Identities, Cyborgs, Children's Books and Politics

And just like that, my worlds collide. Dissertation, children's books, presidential campaigns. An implosion Donna Haraway could be proud of!

Clare and I sometimes read a book before bedtime titled, Only You. It's a little love poem from a parent to a child, with lovely illustrations of waking up, playing, bathtime, bedtime--the daily routines which are the stuff of life lived together. Some of the pictures are of mommies and babies. Some are of daddies and little kids. Some are white. Some are black. Clare will often point to the mommy and say "mama." She used to point to the baby and say "baby"--now she points and says, "Clare." And then you turn the page, and see the illustration of a black man holding his little boy's hand as they walk through autumn leaves. And Clare points and says, "that's Daddy." And "that's Clare."

What I love about this is that she either doesn't notice at all, or doesn't know that it matters, that these pictures don't look like her or her Daddy. What defines the correspondence is not the identity of the people--it's the relationship depicted between them.

Clare is already beyond identity politics. I wish to God the rest of us really were, and I pray to God that somehow, I can mother her in a way that protects her from being dragged into them.

You're probably tired of hearing about cyborgs and transgressed, permeable, blurred boundaries from me. But all that ontological talk, while sometimes useful, obscures the real motivation for introducing cyborg discourse. The cyborg is, always was, a political figure. The cyborg is meant to signal the hope of breakdown of identity politics. After all, when you have no stable, categorical identity with which to label yourself, you can't really engage in the Us vs. Them of identity politicking. When you know you are both Us and Them...who do you pick a fight with? How do you choose sides?

Haraway writes, “With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical construction, gender, class, and race cannot provide the basis for belief in ‘essential’ unity…Gender, race or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. And who counts as ‘us’ in my own rhetoric? Which identities are available to ground such a potent political myth called ‘us,’ and what could motivate enlistment in this collectivity?” ("Cyborg Manifesto," in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 155). To decode: when you realize that there's nothing essential about the identity of Woman, Blacks, The Poor--a realization easy to come by when you fit into multiple categories at once, since essential identity is presumably a coherent unity, who you really are--then you also realize that there's nothing automatically binding you together with other women, blacks, poor people in some mystical, magical, transcendent understanding. If there's understanding, it's forged through the difficulties of navigating similar social/historical circumstance--the same thing that categorizes you in a lump to begin with. But that understanding must be actively constructed, not assumed. Assuming those essential identities as the political starting point not only accepts the -ism spawned systems which birthed them, it opens the door to what Haraway describes as "endless splitting and searches for a new essential identity" (155).

The cyborg sidesteps this dizzying circle of identity politics with its tautological reasoning and categorical essentialism, because the cyborg knows from the beginning that its identity doesn't fit in the available identity boxes. So: "From the perspective of cyborgs, freed of the need to ground politics in 'our' privileged position of the oppression that incorporates all other dominations, the innocence of the merely violated, the ground of those closer to nature, we can see powerful possibilities... To recognize 'oneself' as fully implicated in the world, frees us of the need to root politics in identification, vanguard parties" (176).

I don't need to be like you to work together with you. I don't need to have the same categorical identity as you to have the same goals. I don't need to feel like we are, in some deep way, the same.

Andrew Sullivan sees Barack Obama as having skipped the dialectics of racial identity politics in this campaign. I said it long ago: he's the cyborg candidate.

But Sullivan says something else, too, something that I've been noticing more and more as the campaigns drag on and on. Identity politics may not be a part of Obama's campaign. But they have become a part of the McCain/Palin campaign.

When I blogged about Joe the Plumber's mythological existence--he's right up there with dragons, ghosties, Tinkerbell, and Santa Claus--this is what I was trying to express. Somehow, Joe the Plumber became the representative of Real America. Imagine--I mean, wow, the unprecedented move of choosing a white man to represent all American citizens. But beyond my knee-jerk gag reflex...the more terrible truth is that Joe the Plumber wasn't really meant to represent all American citizens. Joe the Plumber represents Real America, not all America. The America inside America: the small town values, the pro-America areas of America, the hard-working America, the patriotic America. We will fight for you, Real America. We understand you. We are just like you. As for Barack Obama, we don't know who he is. He has a weird middle name and lived overseas and his black preacher seems pretty pissed about stuff we don't want to talk about and there's that Weather Underground dude back in his hood in Chicago, also. So we are pretty sure he's not like you. And that means he won't be fighting for you.

How effective is it? Well, it's what we're used to. It's what we know: Us vs. Them is a game we get, a language we speak fluently. Tina Graham gets it: "'I never really thought about whether or not that I was racist, or however you want to put it,' said Tina Graham. She fears Obama would focus on African-Americans at the expense of poor white people like herself. 'It's just the fact that I think that he will represent them, and what they want, and what they need. ... They're his people, they're his race.'" (You can listen to the NPR story here.)

Is it racism? Maybe not. Maybe having a black friend saves you from having to claim that shameful label. Maybe it's just, as Sullivan puts it, "the reductio ad absurdum of political appeals based purely on cultural or ethnic identity." It's absurd all right. But it's also powerful.

Don't get me wrong. This sort of divisive identity politicking happens everywhere. Bill Maher trades in it every time he says there are two Americas, one progressive, European country trapped inside this backwards conservative evangelical country (I've heard this statement twice, once on Charlie Rose and once to Jon Stewart, who, to his credit, didn't seem to buy it). The simplistic antagonistic atheism of Maher meets its religious mirror image in the FotF 2012 letter. Despite the ideological gulf, they are indeed mirror images of the Same, mimicking each other in an endless recursion of self- and other-defeating suspicion.

In a presidential campaign that contains both the defeat and the revivification of identity politics, we have a choice. Do we, as a nation, succumb to the tempting, security-blanket familiarity of voting our Identity? Or do we take the huge step of recognizing that we don't need to have the same categorical identity to have the same goal of building together a liveable world, for everyone who lives in it? Can we follow the lead of a politician whose own personal identity, bridging the categories we like to think within, provides a starting point that sidesteps the necessity of Identification for political cooperation, whose campaign has steadily resisted drawing the boundaries between our various American identities that we all wish weren't there?

cyborg, but not Robin Hood. honestly!

Once upon a time, in a land not really that far away, in a country not yet blessed with democracy (but destined to become the birthplace of that fantastic political experiment...uh, erm, or at least, destined to become the hoary forebear of that fantastic political experiment...) and still suffering from the hierarchical power structures in which white male privilege were visibly evident, that is, of course, feudalism...

There was a yeoman who protested the unjust practice of taxation without representation, who saw that the ruthless powers-that-were cared not for the people they were supposed to serve and protect, and with courage and daring, defied those powers in order to serve the people...by robbing from the rich to give to the poor.

Ah, Robin Hood. The Champion of The Redistribution of Wealth. Stay dead, fiendish rogue! We used to enjoy you in our movies and applaud your heroic feats, your stand against injustice and your solidarity with the poor. You used to seem warm and fuzzy and friendly. Damn you, Disney, for making him such a cute little fox! Another example of the out-of-control liberal media attempting their insidious indoctrination... But now we know better. You're no hero in real life. You steal. You take the justifiably earned goods of those who have, to give them to people who did not work to attain them. You skunky villain. Disney should have painted you black with a white stripe down the middle.

Seriously. When did redistribution of wealth become scary? And to whom? And who are you in the narrative if it is?

But finally. Let's be up front about the fact that Obama's comment to Joe the Plumber was not a declaration of government Robin Hood-ism. The plan is not to repo your minivan and give it to the poor family across town. Stop with the uber-defensive reactionary crap--the "don't take my stuff" thing. The point is that there are, still, systemic and structural barriers to success depending on one's starting point. You've got a tougher road to basic economic security and a decent life if you get born poor and black and urban. This matters. The solution is not Robin Hood violent redistribution of wealth--that sort of thing simply props up the economic system that creates the inequity in the first place through its short term fix. And Obama knows that. The Robin Hood villain rhetoric--without the Robin Hood bit, because he is a kind of persistent hero figure in our cultural narrative after all--is a misrepresentation designed to generate fear and distrust. It's so obvious I can't believe I even have to write it.

reasons to hope?

Out of 15 calls made to PA women voters (though I actually spoke to a couple of spouses who seemed willing to engage in conversation):

hangups: 1
polite excuses to hang up: 2
wrong numbers: 2
messages left: 3
Obama supporters: 5 + 1 probable
McCain supporters: 1

The one McCain supporter actually was the most interesting conversation of the night: a Philly resident, he readily identified the NRA/guns as the number one issue that pushed him away from Obama (this was volunteered without prompting) as "Philadelphia isn't really safe and Obama doesn't understand this issue" and, with prompting for any more important issues in deciding his vote, pro-life. He listened very politely while I offered my own pro-life rationale for my Obama support though he didn't want to engage on it. But it was a nice experience for my one phone encounter with a McCain supporter. Interestingly, he identified himself as a Democrat voting for McCain b/c of those issues. Also very interestingly, though perhaps not really relevant, is that his wife initially hung up on me, and he called me back.

But 6 out of 7 actual people on the phone more or less immediately identified themselves as Obama supporters. That's pretty hopeful. Right?

some undisciplined musings on feminism, abortion, and politics: or, why Obama is not a baby-killer

Before we talk about what it means to end a pregnancy, let's talk about what it is to be pregnant. I'm writing from the first person, as always, on this blog--well, as always, anywhere, really, since how else would a person write? But for a long time now I have been a part of that big academic collective hallucination that subjectivity can be somehow dampened if you just try hard enough, so a reminder is always good. But I bring it up now to signal that I am going to be deliberately and directly drawing on my experience of pregnancy with Clare.

Nowadays I like to own the f-word, feminist, in contrast to my early post-Harding days when I still found that word too divisive and scary to use. What I discovered, once I began actually reading some feminists, is that feminism isn't what I had been trained to think it was. But what I stumbled into, with my late entry into the game, is what I've since learned to label "third-wave feminism." To grossly oversimplify, think of first-wave feminists as proclaiming the message "hey dudes, we have brains too--that makes us real people with real rights, so give us the damn vote already and quit staring at our boobs." Second-wave feminists realized, after awhile, that making personhood all-head and no-body was defaulting to the male anthropological paradigm and said, "Look, we don't want your penes. Boobs and wombs are great. We can do and see and know things you poor slobs never will. We are earthy and natural and love it--you want to live in your head, fine; we're happy with our bodies. Long live the goddess!" Third-wave feminism comes along and says, "Um, girls? Look around a sec and notice that we're not identical--not all of us are privileged white chicks who have the luxury of making an epistemological privilege out of having wombs. Yeah, our bodies are different from males and that difference is awesome--but we're also all different from each other, and that's important too."

How does this relate to the topic at hand? I think that the assumptions built into the current, tired abortion discourse are first-wave assumptions: talk of the body as property, talk of the right to privacy to that 'property.' I think that's rubbish philosophically, no matter what kind of traction it gets legally. As I understand it, and actual lawyers who might happen to read this post can elaborate or correct if necessary, the basic legal underpinning to Roe v. Wade: an (at least) implicit right to privacy in the Constitution, applied to one's body parts. The problem for me is simply that I think it's wrongheaded to think of one's body as property--an anthropological assumption built into the legal argument. It's an inherited anthropology that assumes that Mind/Soul is the "I" and body is just the thing the "I" uses to get around in, everyone has one and everyone is entitled to do with it and treat it as he sees fit. In the R v. W. application, the important point is that as long as the fetus is attached to the mother's body, the fetal body is an extension of the maternal body and therefore the "property" of the mother in the same sense her own body originally is and always was. But if our bodies are ourselves (second wave talk, there), dualistic anthropology and body-as-property are rejected.

But what would it mean to be pregnant, if bodies are not property and fetal bodies are not the extension of maternal body-as-property? It's an interesting question and one that preoccupied me quite a bit during my own pregnancy. Not conceiving my own body as my ontological and legal property, I did not conceive Clare's developing body as my property. But was that developing body an extension of my own, or was that body always Clare? Or when and where does the transformation from part-of-me to being-her take place? Notice these are the same questions that always get asked--but asked from a slightly different perspective, the perspective of embodied but bound together creatures, whose ontological boundaries are permeable, blurred and confusing. Yes: are you hearing it? That's cyborg talk. Yes: I am claiming pregnant women are cyborgs.

But what's the point? Well, for one thing, if we could admit that pregnancy is an ontologically confusing category, and stop trying to draw undrawable boundaries about when/how a baby becomes its own person (=when a baby has enough of a brain to justify postulating its own consciousness/self-awareness/personhood???), we might be able to stop wasting time and energy and breath about something that we'll never figure out because we set the terms wrong to begin with. Everyone who wants to draw that line is ignoring the obvious fact that--whether you put it at conception on the basis of potential consciousness/self-awareness/personhood, or at some late stage of fetal development on the basis of postulated consciousness/self-awareness/personhood--that the bodies in question remain bound together and this is important. Not secondary. Not a question of correctly drawing property lines. A matter of survival.

Secondly, I think we could benefit from being forced to admit that if we care about the baby, we also care about the mother, because they are embodied together. Everyone knows that what the mom does, eats, drinks affects the developing body bound to her own in utero. In my experience, this embodied-togetherness lasted quite awhile after Clare's birth as well: we were synched bodily for a year, most obviously through breastfeeding though I suspect there were other manifestations as well.

So hear me on this: I don't think abortions are the kind of decision one makes when deciding how to dispose of personal property. You don't clean out your womb like you clean out your closet. That's not the moral prescription it sounds like in the second person--let me try again. No one cleans out her womb like she cleans out a closet. It's not the same. It's not even a good parallel. The fact that it's the paradigm enshrined in our legal precedent is, IMO, harmful to the discourse. It does not reflect reality. It is not cognizant of what it means to be a human being, of the embodied reality of being human. It is not cognizant of what it means to be a pregnant woman, a special case of bound-together human embodiments.

One way in which direct harm is done to our discourse in in the different paradigms of the woman who chooses abortion at work on each side of the debate. Pro-lifers tend to view the paradigmatic woman as one who chooses abortion for the sake of convenience: my closet is full, I don't like this dress, I'll get rid of it. The language of Roe v. Wade, with its view of human bodies as property, aids the contruction of this rhetorically effective, distorted paradigm. I have written before that I think this is utterly false.

If I am right--and I am at least being true to my own experience--and pregnancy is best considered a bound-together embodied cyborg existence, then the choice to abort is a choice that is best spelled out in double terms: choosing to terminate self and other, because in this strange cyborg existence they are not truly separable. To call this tragedy is to light-heartedly understate the case. I hope this gives some sense of how serious I am when I insist that I do not consider this moral decision-making a matter of abstract "choice" and "rights." It don't even think it's an issue of "equality." It's a matter of living and dying.

But more than being a false construct, a straw (wo)man, I think this paradigm of the convenient abortion is hurtful in that it gives people permission to consider woman as less than reliable moral agents in this situation. This is the basis, I think, of the impulse to legislate--take away this choice because these woman are going to choose wrong and "we" (=the capable moral agents) can't allow that. If we make abortion illegal (and presumably therefore unavailable), then we don't have to just trust and pray that these untrustworthy moral agents will somehow make the right decision. We can coerce the moral decision by making a law about it.

Again, hear me on this: I am not offering a version of right-to-choose based on right-to-privacy. But beyond the question of whether morality can be coerced, and beyond the pragmatic point, often made, that making abortion illegal will not magically make it unavailable but simply more dangerous and unregulated, what's wrong with this position is that it demeans women. It refuses to recognize the embodied fact of the bound-together state of pregnancy, and the undeniable consequence that the mother is the moral decision maker who matters in this strange bound-together cyborg existence of pregnancy. We can recognize this and honor it, or we can deny it, and with our denial, tell women that the cyborg existence of pregnancy makes them temporarily not fully human and therefore not capable moral agents like everyone else. (And ignore the fact that she has 9 months in which to continue, daily, making the moral decisions that are a part of the cyborg fact of pregnancy. Each one is its own affirmation or denial of the other within.)

This is what I hear Obama saying--though of course, without the cyborg rhetoric. Still, what I heard at the Saddleback Forum was a recognition that a pregnant woman is a human being in an extraordinary, singular, ontologically confusing state of human existence ("above his pay grade" to suss out when a baby becomes a distinct person). She is herself, she is another; another is within, another is part, another is her. Our laws can recognize that no one but the cyborg mother is in a position to make the decision about how to respond to this other, or our laws can deny it. But legally denying reality does not change this moral reality. Stephen Colbert can choose to reside in Fantasyland for ideological reasons; the rest of us don't have the luxury.

The articles which raise alarms about Obama as on record as extremist pro-choice miss this basic fact just as surely as Roe v. Wade does. We can legislate "no" till we're blue in the face; it doesn't change the fact that it is a woman who lives in the constant, strange cyborg existence of pregnancy, and who faces a million daily decisions about her cyborg body(ies) as a result. Supporting laws which recognize this de facto reality get him labeled extremist. I think a better label would be realist. A woman determined to terminate a pregnancy can do so with an abortion--or she can go through 9 months of legally coerced pregnant cyborg existence, undermining the developing other within, consciously or unconsciously, through the millions of daily decisions that can never be coerced no matter how many laws are passed, because truly nurturing this other requires pro-active, affirming behaviors that one can only assume a woman wanting an abortion is unwilling/unable to provide. And that's just during pregnancy; who knows--and who cares???--what happens to this vulnerable human other after the formal but incomplete separation of childbirth.

And here, despite all the critique he gets as some kind of 'naive idealist,' is where Obama's pragmatism comes into play. We need a law that recognizes the incontrovertible moral agency of women in this situation. And if we're truly interested in promoting an outcome of life for these cyborg humans known as pregnant woman/fetuses, then we need to make it possible, desirable, and beneficial for these cyborgs to choose it--to celebrate their cyborg existence. This is the argument you'll find on the Pro-Life, Pro-Obama site of the Matthew 25 Network.

My apologies for the unruly aspects of this post. I know my prose is unpolished and my argument a little unorganized and I truly wish that I could do more justice to a topic that I've put off for so long precisely because it is so important. But this is here and now, and this is the best I can do for today.

Please be kind.

Top 10 Things Palin Should've Said

to prompt line, "You are way hotter in person."

off the top of my head:

You're not.
I'm also way cooler.
Too bad it's not a beauty pageant I'm competing in.
I changed my hair.
(please feel free to contribute. As Kate Eicher tweeted, there are a million witty possibilities)

But I am of the opinion that the only effective rejoinder (politically, not humorously) would have been some variation of "I'm way smarter in person, too." It's what I would have said.

mythical creatures: The American People, The Middle Class, and Joe the Plumber

My dissertation topic is the posthuman, which, rather unsurprisingly, has a certain kinship with other monstrous and mythical creatures: vampires, Frankenstein's monster, aliens, cyborgs and robots. So I spend a lot of time thinking about mythical creatures--concepts and images we carry around in our collective imagination, which we know don't really exist, but still serve in some sense to shape and define our view of ourselves and our world.

So, preoccupied with such, maybe it should have been unsurprising that I noticed a certain number of mythical creatures pop up in the debate last night.

The American People. The monolithic American People does not exist. Don't task me for my grammar; the verb is singular because the concept is singular. And that's what makes it false. I'm American. If you're reading this, you're probably American, because I don't have a huge int'l readership. But does this accident of our individual births somehow fuse us into one conceptual entity, one monolithic national identity, which can then be called upon reliably to display its uniform attitudes, desires, way of life, dreams? No. Should it? No. Has it ever? Probably not.

The Middle Class. IMO, just another version of the above. In the mythical land of The American People, The American People are Middle Class. At least, The American People that count are The Middle Class. Everytime I hear that phrase I want to clutch at my head and shout to the heavens, "what is so wrong with caring about the poor??? why is it off-limits for a politician to say, "poor people need some help"?" But beyond that, even, the point is that there is no The Middle Class in the sense we toss that phrase around anyhow. What is middle class? Does it mean growing up not worrying that you won't get enough to eat, but always with the background knowledge that there's not really enough money, to the point where in high school you were the kid who never asked your parents for $5 for the movies? Or is it growing up with enough security that money was never an issue, not even a background one? Obama's line of 250,000 sounds comfortably wealthy to me; but that just raises the question...am I really middle class?

Joe the Plumber. Sure, I know he's a real guy. I heard him on the phone with Katie Couric and there's an NPR story about him and everything. But Joe the Plumber, symbolic representative of The Middle Class American People, DNE. He is a mythical creature. And he does not represent me, at least not in any way that takes into account differences that make a difference. I am very, very tired of being put into categories--social or philosophical--in which my humanity is represented by white maleness if it is to count. And I bet there are some others, as American as I am and as American as the real Joe the plumber, who feel the same.

Americans are not adequately represented by a white dude.

But The American People is a white dude.

3BT

1. tight hug round the neck from a crying toddler because you're the mommy who is the source of all comfort, even when you're the mommy who said "no" and made her cry in the first place.
2. arguing with Dad about theological stuff without the tightness in my tummy that usually comes with disagreeing with people I love and admire and want to think well of me. breakthrough! love you Dad! thanks for arguing!
3. Brent making me margaritas while waiting patiently for me to 1) quit talking on the phone and 2) quit the computer.

bonus: breakthrough realization on the dissertation today! yay yay yay!

kniftty

If you had a choice about it, what amazingly marvelous handknitted Christmas gift would you most like to receive? Are you a Dumbledore who fervently wishes for warm socks? Or are you like my mei-mei, who wants legwarmers for her arms?

we want Barabbas

Seriously? "Terrorist" and "bomb Obama"? People are shouting "Kill him" at Palin rallies?

How literally are we going to take that misguided Christ-reference in the old McCain ad, anyway? All the way to "Crucify him, crucify him"?

Fridays I detest

random

who's that chick? didn't anyone ask if she were a confirmed Episcopalian? :)

disturbing thoughts.

Yesterday I heard about the most upfront racist statement I've ever heard on the radio. No, I wasn't listening to some kind of shock jock and the n-word wasn't used. But the sentiment was palpably racist.

"I never really thought about whether or not that I was racist, or however you want to put it," said Tina Graham. She fears Obama would focus on African-Americans at the expense of poor white people like herself. "It's just the fact that I think that he will represent them, and what they want, and what they need. ... They're his people, they're his race." (You can listen to the NPR story here.)

While looking up that hyperlink, I was confronted with this story on the NPR homepage: "Searching for a President 'Just Like Us.'" This story is less about implicit racism than the populist appeal at work in both campaigns, but the title arrested my attention; for this is exactly what is at work in the aversion to Obama expressed in the above quote. He's not like me, this VA voter is saying. He is Them. And They are something to be afraid of--what They want and need is different from what We want and need, and we better make sure We elect someone who's going to work for Us. Not Them.

But what's been disturbing me today is not so much the spectre of implicit and unacknowledged racism or all the talk about "the Bradley effect" and how that may undermine Obama come election day.

What's disturbing me today is the realization that, for my own part, I dislike McCain because I recognize that McCain is Not Like Me. (He's hawkish, I have a peace dove tattooed on my foot. Etc.) Now, I hasten to assure myself, "Self, I have good reasons for being Me. So it's okay, there's nothing wrong here. It's a matter of principle and thoughtful rationale, not knee-jerk not-like-me-ness." I'd like to believe myself. But then there's Sarah Palin. Who is also very, very much Not Like Me.

And Obama is, perhaps surprisingly, Like Me. ("professorial!" oh, that warms the cockles of my heart, people!)

good cyborg, bad cyborg

not pictured: Sarah Palin. But Jon Stewart says she is (check out the link, 3:30-4:00 minutes in).

Pro-Life, Pro-Obama

Not to distract from the riveting Palin, but check out the new link under "politics and religion" on the sidebar. Matthew 25 Network has launched the site. Also, I've entered a quote from the home page on Ameritocracy.com, which you'll find on the widget; if you want to vote on accuracy/relevance just click on the link below it to get to ameritocracy & sign up.

Veep debate lists and tallies

Like my liveblogging of the RNC speech, this post should not be considered serious commentary on the candidates or their respective policies. It will be sarcastic, disrespectful, probably snide. I'm not trying to be fair; I'm trying to express some incredulity and outrage on this, my personal blog, which functions as a useful outlet for, well, incredulity and outrage. My "partisan" Obama leanings will be evident because I ate the arugula a long time ago...and, since having turned into one by virtue of my East Coast over-education, I just kinda like pointy-headed elitists. So there's the disclaimer: read this as an attempt at comedy, the kind of "laugh so you don't weep" kind, and don't get your panties all in a wad, or your knickers all in a twist (if you happen to be from NZ). And finally, please consider these lists and tallies as works in progress, and feel free to contribute.

Tallies

1 blown kiss
2 winks
no observable hip waggles (podium in the way)
4 come-hither eyes, then I stopped counting
1 sexy grin (at least)

nuke-you-ler: at least 6 times.

Folksy Talkin' List

can I call ya Joe [six pack not included]?
darn right
betcha
Joe Six Pack hearts Hockey Mom (I know that's not verbatim)
heckuvalot
darn right
"the tax thing"
bless their hearts*
'em
Main Streeter like me
drill baby drill
Man (come on people: can't we all just admit not all of humanity is male, or is that too much to ask, really? and for the record, Biden followed suit on that question, using the term "manmade". Argh, argh, argh. Though I would enjoy pinning the cause of global warming on solely the male half of humanity, I don't think that would really be scientifically accurate.)
say it ain't so Joe
doggone it


Notable Phrases and Unbelievable Comments

"No, it isn't [correct] but I'm still on the 'tax thing'..."
apparently she can use the word "raping" casually (Anna's observation)
John McCain knows how to win a war (an inside job on Vietnam?)
"the middle class where Todd and I have been all our lives"--um...yeah, I know tons of people who live in governor's mansions. (Actually, I do kind of know someone who used to, now that I think about it...)
can't allow other countries to pollute "more than America will stand for"--wow, well, the whole planet just got dropped in the trash bin, or doesn't she know that America is the world's #1 polluter?
"Talibannie" (the diminutive form of Taliban, apparently. perhaps technically only refers to the young'uns, or maybe just the hotties. Some women just have a thing for beards, after all...)
and my favorite: "where I would lead...with his agenda."

Most Often Heard Outburst from Middle Class Living Room TV Audience

how many get out of jail free cards does she get to play? can't there be a limit to how many times she can redirect a question on anything she doesn't like to energy policy? Gwen Ifill, I demand that you do something about this! Why aren't you doing something??? Oh...I get it...unlimited get-out-of-jail-free was a precondition of the debate, wasn't it...:(

miscellany

Ever played that game where you make everything funny (movie titles, book titles, fortune cookies) by adding the phrase "in bed" after it? I've decided it would be great discipline for everyone involved in any kind of public discourse to add the phrase "according to whom?" after every assertion. It might make us more aware of ourselves--our limitations, our assumptions, our presumptions, our false characterizations, our general epistemic laziness.

***

Clare's learned how to tattle: after I returned to Dallas from Abilene, she told on her Grandmom for taking away her duckies in the bathtub (they were soaps, and she was about to rub them in her eyes). Imagine piteous toddler voice: "Grandmom TOOK soapy duckies. Clare sooo SAD."

***

Had a successful dissertation day today: a section that gave me so much trouble months ago that I moved on without finishing it, leaving it in a mess, is now in a more-or-less final shape after incorporating an insight I gleaned while teaching the ACU Cyborgs & Olive Trees class. Current goal: get this chapter presentable enough to send off to my advisor by AAR, and after AAR's presentation on transhumanism and the body, turn my attention (finally!) to the theology part of this theology and science dissertation.

***

I realized tonight while talking to my sister that I'd actually be a LOT happier if I could feel some pride in Sarah Palin as a respectable adversary. Part of me would be very satisfied to see her finally do well on the national stage--to give some solid answers, not just insults and roundabout BS. It would undoubtedly suck for the Obama campaign if she did. Nonetheless, part of me--you know, that part--would feel quite satisfied to see her justify her presence on the national stage, rather than continue to occupy it on the basis of someone else's whim, (um, I mean, calculated strategic choice based on her symbolic value to certain demographics).


***

I read an interesting article recently on Obama and the infanticide charge that keeps appearing in those blasted youtube comments that I find so ridiculous. I don't agree with everything in the article, but it does make the point that the difference between the law as it stood and the bills Obama voted against hang on viability; and that makes the ethical situation parallel to end-of-life situations. To call Obama a supporter of infanticide is like accusing people with living wills and DNRs of being suicidal, or calling family members who make the decision to remove medical support murderers. (Of course, there are people who say stuff like that, I guess.) The bottom line, though, is that this is one of those gray-area disputes misleading crammed into very black-and-white categories. Is it really moral to "save" a non-viable life? I find this the wrong point for drastic intervention in any case: if we could reduce unwanted pregnancy with preventative measures like birth control and effective sex ed, if we could reduce the perceived necessity of abortion by making it possible to carry unwanted pregnancies to term without shame and unbearable economic/social consequences, then we will have intervened at points which are actually effective for averting this tragedy.

***

I've started re-reading books from my Brit Novel course back in my Harding days. It's an interesting exercise, one that proves that I was truly clueless back then. I didn't notice at the time how many of the protagonists were women: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Excellent Women, A Passage to India (there were more books, we did a book a week, I think, so the pattern may not hold all the way through--I'm not sure how to verify, since I no longer have the syllabus). I'm also horror-struck in my re-reading of Jane Eyre: it begins with a scene I can only read as a euphemistic rape scene and I know I didn't see that when I was in college. But what really threw me was the character of St. John: reminiscent of the missions type I dated, the result of which was a two-year depression and a whole hell of a lot of emotional baggage. Thank God Jane knew enough to run screaming away back to Rochester! Then, of course, Wide Sargasso Sea retells it all through the eyes of Bertha, the mad wife in the attic; and then Rochester's no prize either.

Excellent Women is much funnier now that I'm a theologian married to an Episcopalian almost-priest; I even get the John Henry Newman jokes and the references to the Oxford Movement along with all the chuckles about the indispensability of excellent women with their ready-to-hand cups of tea.

***

Had sincere intentions of blogging more about ACU Summit but honestly, I can't remember any of the things I had mentally tucked away to blog about at this point. Except that, it's wonderful to return to a place where everyone seems to remember you fondly and says outrageously nice things about/to you. Like "she's one of my favorite people." Whaaaa? Really? The gathered-up collective ego-boost from such outrageousness is going to keep me going all the way to next year.

***

Looking forward to the arrival of Anna and Sylva tomorrow! Toddlers Unite! (Mothers, cower?)

update

Go visit Feminary and read awhile. She is always consistently interesting but her last three posts raise some major questions, and quite coincidentally, dovetail with the issues I've been thinking about and discussing the last few days: white privilege, "otherizing" Obama, and the censorship (or attempted obliteration from existence?) of women clergy. Wow. Are we experiencing some weird hormonal synching up of our mental flows?

Clare and I fly back home tomorrow after a couple days hanging out with Granddad and Grandmom and Unkie Brandon. Hopefully, I'll be able to blog a bit about ACU's Summit after arriving. There was some impressive stuff happening there this year, not all of which I was able to attend (sometimes parallel sessions suck! how do you choose btw classes on violence, women & politics, and racism & white privilege? or when friends are teaching simultaneous classes?).

And a shout out to the Kendall-Balls for their hospitality and excellent scotch. Gracias!!! Hope to return the favor someday.

just asking

1. What one personal thing do you like most about Governor Palin?
2. What one personal thing do you dislike most about Governor Palin?
3. What one political thing do you like most about Governor Palin?
4. What one political thing do you dislike most?
5. Favorite line from convention speech? Least favorite?
6. Most revealing or significant Q&A exchange with Gibson?

messed up all around

The real measure of entrenched sexism in our society and political discourse?

My own unquenchable desire to mock Palin's prom hair.

Sarah Palin: No Friend to Children or Adults with Disabilities.

h/t to Jennifer Baker (via facebook).

don't miss it

Buried in the comments of the supermom post is a link to a legitimate article (as opposed to my personal meanderings) on Palin as supermom. Don't miss it. (Thanks, Steven!)

"Whine Not."

unprecedented

I haven't confessed this to too many people, especially since moving to NJ and spending time in NYC. But I have never felt the kind of intense, personal, emotional impact most people seem to have in response to 9/11. It's not that I'm unaware of the horror of it, or the extent of the tragedy for those involved. But something about the insistence on grieving pushed me firmly away, emotionally. I resisted being drawn into it. Part of it is probably just my personality--I think abstractly, in terms of systems and patterns and ideas, and not people. And part of it may have just been some kind of perverse coping.

But today after dropping Clare off at "school," as we call it, I switched off our favorite "Music Together" cd and tuned the radio to 93.9, one of NYC's NPR stations. And listened to part of the memorial ceremony, and some of the commentary. And what hit me was a keen sense of the emptiness that must have been present in those last moments, when everyone realized the craziness was past the point of no return, and I wondered: could anyone feel the sense of religious fulfillment being sought after in the act? Isn't there something about the nature of that deed that would belie the sought-after goal, even for the most zealous, the most committed? I can't really know. But I hope so. I hope that God has arranged this creation such that when such confusion about who God is and wants from us, God's own creatures, leads to horrors, that even the most confused experience a moment of revelation about their actions.

It took seven years to feel something, and in the end, I don't even know what this emotion is.

how it works

After Palin's acceptance speech, which I watched live and then reviewed on youtube while writing the supermom post, I was irked and curious enough about her statements re Obama's policy positions that I put them on ameritocracy.com to see how they would get rated for accuracy & relevancy. In particular, the one that really got me was the statement that Obama didn't want to produce more energy to meet the nation's needs. That seemed so ludicrous that it almost didn't need to be considered, but then again, I thought, she was addressing people who were probably ready to believe it, and (like me) not able to spend the time trying to research what evidence might undergird that conclusion, or search out what Obama might have said to support or belie it.

So here are the results: "America needs more energy. Our opponent is against producing it." Accuracy: .6 out of 5; Relevancy: 2.8 out of 5. There are 15 votes so far, and one assessment contrasting Palin's statement with news sources quoting Obama on the offshore drilling included in his energy plan.

I've added Ameritocracy to the sidebar of the blog, and a widget featuring the quote of the day. Anyone can join, and add quotes, vote regarding a quote's accuracy and/or relevancy, and add responses challenging, supporting, assessing or giving context for a quote. Users build a reputation that reflects the community's consensus on their reliability, as do the sources.

Palin's a bit low right now at 2.6 out of 5.

The more people who join, the more informed the communal judgment is. Or you may be like me, rather unsure of your own ability to make an informed judgment about the reliability of political statements in most cases, and use the site by adding quotes and benefitting from the accumulated judgments of others. I expect I'll be relying on this site more and more, as the campaigns get underway.

link

The Hermits have an excellent post on Palin's record and policies.

SP: Supermom vice-Pres

Sarah Palin's acceptance speech was followed up by another night of so much Mother-worship that, if you didn't look around and see the obvious white male presence of the RNC, you might have mistaken it for a grand coven of Wiccan goddess-worshippers or something. Seriously; Sarah Palin's aggrandizing of the hockey mom, PTA persona was underscored by Cindy McCain's blunt assertion that nothing else she's done in her life has fulfilled her like being a mother; and the star of John McCain's biography video was Roberta McCain.

I was already convinced there was something going on with all the mom-talk Palin was doing in her acceptance speech. I know that part of what happens in these speeches is a sort of introduction of oneself as person and candidate, and that Palin had a lot of this to do, given that she'd been under wraps at the convention until that point, and all the true and untrue things swirling in the media with regard to her family. Even so: the hockey mom line grated.

But now that the role of Mother has been so elevated in successive RNC discourse, I am all the more firmly convinced that this is simply the only way that this voting constituency can even comprehend strong women. Palin has to present herself as "just your average hockey mom..." because that is only category in which women are allowed to be legitimately aggressive, and is attached to the only sphere (the home) in which women are allowed to be leaders. Palin has to distance herself from the frightening feminists, like Hillary Rodham Clinton (who may also be mothers but who don't run for political office by listing their wombs as assets), by making her political activity an extension of her mothering: "...and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids public education even better" flows smoothly into "and when I ran for city council..."

There are many other things that bug me about the deliberate positioning of Palin as mom, including my feeling that Palin's children are being used as political props in the same way that the adopted daughters of McCain and friend were used the night before (and Bridget was, again, made the object of that repeated narrative last night). I've already blogged about that, so that's all I'll say about it here.

Laura's expressed her reservations about Palin on her blog. This is less a critique of Palin as potential VP than it is a question about her priorities as a mother. Normally this might be out of bounds--certainly people are playing the sexism card about it (Guiliani's comment prior to her acceptance speech, and Carly Fiorina's complaint to Charlie Rose, for examples)--but given that Palin is billing herself as Supermom, I think it's actually quite fair.

Now, don't read me as saying that I don't think any woman, or any mother, should consider accepting a nomination for vice president (or any analogous type job). But mothers who do take on those responsibilities have the obligation to make sure that their kids are adequately cared for by someone--dad, grandmom, nanny...someone. Because it's simply not true that the mom can do it all. If Sarah Palin would come clean about that--that there will be others taking on the role of primary caretaker--then the criticisms of her mothering priorities would lose a great deal of force. Of course, she can't; because to come clean about that would mean walking away from the supermom image.

And this brings me to my biggest complaint. Sarah Palin made the pseudo-feminist claim in her acceptance speech that every woman can walk through every door of opportunity. And to that I say, bullshit. Forget the obvious example of poverty stricken female heads of households who are scrabbling for enough wages to put food on the table and pay the rent, let alone childcare. I'm talking about me: affluent (well, you know, relatively), educated, white, privileged, for whom opporknockity tunes twice an hour. And I say, bullshit. The Supermom myth is one of the most pernicious lies about women that we tell ourselves and get told, and here's Sarah Palin lying to us all on a national stage: I'm just a hockey mom who can raise her five kids and be Vice-Pres too.

Well, I'm just a mom of one toddler, and all I'm trying to do is maintain my sanity, take semi-regular showers, and write a dissertation. I've been trying to achieve this for two years now, and so far, my daughter's healthy and happy, I've not showered today, and I'm still writing the same chapter of the dissertation I was two years ago when she was born.

Oh, and the sanity thing is questionable; I'm starting therapy soon.

Why? Because quite frankly, I am tortured at every turn with guilt. Supermom taunts me. I should be able to mother my toddler, feed her nutritiously, stimulate her intellect and curiousity by constant interaction, keep my house decently clean, cook dinner every night, look beautiful, lose those last torturous 12 pounds I'm still carrying, support my husband in whatever way he needs, be involved in church and in other people's lives and have friends, AND enjoy a successful academic career. I should be, because I am a smart and capable and strong woman, and this is what smart capable strong women do: they do it all, without breaking a sweat. Because women are not only innate nurturers, they are natural multitaskers as well. Well, I suck at all that, and because I can't kick the feeling that I should be able to do it, I constantly just feel like a loser. I'm a bad mom, because I can't do the ideal stay-at-home-mom thing the way it should be done. I'm a terrible student, because I'm not making any visible progress and my committee probably has forgotten I even exist. I'm a rotten wife, because I'm so bummed and guilt-ridden and exhausted that I don't want to go out or have fun or do anything other than stay at home, have a glass of wine and spent a few hours asleep trying to forget how bad I feel about everything. And I no longer sleep so well.

Sarah Palin's use of the hockey mom image as a major part of her public persona is therefore pissing me off, because I know it's a big fat lie. And instead of being able to see a woman on the national stage as a triumph for American women, I am experiencing it as a betrayal. Sarah Palin's carefully constructed hockey mom image may reassure those voters who have no category for strong women other than "mom." But in pandering to those who are unwilling to see women as simply other human beings, free to follow any number of possible paths through life, she has also condemned women who are struggling to liberate themselves from the tyranny of unmeetable expectations placed on them by the Supermom.

live blogging Palin at the RNC

**NB: this is belated because Brent's laptop is not on internet, had to retype it all on my desktop this morning.

Giuliani: "how dare they ask if she will have enough time with her children--they would never ask this of a man"--fair point--but unfortunate cut to Cindy McCain holding Palin baby...irony? of course not.

cancellation of the intro video? whaaaa? no maudlin scenes of childhood and gummy music? what on earth for? what's in there? who wants to bet some unscrupulous person gets hold of it and makes a big splash?

No introduction...Giuliani barely mentions her before going back to McCain and then bam! There she is on stage.

how many shots of Bristol Palin can we get? should I be keeping a tally? let's start here at 1.

BP2

BP3

Brent notes catcalls in audience.

she hasn't started speaking yet...still saying "thank you."

hey, good lookin' man she caught there.

"I will be honored to accept your nomination"...you fool. I wouldn't touch it with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole.

BP 4

BP 5

other kid 1

BP 6

baby 4

She does speak well. She's got some edge.

BP 5

getting the slogans in: country first.

wow, MUST she emphasize the word MAN so strongly? "he's a MAN." is this some subliminal message like, "don't worry folks, you're not really voting for a woman"?

fist mom ref: "as a mother of one of those troops"...oldest son Trask gets his first shot.

...extended mom riff...

introduces her whole family: girls stand up to beauty queen wave at cam, boys stay seated. all part of the RNC daughter pawn strategy?

emphasis on "perfectly beautiful" baby boy Trig a little heavyhanded IMO. I don't disagree; I don't think Down's is a reason to abort, esp. considering how many false positives those diagnostic tests get. Just don't like the way the RNC trend of showcasing one's offspring as evidence of one's superior virtue is continuing with Palin.

BP 6

baby

short resume of hubby: something about snow racing? who cares, let's just get him on camera, the hottie. met in high school, "still my guy." Yeesh.

"every woman can walk through every door of opportunity"? really? just not get paid as well, but we better not whine about it? (and what about that teen mom halfway house whose budget you slashed--they don't have a door to walk through because now they don't have a house.)

hmmm..shot of boy not in uniform. other son? [no--turns out to be BP's fiance]

small town, working class, I'm one of you, so is John McCain...

here it is! "average hockey mom" followed by PTA ref in one breath!

it gets better! a hockey mom joke! "what's the diff btw a hockey mom and a pitbull? lipstick!" great! here's another: what's the diff btw a hockey mom and a VP? credentials?

Okay, NOW we're finally getting to making a case for mayoral experience as exec experience, and cred for VP. AFTER spending how much quality time on SP as MOM? what's more important, that she's a mom or used to be a mayor and is now a governor? is there a reason we lead with the MOM bit and not the professional cred? (Oh believe me, I think there is.)

crowd chanting "Sarah." Is Palin too hard to say? Or do we insist on being on a first name basis with ALL our women politicians? ah well. it's not like their last names are really their own anyway, right? so the presumptive first name basis really doesn't show a condescending familiarity in place of respect, after all, right?

who is that? protester led out by security?

Obama slam. I'm one of you, McCain is one of you, the other guy sucks because he said a mean thing about you in CA (guns and religion line, very unfortunate. I guess an NRA member has special contempt for someone who would think clinging to guns is a bad thing).

MAN, again. "he's the same MAN..." this is so not an accident. very clever. disturbing.

"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment though some in the media take this as lack of experience"--crowd boos that naughty liberal lefty media for far too long. she's just standing at the podium while the crowd boos. cut it off, SP! you don't want to stand there the sole object on stage with a bunch of booing. uncomfortable.

what is this weird accent? Alaskan? it's got this down-homey twang that should be Southern but isn't. (reminds me of that article on Texas accents I read a few years back that noted a study that length of residence in TX had nothing to do with strength of TX accent; loyalty to identity as Texan did, and cited GW as case in point.)

camera catches woman in audience mouthing to neighbor: "I love her."

Why is Mount Rushmore in background while she refers to fighting the "good ol' boys?" I'm sure it's an accident but that is just hilarious!

ah, the luxury jet. you know, if I were in the position of having to divest myself of such an inconvenient object, I would certainly choose the people's way: eBay. so much better than that classist method of parking your unwanted junk in your front yard and haggling...

other proof that she's no elitist: drives herself to work, fired the gubernatorial personal chef. kids regretted that. good line: mentions fam again and also implies that she continues to cook family dinner after all the governing nonsense is done for the day.

uses the above as smooth transition into her record on budget; defends her use of veto power to control "wasteful spending" (like that Covenant House for teen moms thing, I suppose.)

now energy independence: the natural gas pipeline as first step to independence from foreign sources of oil. energy is cast as a SECURITY issue, not environmental one--an American issue, not a global one. Oh, and the tragedy of Gulf Coast hurricanes is that they make us more dependent on foreign oil. (how about, um, deaths and devestation and homelessness?)

"they keep telling us drilling won't solve all our problems, as if we didn't know that"--well we know drilling won't solve all our problems, but there's not reason not to do it in the meantime? what? was that supposed to be a logical argument?

Obama as Moses slam. dudes (and dudette), I would stay away from painting your opponent as divinely inspired and powerful. but that's just me. maybe it really does incite some kind of self-righteous rage against supposed Democat idolatrousness. I mean, after all, we all know we're supposed to be worshiping the FLAG, not some guy.

"Our opponent" is against producing more energy???

Victory in Iraq is within sight???

Obama wants to raise taxes? Why not just out with it and call him a liar?

Boo! Hiss! crowd says, whatever you do, don't take MY $$. bottom line voters.

MAN alert: "chosen the right MAN."

"the American Presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery"--she got applause for this line--WTF does that even refer to? Obama as hero of Bildungsroman?

"only one MAN has fought for you in places where winning means survival and defeat mean death." oh, is this a criterion for Presidency? have the rules changed, the loser gets shot or something?

MAN. MAN. fellow.

God.

Evil.

Ah, POW story.

[pause to note my gratitude that shots of family, even BP, seem to have ceased. Thanks be to God.]

MAN.

Thank you and God bless America. Just once, I would love to see a politician break out of that xenophobic prayer formula and ask that God bless the whole damn world. Or all people. Or all creation. Or something, but all of that something and not just our petty little piece of it.

Why is she still all alone up there? She looks abandoned.

finally here comes the fam...now she's holding baby. I wish I felt like that were a triumphant thing, but I just feel like it diminishes her and every other woman to "mom AND."

BP holding hands with boy. Boy chewing gum.

Finally, here's McCain. Hug. Of course, you can't shake hands with a woman. Seemed awkward though.

Catcalls.

last line of night, John McCain: "and what a beautiful family." why? because that's the most important thing about her.

what I don't want to be when I grow up...

...A daughter of the Republican party.

I'm not talking about Bristol, either, though it pains me that the one thing NOT being considered is what her own desires and goals for her life might be. That doesn't mean I think she should consider aborting; but it does mean that her parents' assurances that she will marry the father of her baby shortcuts around the complicated issues of what her (and his) wishes might be, and any pragmatic issues attending a shotgun teen wedding. (blog post in the making, why all the discourse on Palin as mother pisses me off)

No, I'm talking about how I saw two other daughters paraded in public just now--silently, not even allowed their own voice--as props for establishing the beyond-divine goodness of the wife of the candidate for President. I'm very unsure how this is relevant to the Presidential race, unless it is a strategy for proving that by-association-John-is-holier-than-Barack. It's a great thing to rescue a baby from neglect and statistically probable death; believe me, I admire that with a fervor that is more than theoretical. And I'm willing to grant that there's nothing trumped up about this story of Cindy McCain snatching these children from the final embrace of the Grim Reaper. But is the quid-pro-quo getting dragged out onto a national stage to be the poster child for someone else's upstanding moral character? The final straw was waiting for this girl to speak, and at the end, HER story was READ by her father, whom she continued to gaze up at adoringly, rather reminiscent of the adoring gazes Cindy mutely gives John while standing at his side on stage. Appropriate, I guess, for a story in which she stars purely as a passive object from start to finish--helpless baby grown up into powerless pawn. Why do I suddenly feel like I am at a CofC devo listening to the mediated testimony of a girl to a mixed audience? There are no scriptures preventing the public speaking of a female at a political convention that I know of, (unless, well, we want to consider the RNC a de facto ekklesia?) Why am I subjected to yet another image of pliant American feminity as the ideal?

But maybe I'm just steaming because the woman who did address the RNC just prior to the daughter debacle kept referring over and over to her "fellow man." Or maybe that's just knowing your audience.

Perfect Pre-Prandial rePast:

Pancakes and Pickles.

Big Daddy Church

In a few minutes I will begin the task of prying Clare away from her beloved Dora and getting her dressed. Most days this can be tricky but today I know that I just have to say the magic words: "big daddy church."

See, she loves church. And, lucky girl, she has two churches to love now. Last week, we took the train into NYC and then hopped on the A to Brooklyn. And all the way she talked about going to the Brooklyn church. She told total strangers she was going to the Brooklyn church. She talked about Ira and especially Sophia, her five-year-old hero and idol. She talked about going to class. She even gave a spontaneous and only slightly garbled rendition of a song I recognized from the CD of class songs.

So today we'll get dressed and instead of a long train ride, we'll walk across the lawn to Calvary. She'll hold my hand and drag me along in her excitement, and we'll stop and say hi to the fish on our way to her classroom. Later I'll pick her up and bring her in for Eucharist, and we'll go up to the rail and she'll point and exclaim "Daddy! there's Daddy!" while I try to shush her. Then we'll sit back down and she'll look around in wonder at the large, beautiful space surrounding her, and be awed into silence by the organ music that still entrances her with its volume and grandness. And after church, we'll go out on the lawn and she'll see Cimi, whom I think she has a crush on, and she'll try to catch Martha the cat, who knows well enough by now to stay, if not out of sight, at least out of reach.

Then we'll walk back across the lawn, "following the squares," and we'll eat a quick lunch and then it's time for a nap.

the "big house"

view of backyard from hammock: Calvary Church in the background, Clare is making her "mud soup" in foreground.

another view from hammock, sans Clare's al fresco dining creations

view of backyard from back door steps.

view to the left from back door steps: Clare's sandbox, my Honduras hammock & Clare, playing in the dirt in front of the sandbox. Some dirt is just better than others.

the sun room. still a little unfinished but lovely even so. my favorite room in the house, especially in the mornings, or when it rains.

view of LR through sun room's French doors.

fireplace in living room. still need more books to display in the lawyer's case on the mantel, but Brent took all the cool old books to his office, and I figure a collection of battered RAH paperbacks from the 60's won't exactly cut it.

our new sofa & loveseat in LR


dining room.

mice, non-Newtonian solids, and Time

Exterminator visit today; more poison traps in basement. Some of those in the kitchen cabinets had not been touched, others, the bait was entirely gone. But since Brent and Cimi sealed up most of the holes around the pipes a couple weeks back, we're hoping that that will make a difference.

Yesterday I tried out First Art's recipe for silly putty. (Here it is: 4 T liquid starch, 8 T Elmer's white school glue, food coloring. Mix together and let set 5 minutes, then knead into putty.) It totally worked, though I was initially highly doubtful and in fact was planning to throw the strange, stringy mass away but it felt so weird in my fingers I kept messing with it and eventually realized that it was getting kneaded into silly putty despite my doubts. Clare loves it. Last night it was "green goo" but that morphed this morning into "googly." So pleased with myself I had to call my mother, who, as a former chemistry teacher, appreciates that sort of thing more than normal people.

I can't believe it's August; I need to plan for Brent's birthday, and also pull out my notes for the ACU Lectureship class in September and start working on getting my mind back on it. (I probably also need to think about finding a place to stay during Lectureship...oh how I hate logistical details.) It's amazing how these summer days can seem almost frustratingly long and lazy and yet there's still not enough time to really get things done. I think this is probably the result of overindulgence in procrastination.

So I've decided to reform some of my counterproductive ways: eat breakfast, put in my contacts (glasses are a liability around Clare nowadays, plus, it makes me feel less sloppy--even though I'm still just as sloppy, it's just a mental trick), do yoga during naptime, and make sure that Clare and I do at least one major learning-type activity each day, whether it's music or art or whatever, and lots of outside self-directed play (she loves digging in the dirt nowadays; a couple days ago she made "mud soup" which then turned into "rice and beans" as it got thicker).

We also have some pics of the house which I'll put up in another post, and some of the backyard, which is still gorgeous even though the lilies and the hostas are no longer in bloom.

miscellaneous news

A couple days ago Clare looked at my armpit and said, "Mommy grow flowers!"

We've bought a sofa. I can't wait till Wednesday when it will magically show up on our doorstep. Microfiber, I love you.

Mouse #9 this morning.

Porn_website28 is now following me on twitter. Ick!

reviews

Re: First Art.

The Jell-O fingerpaint recipe: a little gritty and sticky, but worth a second try.

The cornstarch paint recipe: pretty easy, once you amend the recipe by reversing the amounts given for the cornstarch and the water. But requires a LOT of food coloring to make real color on the paper.

Freezer paper for fingerpainting: excellent.

Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv: interesting. The thesis is too simplistic to suit me, but even so I don't disagree with everything Louv is arguing. The main point seems to be (I hedge because I'm only half-done) that all this technology stuff defining our lives and environments nowadays has led to our children suffering from "nature-deficit disorder." No free play, no natural environments. A lot of reminiscing about his own past prowess at building tree houses. A lot of lamenting today's children's lack of tree house expertise. I find the appeal to "nature" problematic, but I can agree that divorcing self from physical locatedness, one's own body, and the connectedness of our physical world is detrimental. But this is an issue of embodiment, not an issue of "Nature."

amused

Two current status updates among my facebook friends:

1. is 10 reasons to not like Barack. #3 Nobel Peace Prixe winners: Algore, Jimmy Carter, who's next, Obama? I can see it now: most un-american american president.
2. is under Satan's spell apparently for supporting Obama. Seriously!

Of course, I should disclose that I changed my middle name to Hussein, so I'm not non-partisan despite the neutrality of my current facebook status, which hopes

that JBK has the GREATEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!!!

the tattoo

The passage of time gets written on our physical bodies. Not just in extra pounds and wrinkles and sad deflated-balloon post-breastfeeding boobs, but in scars and aches and pains. Most of these signs are marks of past accidents and sometimes even traumas.

We don't often have a choice about how our bodies become marked in this way. It is the result of our human vulnerability and the arbitrary circumstances that add up to those childhood accidents and falls, the adult wrong-place-wrong-times. But taken all together, they can narrate, in some sense, our personal history in a way that we often overlook.

Michel Foucault knew this.

Brent has resigned himself to my tattoo, but he still doesn't get the why. It goes beyond the actual symbol itself, although I love my tattoo and am ever grateful that Casey would be willing to share it with me. (She is a generous person in so many ways, tangible and intangible.) I wasn't really able to explain it, not having analytically considered it thoroughly myself, until the Thweatt fam reunion a couple weeks ago.

Where I saw my cousin Kevin again for the first time in probably ten years. Still proud of my fresh tattoo, only a few weeks old, I was hyper-alert to everyone else's...and a surprising number of my relatives do have them. Kevin has a large, beautifully rendered tattoo on his arm, a portrait of his older brother, my cousin James. James Bruce, named after my own dad. James was a little older than me, Kevin a little younger; our ages stairstepped down to my sister Ally, just a year and a half younger than me. They were fun. All Thweatt cousins are fun, it's part of the genetics, but we seemed to see James and Kevin a little more often than others and they were always favorites.

James died young, when I was still in college. It was a shock; I can remember the day and the circumstances when I found out. News like that knocks the wind out of you, you can't process it immediately, just wait until that sick, awful feeling of not being able to breathe passes, and then try to keep breathing in and out. Eventually breathing becomes normal again.

Kevin's tattoo is beautiful; it took three sittings, Kevin told me, by the best artist in town. And it is a physical sign of how certain things mark us profoundly, even when the scars don't show. I like the idea of tattoos, of choosing to mark our bodies deliberately with symbols that speak these profound things; there's a transparency, an honesty, a physicality to this kind of narration that seems to suit the vulnerability of such naked truth-telling.

death count: 7

Two more this morning. We're thinking about borrowing the humane mouse traps again, just to have more traps out there. The spring traps have caught 3 so far, bigger than the others we'd seen. The tunnel traps seems to do well with smaller mice but not bigger ones. It doesn't seem like the stuff the exterminator put down is really slowing them down any. But maybe that takes awhile to have an appreciable effect...?

I reorganized the office a bit this morning while Clare was dancing around the living room downstairs to "Lazytown." (I really despise that particular show. All the puppet characters look like they were born with FAS and the main girl actor is all cutesy in pink and madeup with more mascara than I use for a night out. But Clare dances around to it so joyfully I can't bring myself to cut her off.) Anyhow, once I got all the boxes out, it was clear that the file cabinet really needed to be in the corner, and that meant moving not only it but also a bookcase full of books. That's what I get for poor visualization skills. (See, Em? I am helpless without you, kid.) Anyhow, I got it all switched around and like the result. There's a lot of usable space in here for crafty artsy stuff with Clare and also for yoga, whenever I manage to find some time to do some yoga. Generally there's so much else to do during naptime that it never happens, and the one morning I tried it while Clare was awake she kept running in here and grabbing at my legs while I was trying to do balancing poses. It's not easy to stay in "exalted warrior" with a 35-pound toddler hanging on you. So the only permanent result of that experiment is that every so often Clare will lie down on the floor and kind of wave her legs in the air and announce that she's doing yoga.

So now I am really ready to start working. And yesterday I added another item to my fall agenda (much to Brent's dismay). Leaven has an upcoming Theology & Science issue and I am just not passing that up--it's too cool. Luckily it sounds like I can work up a short article based on stuff I'm already doing anyway. Gotta love that. And I'm hopeful that this enforced break from research will provide me with a little bit of perspective on the transhumanist stuff I was sort of drowning in before; I really do want to provide as accurate and fair portrayal of the movement as possible, but I need to avoid getting too bogged down in the details.

Well. For some reason no one turned on the dishwasher all day long yesterday and so I have a dishwasher full of clean dishes to unload and a kitchen sink overflowing with the detritus of last night's dinner makings: homemade pita bread, hummus and babaganoush means quite a bit of kitchen wreckage, and with the mice and all, it's really a terrible idea to let things just sit around dirty. And that means Today's Naptime is dedicated to my very least favorite activity in the Whole World: Cleaning My Kitchen.

Don't know where the Emily Dickinson caps came from, just felt like a little emphasis was needed, I guess. So you all know How Much I Really Hate It.

Later today, perhaps a venture down to the park with Clare on the bicycle. We'll see. I still feel nervous about it; the bike slews around quite dramatically as soon as you stop moving, and I always feel like I've barely avoided a terrible fall. I suppose it wouldn't kill us but OH, the Guilt...

mice, playdough, thunderstorms and dissertation guilt: a stream of consciousness post

Well, we caught another mouse last night. This was a big one, and the old-fashioned spring trap killed it dead. It was in one of the bottom cabinets that we haven't been using for awhile. So--that's five total we've caught, and we don't know how the poison stuff has been working (the exterminator has some way of checking that but I think he said he'd give it a month before coming back to check them). Hopefully there's some kind of redemptive reality for mice in God's eschatological intent. Endless landscapes of peanut butter, dotted with cheese? Stickier than pavement of gold, but far more edible.

It's been raining for a couple days now, nice thunderstorms at night. I love it, especially here in this house where everything is quiet at night and the only things you hear are the rain and the thunder. Clare's gotten a little scared of thunder, though; yesterday evening when it started storming she just sat in my lap and didn't speak a word for at least 5 whole minutes. That sort of freaked me out; right as I was really starting to worry, though, Brent came home and daddy's arrival snapped her out of it and she started talking again.

Right now she's singing her favorite improvisational song, "la la la la la." She's really enjoyed the blue and pink playdough we made this morning. Yay for finding my toddler art/activity book finally!!! And for inheriting cookie cutters from Laurie (or another former resident???) and food coloring from Sarah's cleaning out of her fun kitchen items preparatory to moving to Strasbourg. These rainy days could have been a lot worse!

I also love that there's this window into Clare's room from my office, so I can sit here and amuse myself and peek in on her without moving from my desk chair. That is awesome. She's so cute when she's all absorbed in her play and doesn't know she's being watched. She's cute when she knows she's in the spotlight, too, but then she starts to perform for you and that's a different kind of cute.

The pink and blue playdoughs are now hopelessly mixed up together.

Just for fun, for any moms who read this blog and would like an awesome playdough recipe, here it is:

1 cup water
1/2 cup salt
2 t. cream of tartar
food coloring
2 T oil
1 cup flour

Mix the first four ingredients together in saucepan over low heat. When the mixture is warm, add the oil and then the flour and stir until it gets thick and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan. To test for doneness, pinch a bit of the dough between your fingers. If it doesn't stick to your skin then it's done.

The First Art for Toddlers & Twos book is great; if you're looking for something like that, I highly recommend it.

I finally got all my office books unpacked and on the shelf--in LC order, even. This amazing accomplishment must be credited to Terri (sp? must ask her) who is going to hang out with Clare Tues and Thurs afternoons this summer so I can get a bit of writing done and hopefully finally finish this interminable posthuman chapter! I got more done than anticipated Tuesday, especially since I anticipated spending some time with orientation and getting Clare introduced and comfortable. They hit it off just fine, and I actually heard Clare shrieking with laughter downstairs at one point. I am so happy about this! Clare's been aching for some social interaction with someone other than me. And I'm only fun when I'm well-rested and unstressed, which happens just about never. But with some time to devote to my own work after quite a few weeks of hiatus, hopefully the neverending dissertation guilt will be somewhat assuaged and I can devote myself to enjoying time with Clare with an unburdened conscience. Those of you lucky enough not to have ever dissertated won't understand, but mainly writing a dissertation involves a lot of guilt. When you're working singlemindedly on it, you feel guilty about all the other more significant aspects of life you're not doing: relationships, exercise, basic personal hygiene...and when you're not working on it, you feel guilty because it's supposed to be THE priority and you're not making any progress. Plus, of course, no matter how much progress you actually make, you never feel like you're making any at all; so basically, trying to write a dissertation just means signing yourself up for a huge catch-22 load of guilt no matter where you turn. I think all PhD programs should make therapy mandatory during dissertation phase, or at least institute student self-help groups, or something.

Enough. I just tore Clare most reluctantly away from her beloved playdough because it's past naptime, and that means, make the most of this hour: shower, eat, talk to Brent, and if there's any time left, a 10 minute power nap because the thunderstorms have made Clare, and therefore me, sleep poorly the last couple nights in a row.

Thanks to all of you with the mice advice and help. I'll keep you posted. :)

of mice and men

Brent made my 32nd birthday awesome. My fam is real low-key about birthdays, to the point that when I get a belated e-card from a sister or parent I feel all warm and fuzzy inside because they didn't forget. That's just how we are. And since we're all like that, no one gets fussed. (Actually, my dad is an exception to this. Knowing that he would be out of the country on my bday he called the night before he left to join Mom and Jarrod & Al in Honduras to say happy birthday, 9 days early.) But Brent is a real ritual-type person (go figure, right?) and birthdays and holidays are a big deal, not to passed over lightly or in silence. So not only was I showered with gifts, things that he either knew that I would like to have although I hadn't thought of wanting them yet (like gardening tools now that I have dirt to scratch around in), or things that I've wanted for a long time, like a bike seat for Clare and a frame for the hammock I bought years ago in Honduras when I visited Al and the kids there...but he also found a babysitter and a great local Italian place that was just right--great food and a nice but not stuffy atmosphere. I think it's been at least a year since we went out for dinner like that. It was so nice to just sit and relax and talk over some wine and good food. I totally splurged and got one of the specials--and lo and behold, it came to the table with half a lobster on top, had no idea what I was getting myself into. I even had one of those cute little seafood forks to eat it with. Special implements! Wow!

But Sunday night apparently the commander-in-chief of our mouse population ordered a surge. We found more droppings in cabinets formerly cleaned and sanitized, a real psychological blow. We're thinking of negotiating terms of surrender; but they'll have to be something we can live with long-term. I'll gladly give them the basement if they'll just stay out of the kitchen.

catching up

So, I know I dropped off the face of the earth for a bit and while I was in limbo I composed several blog posts in my head, most of which center on my disgust with the ubiquitous patriarchal elements in the narratives of pretty much all children's entertainment. This is undoubtedly indicative of the fact that, deprived of both TV and internet access while sick with pink-eye and a cold and home with Clare all day, we've watched Disney movies and "Diego's Great Dinosaur Rescue" over and over. Why must the maiasaura be female and the T. rex male? Because. Thanks, guys. It's so scientific to read our gender expectations onto extinct creatures from the Cretaceous period.

Unpacking having been interrupted by our trip down to Emerald Isle for the big Thweatt fam reunion, we've been a little slow to get back into it. Clare's room is finally done, though; all it lacks is a nice bright kid's rug from Ikea or someplace. That will have to wait awhile, so for all practical purposes, it's done, done, done. And it looks great. It's light and airy and little-girl perfect, not frilly but very cheerful, with the pale sunny walls and all the windows, and Priscilla's blue and yellow flags from her baby shower up. It's one of the best rooms in the house, with a view of the backyard, the front and the church next door.

Other rooms are less complete; exceptions being the spare bedroom, and our bedroom, which is a little sparsely furnished but has everything it needs. Downstairs, the living room desperately needs a sofa. The futon gives us something to sit on in the meantime, but it really needs a new cover and to go in the sun room (which is itself hopefully a somewhat temporary measure, as it just shouldn't be downstairs at all. It was very secondhand when we got it five or so years ago, and it's seen some wear. I'd really like to put it somewhere in my office.) The entry hall is the least finished--it's basically full of boxes. I've also no real idea what I should even do with that space anyhow; Em's suggestion is a little round table for a vase of flowers. Other than that, we have a hatstand... We also haven't put anything up on the walls. Upstairs there's a nice bit of hallway space for my family pics, so at least that's not a hard thing to figure out. The living room wall colors were picked to correspond with our square "tapestry" piece and the Waterhouse Lady of Shalott print, so those items will go in there somewhere but they're not up yet. I can kindof see how things will shape up eventually, but the question is how long even-tu-al-ly really will be...

And there are other things that need to happen, like, I need a watering can so I can properly take care of the beautiful backyard and flowerboxes we inherited, and Clare needs a sandbox (there's a great spot for it, where Laurie had the hot tub. Too bad we didn't inherit that! ;) I'd also like to plant some stuff--kitchen herbs at least. It's criminal to pay $1.99 for a bunch of fresh basil when most will go bad before you can use it, and it's so easy to grow. And we need a vacuum cleaner, because even though most of the downstairs is hardwood, there's carpet upstairs and we inherited a couple of really great large rugs too, and I can't see cleaning those with my ancient dustbuster on my hands and knees.

Clare's started really picking up some Spanish from all her Dora watching, and yesterday we caught "Kai-Lan" for the first time and she learned "xie-xie." Must, must get on the ball with the foreign language stuff if it's going to happen. I could at least teach her the Chinese "frere Jacques." It did after all serve me well back in Wuhan--always good for a laugh when the classroom got dull though it did make me feel like a performing lao wai monkey. She's learned a lot in the past few weeks, like, she can now attempt to color actual objects with her crayons (not that she stays between the lines or anything, but it's more than just aimless scribbling) after watching her very accomplished five-year-old cousin Sol color. And she's definitely losing her little Buddha belly; it's still there but she's that leaner older toddler look is slowly replacing her baby rotundity.

Mostly though we're at the point where I need to start putting together a reliable routine, especially for the morning. I think Clare still doesn't realize that this is home now. She keeps telling me that she's going home to see Albert. Rarely does a day pass, in fact, without a mention of Albert. It's still amazing to me how strong that friendship is--before witnessing it, I would have thought that toddlers were an out-of-sight-out-of-mind bunch, but not these two. And she misses school. Every so often she'll inform me that today she is going to school, or she'll mention her teachers or Miss Polly. I'm sure that hanging out with me all day is a real letdown after being used to the Children's Garden, where they did awesome stuff all the time, and then going on the Trip to the Big Water, which she just couldn't get enough of, and besides, had Nana and Pop and cousins to make her day nonstop fun. These days, especially since this past week I've been feeling less than 100% due to pink-eye and an obnoxious cold, are a little TV-intensive. Which reminds me: I have got to track down my toddler art book, or we'll all go crazy, and that means utilizing naptime for searching through book boxes instead of blogging. But I figure if anyone's still reading at this point you are adequately caught up: my internet absence having been filled with the mundane activities of unpacking and parenting accompanied by sniffles, coughing fits and eye goo and much groaning.