My superpower

Today I volunteered for an hour at Clare's school, while the kindergartners made cheese in the Learning Kitchen. (Yeah, she goes to an incredible school like that!) While they were watching the process they were answering questions, like "what animals make milk we can drink?" Cows. Sheep. And:

"Clare, you have another animal that makes milk?"

"humans." Slight pause. "My mommy makes milk."

Yes, I do. And so proud of my little girl naming it like it's the most normal and obvious thing in the world...'cause it is!

Which Side Are You On?

Just bought the new Ani DiFranco album, Which Side Are You On?, this week. It's amazing--it's hard to choose which song cuts the deepest. For starters, track 1 gives a first person narrative in a homeless woman's voice, who laments--or rejoices?--"every time I open my mouth, I take off my clothes." But there's a line in the following song which strikes me every time as just right:

"Trust: women will still take you to their breast. Trust: women will always do their best."

It's a political song, about a lot of political issues concerning women--but for me, this is what they all come to. Trust. Trust us. Trust us as human beings. Trust us as grown-ups. As citizens. As moral agents. As bearers of the imago dei, twice over. Trust that the decisions we make for ourselves and our children are the best decisions we can make, and that we understand--understand in a way no one else can--what they are and what they mean. Trust: women will still take you to their breast. Trust: women will always do their best.



"amendment" by Ani DiFranco



wouldn't it be nice if

we had an amendment

to give civil rights to

women

to once and for all just

really lay it down from

a point of view of

women



I know what you're thinking

that's just redundant

chicks got it good now

they can almost be president

but worker against worker

time and time again

as the rich use certain issues as a tool

and when I said we need the ....? cause I'm a fool

it's cause without it nobody can get away

with anything cruel



you don't need to go far like

just over to Canada

to feel the height and sense of

live and let live

what is it about Americans

like so many pitbulls

trained to attack them

to never give



we gotta come down abortion

put it down in the books for good

as central to the civil rights of women

make diversity acceptable

make it finally understood

through the civil rights of women



and if you don't like abortion

don't have an abortion

teach your children

how they can avoid them

but don't treat all women

like they are your children

compassion has many faces

many names

and if men can kill

and be decorated instead of blamed

when a woman called onto mother

can choose to refrain



and contrary to aeons

of oldtime religion

your body is your only true dominion

nature is not here to serve you

or at any cost to preserve you

that's just some preacherman's oldtime opinion



life is sacred

life is all so profane

a woman's life

it must be hers to name

let an amendment

put this brutal game to rest

trust women will still take you to their breast

trust women will always do their best

trust that our differences make us stronger, not less



in this amendment

family structure shall be free

to be the right to civil union

if we take unions of all kinds

unions of hearts and minds

to give society communion

let's do more than tolerate

let gay and straight resonate

and emanate all things human

with equal rights and

equal protection

intolerance finally ruined



and then there's the kids rights

they'll naturally be on board

a funnel through which

womens' lives are poured

our family is so big and we're all so very small

let a web of relationship be laid over it all

over the strata of power piled up into the sky

over the illusion of autonomy on which it relies

over any absolute that nature does not supply


...and the birds say woman shall regain her place
in the circle of women, ina sacred space
 turn off the machine, put away them knives
this amendment shall deliver from bondage, midwives

call it like it is

I dislike euphemisms. Perhaps this can be attributed to early childhood training; Mom was a biology major and taught us to label our anatomy and functions accurately. I didn't learn any cutesy demeaning nicknames for my genitalia. I have a vagina, boys have a penis, no one has a "v-jay-jay" or a "wee-wee" or whatever. There's even an apocryphal story in my family about Mom trying to teach the barely articulate toddler me the word "urinate," because she hated hearing other small kids yelling in grocery stores "Mama I have to pee-pee" and stuff. This, so they tell me, resulted in a tearful confrontation in which I burst out with "I am not a Nate! You're a Nate!"

So. Maybe it's my mama's fault, but I have little patience for euphemism, in just about all contexts. (Which helps, now that I think of it, to explain my attraction to the blog motif of "rude truth." Rude--straight up--unvarnished--blunt, non-euphemistic talk to be had here, y'all.)

A large part of my personal frustration with politics therefore takes the form of hating the euphemistic mode of communication taken for granted there. Particularly on issues of race or sex where euphemisms contribute to, not just befuddlement, but the maintenance of the status quo. If you can't label it accurately, you can't talk about it honestly.

One thing bugging me in particular these days is this "social issues," "culture wars," "religious freedom" (?!), "values voters" stuff. Campaigning as the real Christian or most Christian candidate, while dragging up the euphemistically labeled "social issues" (abortion, contraception) to attract the euphemistically called "values voters" (a certain brand of nationalistic biblicist who want a Christian theocracy) is just another form of blatant identity politics, even if no one will call it that, and it's high time we did. It's also, not coincidentally, the current manifestation of white identity politics. And that puts "Christian identity" in bed with racism, whether or not you want to say so out loud.

I think these phrases ought to hit our ears like the dirty words they are. Euphemisms are pretty masks for ugly realities, and meant to be so so that we can leave the social contract to ignore ugly reality undisturbed.

Another apocryphal story comes to mind now, thus one from college and by way of JBB. Once upon a time there was a stand-up Christian dude, who had obeyed all the laws and commandments since he was a child, even studiously and obediently avoiding all cursing and foul language, except that he frequently used the n-word. A friend of his was greatly disturbed by this and confronted him but to no avail. And so this friend devised a plan: every time he heard that word from the guy, he would respond by yelling "FUCK!" as loud as he could. Pretty soon Mr. Stand-Up Christian got the point.

Call it like it is.

Christian identity is being euphemized into a racist, sexist political identity by people who see this as their route to power. I think Christians should probably be objecting to that. Don't you?

So, tonight I made a vegetable curry and got out my "Extending the Table" cookbook to make chapati, and noticed, not for the first time, the anecdote on the bottom of the page. (See picture.) this time, however, I though, "this is why we need birth control."

Not (just) because we ought to be in charge of our own bodies. But because we are also in charge of theirs.

Nickname

So, I've been wanting a nickname for Z. Of course, Zada Eloise already has nicknames: we call her Zadie, I call her Z, but I wanted a term of endearment. One that fit her emerging, adventuresome, curious, exuberant personality.

We called Clare "Clare-Bear" from the very beginning almost. The nickname that came to my mind for her sister was "scamp." A sort of combo of impish and scamper--perfect for my little explorer. But then Brent objected: you can't call her that, hd said. It sounds like "skank" combined with "tramp."

Yikes.

So, I started over. What sort of nickname could I find for my energetic happy girl that suggested her fearlessness and awesomeness? And then my sister rescued me. Scout, she said. It's perfect.

It is. And now she responds to "Scout" almost as readily as she does "Zadie."

#ows

Too busy now for my own words. Am borrowing from Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God, from chapter 4, "Liberating God of Life," which we are covering in class for this week:

"Idolatry entails putting alien gods before the true God of the Bible, worshiping something which is not divine. In the Latin American situation these gods are money, the comforts it brings, and the power necessary to make and keep it. Starting with the conquistadores and continuing for five centuries through successive ruling systems up to multinational corporations today, greed has divinized money and its trappings, that is, turned them into an absolute. Core transgressions against the first commandment have set up a belief system so compelling that it might be called moneytheism, in contrast to monotheism.
Like all false gods, money and its trappings require the sacrifice of victims. Whether the poor are offered up indirectly through the economic conditions necessary to produce profit, or directly through the violence necessary to sustain those conditions, their lives are the sacrifice. What is most insidious is the way traditional preaching and theology put a superficial veneer of Christian  belief over the face of these idols...Neutral in the face of injustice, the racist, sexist, classist image of God perverts the actual contours of the living God in the service of moneyed interests" (79-80).

It won't fit on a sign. But it is to the point. I don't know if Jesus would #ows, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Sister Elizabeth there.

breaking bad

FTR, I am ripping through these episodes like a, well, like an addict or something. (Thank you Netflix, you're such an enabler.)

And I love it. Not least because it makes me miss those gorgeous views of the Sandias I got to enjoy those brief summers I got to live in ABQ.

But two things really irk me.

First. Yes, this is highly personal and has to do with the constant, chronic and let's just own up to it, debilitating sleep deprivation I'm currently experiencing (the number of record screw-ups in the last few weeks! like, leaving my phone on the hood of the car, and misreading my own course schedule re the midterm date). I am so utterly pissed off at the way in which TV pregnancies, births, and babycare are depicted. The Whites are supposed to be living on a teacher's salary, and yet Skyler has a maternity wardrobe that never repeats itself? Come on. I will admit that the whole birth sequence was less annoying than is typical. No ridiculous scenes of women lying prone in hospital beds, screaming, cursing their spouses, and demanding immediate medication. But what's really bugging me at the moment, at episode 29, is that Baby Holly is the world's most autonomous, care-free infant. It's just No Big Thang to load her up and take her along to the bookkeeping office, where of course, she does nothing to interrupt getting work done. (I have yet to make good on my intention to book some office hours at NBTS with Baby Z in tow, and I struggle to do my course prep on a laptop on the living room floor beside her jumper contraption thing. It's pretty difficult to write a coherent lecture in 15-minute blocks of time interrupted more or less regularly by various demands for attention.) And at the hospital vigil? "Where's Holly?"/"I got a sitter." Right. Because it's No Big Thang to first, find a sitter, and second, feel completely comfortable leaving your newborn infant in someone else's hands for an extended and indefinite period of time. WTF. But for TV this is typical. The moment the drama of seeing the hotties morph into hot mamas with their baby bellies stuck onto curiously otherwise unmodified female frames (and then of course, morph smoothly right back to "normal" afterward...no postpartum bods to be found on American television), and the drama of the unexpected public waterbreaking and screaming cursing medicated hospital-practice-dictated birth sequence is done...well, the baby's just not that interesting, and stories about people who function just above zombie level due to the intense energy drain that is actual care of a real infant just don't cut it. So TV babies are magical--they don't need feeding, certainly not breastfeeding, (oh the logistical horror of negotiating that on a TV show, right?), and they don't require any actual interaction on an ongoing basis. A symbolic bottle waved in the air, a symbolic diaper change--and then they disappear from the viewer's sight. You'd forget that they exist, except for the perfunctory references to them here and there in the dialogue. And all this from a show that, really, does a better than usual job on this stuff. SIGH. It makes me want to tear my hair out, but Baby Z's already regularly doing this for me.

And second, I was so totally struck by Walt's line to Jesse re the airplane crash: "I blame the government." The irony of this willingness to pin something like this on the government just blows me away, in this context where Breaking Bad as a narrative wouldn't even exist if Walt's cancer treatments weren't completely inaccessible for financial reasons. There's plenty of personal moral failure here, but really, on some level...I blame the government.

First Day of School!

This morning we woke up to an alarm. For a long time Clare herself has been our morning wake-up service. Her techniques have varied from pouncing to simply picking up midsentence with whatever conversation we were having prior to her falling asleep. It sounds lovely but in reality, it's just as brutal as having an electronic thingy yell at you from the bedside table. Worse, actually. You can turn the electronic thingies off.

But not today, and maybe not ever again. This morning was the First Day of School and from now on, for the next thirteen years, everything will be different. Clare's not so aware of this, but I am. She's a Big Girl now, for realz, even if I still can't break the habit of calling her "baby." From now on, we have a schedule, a place to be, and a place we have to be on time. And this place will be what defines her day: shaping her conversation topics, her interests, her friendships, her moods... And who knows what-all this is going to change? It's the First Day. We'll have to wait and see.

But for now, Brent is back to work after his time off, Clare is at school, and it's me & Baby Z hanging out at home, wondering what our days will look like together as we slide into our own new groove of working-from-home and playing-with-baby. Possibly on Wednesdays we might go put in some office hours at NBTS together--but not today. Today is for contemplating the First Days of School and enjoying the sound of the rain. And doing some laundry. :)