’s “ambitious” but he shows “fire in the belly.” (Ever had labor pains? )
--When a sexist idiot screamed “Iron my shirt!” at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted “Shine my shoes!” at BO, it would’ve inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
--Young political Kennedys--Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.--all endorsed Hillary. Sen. Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort “See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him.” (Personally, I’m unimpressed with Caroline’s longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.
Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?
Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .
The women’s movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments (www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC’s Tim Russert’s continual sexist asides and his all-white-male panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN’s Tony Harris chuckling at “the chromosome thing” while interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And that’s not even mentioning Fox News.
Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male and all women are white . . .
Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations, ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages--not only African American and European American but Latina and Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab American and—hey, every group, because a group wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t given birth to it. A few non-racist countries may exist--but sexism is everywhere. No matter how many ways a woman breaks free from other oppressions, she remains a female human being in a world still so patriarchal that it’s the “norm.”
So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?
Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which whites—especially wealthy ones--adore), while she has to pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and then found unforgivable). If she were black or he were female we wouldn’t be having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn’t stand a chance—even if she shared Condi Rice’s Bush-defending politics.
I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on African American women deciding on which of two candidates to bestow their vote--until a number of Hillary-supporting black feminists told me they’re being called “race traitors.”
So goodbye to conversations about this nation’s deepest scar—slavery—which fail to acknowledge that labor- and sexual-slavery exist today in the US and elsewhere on this planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.
Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience the world differently from men--though not all the same as one another--and can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran for this high office and barely got past the gate—they showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists so famished for a female president they were even willing to abandon women’s rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)
Goodbye, goodbye to . . .
--blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys--though unlike them, he got reported on). Let’s get real. If he hadn’t campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.
--an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it’s “cooler” to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.
--the notion that it’s fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.
Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts “entitled” when she’s worked intensely at everything she’s done—including being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my state.
Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their own fears, failures, fantasies.
Goodbye to the phrase “polarizing figure” to describe someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the women’s movement that quipped, “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” She heard us, and she has.
Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands, because Hillary isn’t as “likeable” as they’ve been warned they must be, or because she didn’t leave him, couldn’t “control” him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn’t bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement. She is running to be President of the United States.
Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries’ history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our “land of opportunity,” it’s mostly the first pathway “in” permitted to women: Reps. Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Sen. Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here.
Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous “Obama Girl” flaunting her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it wasn’t her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and dictated the clothes, which she said “made me feel like a dork.”
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.” Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”
I’d rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young women who do identify with Hillary, and all the brave, smart men—of all ethnicities and any age--who get that it’s in their self-interest, too. She’s better qualified. (D’uh.) She’s a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail, ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping on. (Also, yes, dammit, let’s hear it for her connections and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was awfully glad about those when she raised dough and campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)
I’d rather look forward to what a good president he might make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned by practical know-how--and he’ll be all of 54. Meanwhile, goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually he’s an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who’ve worked with the Kennedys’ own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson. If it’s only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run. But isn’t it about getting the policies we want enacted?
And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to rouse US youth from torpor it’s useful to triage the single largest demographic in this country’s history: the boomer generation--the majority of which is female?
Older woman are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age—and we are the generation of radicals who said “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace yourselves: we’re back!
We are the women who brought this country equal credit, better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a family-focused workplace; the women who established rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and environmental movements; who insisted that medical research include female anatomy, who inspired men to become more nurturing parents, who created women’s studies and Title IX so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography, who put child care on the national agenda, who transformed demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years, won us the vote.
We are the women who now comprise the majority of US voters.
Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There’s not a woman alive who, if she’s honest, doesn’t recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media’s obsession with All Things Bill.
So listen to her voice:
“For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.
“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.
“Women’s rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to speak freely--and the right to be heard.”
That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the US State Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing.
And this voice, age 22, in “Commencement Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government Association, Class of 1969”: “We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.”
She ended with the commitment “to practice, with all the skill of our being: the art of making possible.”
And for decades, she’s been learning how.
So goodbye to Hillary’s second-guessing herself. The real question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves? “Our President, Ourselves!”
Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in furious energy--as we did when courageous Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the US Senate, as we did when desperate Rosie Jiminez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly, with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money, argue, rally, march, shout, vote.
Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she’s the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she knows how to get us out of Iraq. I support her because she’s refreshingly thoughtful, and I’m bloodied from eight years of a jolly “uniter” with ejaculatory politics. I needn’t agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama’s—and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she’s already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, and because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.
As for the “woman thing”?
Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman--but because I am.
RM
February 2, 2008
New York City
[Also posted on www.womensmediacenter.com]
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
naked lips
Running out of my tube of Kiehl's baby lip balm. Apparently I apply it a gazillion times a day while at work. Didn't even notice. Good think there's a new Kiehl's in my favorite mall! It's soooooo good.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
hacer el bien sin ver a quien
Here's a sweet story in the news today: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/01/14/MNFKUBCRJ.DTL
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Monday, January 07, 2008
Friday, January 04, 2008
Webbing it
The internets are moving too slowly for me today.
Also, I think I'm developing carpal tunnel. Youch.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
haiku wednesday!
Look....I actually remembered! Alright, here goes....
Supposed to get in
To the backup school, but what
If that doesn't work?
Can you tell what's on my mind??
Getting ready for New Years
I'm having a New Year's conundrum this year - cough up $125 to go to a party thrown by friends (not too close of friends, though) or be lazy and have a small get together at home. If I end up doing the latter, I'm going to have to check out these affordable champagne suggestions from users on Epicurious.com.
-Wolfberger Cremant d'Alsace (around $15.95)
-Codorniu Pinot Noir Brut Cava ($11.99)
-Pearly Bay Celebration from South Africa (around $8 to $10)
Did I mention I love the bubbly? Mmm....
Thursday, December 06, 2007
OMG...cuteness overload
I love hedgehogs. If you do, too, click here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=499453&in_page_id=1770.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Wednesday Haiku afterthought
I thought of it and
then it was gone, Wednesday too;
This is late again.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Thinking...
Buddhists say you need three things in life: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
almost forgot! haiku wednesday
An ode to standardized testing:
Can't wait for Friday
to be over, give me an
eight hundred now, please.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Mmm...sanitation
Maybe I'm a little bit paranoid, but after reading Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential", I'm definitely more wary of where and when I eat out. So, I was thrilled to discover this fabulous new website that gives you all the latest health inspection results for San Francisco restaurants. If you're lucky, maybe they'll come to your city soon. Check it out: www.cleanscores.com.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Thursday, October 04, 2007
haiku Thursday (just changing it up a little!)
Oops, I forgot and
Wednesday came and went without
A proper haiku.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
lesson learned
I work in an office with mostly women, so sometimes I complain about how I never meet men. But, there's something comforting about not having to put on makeup every morning just to go to work. Until today...when I walked into our waiting area and bumped into two ridiculously hot guys. And here I am dressed like it's laundry day. Faaaantastic.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Ummm....
Clearly my mind is in the gutter, but I just can't get over this one: http://bananabunker.com/. Enjoy.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Monday, Monday
I can't seem to concentrate at all today. And now parts of Office Space are running through my head. (Do I have a case of the Mondays?)
Thursday, September 06, 2007
yesss!!!!!!!!
Oh, hallelujah, I just found a bag of cheetos in my desk drawer. That just made my day. (If there's something wrong with that, I don't ever want to be right.)
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
A Sartorial Wednesday Haiku
When wearing white shirt,
Don't forget - skin-colored bra
Is still visible.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
i heart caffeine
More specifically, I love chai tea with splenda and a little splash of vanilla soy milk. Why did it take me so long to realize that I could do that instead of wasting $3 (and too much sugar) getting my fix at Starbucks?
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Overheard wisdom
An interesting "public eavesdropping" quote in today's SF Chronicle (from a mother to child):
"Yesterday wasn't a long time ago. Yesterday was just before we went to sleep."
So simple, yet so complex.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Awesomely Weird Animals
I particularly like the angora rabbit, which just looks like a really angry cat stuffed into a fuzz ball costume.
Pick your favorite: http://divaboo.info/
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Thanks?
A guy on the street told me I had a good looking walk. What do you suppose that mean? And why do men only compliment me on days when I'm all schlumpy and wearing my glasses and no make up? Is there a secret fetish for sloppy nerds? I mean, aside from the one I have?
a Mr. T revival
You know what's awesome? Dudes who shave their afros into mohawks. You know what's kind of scary? Girls who do the same.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The View From Up Here
It's kind of a dim video, but this is the view from my new living room. Am I lucky or what?
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Wednesday Haiku - First House Dinner
A menu haiku:
Veggie lasagna,
fresh green salad, garlic bread,
tiramisu...home.
Veggie lasagna,
fresh green salad, garlic bread,
tiramisu...home.
Free Will Astrology
I don't always get Rob Brezsny's horoscopes, but I always read them. Here's mine for the week:
"Certain religions whose names I won't mention have given prayer a bad name. It has come to be associated with sentimentality, desperation, delusion, greed, and wishful thinking. But I prefer to define prayer as an intention to align your emotions and thoughts with the highest possible good. Can you give that definition a whirl? I hope so. It's Big Wild Prayer Week, a time when you will have an extraordinary ability to get in sync with almost unimaginably catalytic currents of cosmic beauty and truth."
Time to get in sync, I could use some cosmic beauty and truth.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Go me!
Today, I taught myself a little program called PowerPoint. I am not afraid to say that I kicked its ass. The (short) slideshow I made is awesome. Now I want to figure out how to add music to further enhance the awesomeness of it all.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
poetry
Charles Simic, one of my favorite poets, was just named the new American Poet Laureate. Congrats to him.
Now, for your reading pleasure, one of my favorite short poems by him:
Watermelons by Charles Simic
Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.
welcome to the neighborhood
Awesome. A man was assassinated by my office this morning. Literally assassinated. No wonder the choppers were circling overhead when I came into work. What is this place coming to?
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Hello out there
So, I haven't really blogged in a while. Only fake blogging by putting up little snippets of stuff here and there. But, I'm beginning a whole new phase of my life right now (which I'll go into more detail about later) and am thinking that it might be time to start up this here old blog again. Ya know, just to see if there's anyone out there.
Bloggers have this weird relationship with their readers that I don't fully understand. Maybe because I don't have any readers, but that's beside the point because I am a regular reader of several blogs. I used to read Tequila Mockingbird all the time, but then one day a couple of years ago she fell off the face of the earth. No, seriously, I thought she might've died or something. She's posted maybe 3 times in the last two years, so I know that she's not dead but I don't go checking her site anymore to see if she's put anything new up. The disappointment is just not worth it.
Another favorite blogger of mine, Cupcake, wrote a post a few months back about how she doesn't give a shit about blogging anymore. As one of her faithful readers, I have to say I was truly disappointed. She still puts something up once a week or so, but they're rarely personal. It all makes me wonder what kind of duty a blogger has to their blog and readers.
Blogs allow people to form largely unrequited relationships on both sides of the screen. The blogger has a false sense of a relationship to their presumed audience (unless they have a real audience of friends and family or something - I know, what??), and the reader has a false sense of knowing the person at the keyboard. So, when one of the parties gives up on the process, what happens to those relationships? Cupcake's decision to stop posting actually made me feel like I was losing a friend. Is that weird? Is it any weirder than wanting to invite her to hang out when she comes to San Francisco next week? I mean, I don't actually know her, or SheWalks, or any of the other famous and not-so-famous bloggers I read, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to invite them over for lunch.
I'm just rambling here, though. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts....if they're actually reading this, that is. :)
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Wednesday Haikus
Lots to do of late.
Must remember to get sleep;
Can't be a zombie.
Internet dating -
Nice guys maybe, weird guys yes.
Many frogs to kiss.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
H2O
Fascinating article on bottled water and something that I've been thinking about for a while now:
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Genius and Slacker
So, I was feeling nostalgic today and decided to re-read the archives of this blog. Mostly the stuff from 2005, when I was actually taking this whole writing thing seriously. And, I have to say, I was really pretty funny. Is it too egotistical of me to actually laugh at my own writing? Where did that dedication and ability go?
Monday, July 09, 2007
I just got an email offering me a visit from the "big dick fairy". Awesome. I wonder what I have to put under my pillow for that?
Monday, July 02, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
covered
I am exhaused and thisclose to going to bed, but I wanted to share the mess that is me. I just got home from a very, very long day and up until a minute ago when I took a much needed shower, I was covered. I had chai latte on my sweater, ultrasound gel on my chest, tomato juice on my jeans, and sap in my hair. It's a good thing I also have a shower and a washing machine.
So wise
According to my Snapple, all porcupines float in water. I feel sorry for all the poor wet little creatures who helped 'em figure that one out.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
What is luck?
Yesterday, as I was leaving BART, a bird tried to land on my head. I felt his little scratchy claws on my scalp. A scruffy looking man nearby started shouting, "It's good luck...the bird....it's good luck, it's good luck!!!" A woman walking next to me clarified, "It's good luck that it didn't poop on your head."
I washed my hair extra good last night.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
J-E-L-L-O
I managed to drop raspberry jello down my shirt today at work. You can imagine my surprise at feeling something cold and slimy in my bra a couple minutes after finishing the last bite.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Friday, February 02, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Top Nine Favorite Deep Fried Things To Eat:
(not to be confused with all those deep-fried things you shouldn't eat)
9) steak-frites (the super thin kind)
8) curly fries
7) potstickers
6) falafel
5) chocolate cake donuts
4) tostada salad shells (preferably with guac)
3) mozzarella sticks
2) mini-corn dogs
1) onion rings
Monday, May 01, 2006
equality for immigrants
It literally brings tears to my eyes to see people try to claim what should be theirs but isn't. There is a large immigrants' rights march and rally going on outside of my office right now. It's a stirring thing to observe and a cause that I support wholeheartedly, I just hope that people outside of the choir are listening.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Good day Sunshine
Yay, it's finally stopped raining here. No more soggy pant hems and lugging around a mouldering umbrella. Hope it lasts!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
