sometimes communal discernment sucks

You know in the abstract, "communal discernment" sounds so very peaceful. Like we're all sitting around humming "om" in the lotus position until we all get the same simultaneous epiphany. Hrmph.


I am, actually, very committed to the idea that dissensus is often more generative and creative and healthy than easy consensus. (Sheep achieve easy consensus. So do lemmings.) But voicing disagreements, hearing people out, and working out exactly what it is you don't agree with and why are painful and difficult tasks--especially when the issues at hand really matter.


I'm not good at this. I like to think a lot but I like to think by myself. My tendency in a group is to stay in listening mode--to absorb as much as possible, and take it home to ruminate upon until I've analyzed everything to my satisfaction. Then, at that point, I have lots of opinions to offer with very good reasons attached to them. Then, at that point, of course, I'm all by myself--the communal bit of the discernment gets a bit lost in my processing. Maybe this is just the natural tendency of the academic mind, but I suspect that a great deal of it also still centers around my reluctance to disagree publicly with people. (The blog has helped...but I remain a G.R.I.T.S. after all. Next time I wear my "this is what a feminist looks like" T-shirt, I'm going to feel like a fraud without one of those Cracker Barrel G.R.I.T.S. ball caps to counter-message it.)

We've spent a good amount of time lately discussing what our vision for CCfB's future is, or can be. Unsurprisingly there is dissensus. Theoretically I still maintain that this is a good thing, but concretely, it also sucks. It also sucks that I still feel like I'm trying to play catch-up on the details, and that I have to try to listen and learn and think while policing my 2-YO's really loud comments about her goldfish (the crackers, not the swimming kind). It also really sucks that I'm missing next Sunday's discussion, so I'm putting down some (belated) thoughts about the bits of the discussion I have been a part of. Because that's what a blog is for.

1. For me--and possibly for others who have been around from the beginning, or for long enough to have seen how CCfB has evolved over the last few years--there was an unnoticed and even in retrospect undiscernible point at which it stopped feeling iffy, and I began taking for granted that CCfB was just going to be there. (If there's any measure of "success" for a church plant, I think this should be it.) Losing that feeling of stability and being thrown back into iffy-ness is difficult. Panic is the right word for my initial response to that; that describes my initial post fairly well.
   
2. I heard more than one comment to the effect that Sunday is the highlight of the week for many people. It is for me. That seems to me to be a clear signal that whatever we do, part of our shaping vision needs to honor that. I also heard this being analyzed as social time, being able to be together with people you relate to who are going through similar struggles and who share somewhat similar beliefs. I don't disagree with that necessarily--but at the same time I'm aware that part of CCfB's vision has always been inclusivity and not homogeneity. We are in some ways a diverse community--and in some ways we are not. I would like to see us continue to reach out beyond the comfortable 'image of the same.'
3. House churches. Of course, we started out as a "house church" since we did after all meet in Joe and Laura's house. By the time we moved from there into our second location at the YWCA, we were really outgrowing it. If we go back to a house church model it will mean multiple house churches--a major decentralizing move. I left the small group discussion right as the invitation to those who have house church experience to share it was issued, so I don't know how that discussion concluded. But my 2 cents: I don't think it's the way to go. Particularly because so many people have stated that Sundays are the highlight of their week--if being together is what does that, and that's important to us, it seems obvious that not being together blatantly disregards that. Beyond that...well, I suspect that most people probably assume doing house church is easier than doing, um, church church. In my experience, it's not. It's harder. Creating liturgy--making possible a genuine and collective worship--is hard work even if you're in the best of all possible spaces, (say, for example, Calvary Episcopal Church) with organ and talented choir and multiple staff on hand to handle the details. People work hard every week at CCfB to transform the very mundane space of elementary school cafeteria into a space where God's presence is clearly signified. This isn't busy work--it's part of worship, and it's sacramental work to set up the chairs and lay out the red carpet on which our 'altar' bears it sacraments of bread and, well, most of the time, grape juice. Working this transformation in a cafeteria is hard enough; working it in your living room is damn near impossible. I've lost count how many times I was frustrated in China by having my careful preparation of our "sacred space" in our living room completely ignored by people putting everything from songbooks to feet on the coffee table serving as our altar, right next to the elements. Loss of sacred space slides easily into loss of sacred time. House churches get sloppy and lax and no one cares; besides, there's no one in charge to do something about it even if they did. Which reminds me of my first year in China, right out of Harding, discovering the hard way that I actually had theological convictions and opinions (and no one gave a crap about them). I was just the hostess: my job was to clean my house every week and make the communion bread (without sugar!!!) and scour the city for decent grape juice (hard to find in 1998 Wuhan). The boys would take care of everything else--except they didn't. And I was furious that the going assumption was that someone could saunter in late, assign worship leadership roles on the spot ("wanna do communion today? um, okay") because there was no forethought put to what should have been sacred time. I tried to organize things--to no avail. When no one's in charge, nothing gets done ahead of time. This is not how things go down at CCfB currently--or ever. We honor our time together and use it well. But the amount of forethought and planning that goes into that time happens between Sundays, and maybe we take it for granted, or don't realize that it's getting done. Or maybe it's not viewed as being as important as social justice involvement in the community, or the relationships between individuals that we all treasure as part of what defines us. But I think that's wrong. Without deliberate, purposeful time spent communally in worship, the consequence will be losing the source of spiritual nurture that so many people have straightforwardly stated they rely on week to week. We must find some way to make this happen--and this will be difficult, because in this we have relied on Joe and Laura both almost exclusively. I don't think it's impossible; there are plenty of talented people in our midst--though I think we will experience a learning curve as we adjust, and figure out who needs to pick up what. But we really can't afford to remain ignorant about this need or let it go unaddressed. Finally...I think house churches tend to become insular, turned in on themselves, and CCfB has always tried to avoid the tempation that churches have to look inward only and to be a locally involved, active community. In a crisis that's what you do--look inward. But it's also not CCfB. If we are going to make it through this transformation without losing who we are, I think we've got to try very hard not to forget this defining aspect of our communal identity. [I would rather see CCfB make a move toward merging with another body than shrink back in on itself in a mimicry of the form if not the spirit of CofC sectarianism (Brent points out, there's an Epicopal church in the neighborhood...:) It occurs to me that perhaps some of us are pretty sour on organized, institutional religion at the moment, and house churches may therefore seem all the more attractive, existing on the opposite end of the spectrum. I get it. But the opposite of organized religion is...disorganized religion. Appealing? Not really.]
   
4. Maybe there has been some detailed discussion about taking care of Joe and Laura while they transition, but if so, I've missed it. Maybe we're all still panicking too much about what the sudden precariousness of CCfB's future means for me to have begun thinking outside ourselves to consider what it means for the Hays family. Sure, there's a limit to what CCfB can do--if we could do what we wanted then they wouldn't be going anywhere. But even beyond showing some gratitude for the work they have done and continue to do, I think we all ought to be mindful of the fact that they're taking a hit for us--making a sacrifice themselves because they won't ask us to sacrifice ourselves in attempting the impossible. If that's not Christ-like then I haven't seen it yet. And we ought to honor that by doing everything possible--including simply reminding them how much we love them, but making sure that we do our part financially as well. Picking up the increasing percentage of Joe's salary that MCofC is dropping starting in March is the minimum IMO. Churches should take care of their people. CCfB has done this for various members as there has been need--including me!--and this is no different.
   

***update to #4: apparently this was agenda item #1 for the first major discussion of the transition team folks. Have I mentioned that I love my church? I really do.

P.S.: sometimes all six verses of "Just as I Am" are comforting.

So, I had a bad week this past week; I couldn't concentrate, couldn't focus, couldn't think very well and certainly couldn't write. I was totally exhausted from the moment Clare came elephant-thumping (the pitter-patter of little feet stuff is all propaganda, folks) into the bedroom to help us greet the dawn until falling back into bed at night--exhausted but unable to relax and get to sleep. I got through the days by deliberately overdosing on caffeine in various forms. Then, Thursday night, I drank a bottle of wine (unaided) and ate some macaroni and cheese comfort food, slept like the dead and woke up Friday feeling relatively awesome. I must have seriously frakked up neurochemistry.

Anyhow, after that unexpected jolt back into normal physical functioning, for which I'm ever so grateful, I'm a little more even-keeled. Brent said something absolutely sensible to me in the midst of my resveratrol (read: red wine) consumption. He often says absolutely sensible things, so that's not remarkable in itself. I often disregard these things, which is stupid but unfortunately unremarkeable as well. This time however I had ears for hearing it.

So, here's the thing. I added a whole layer of personal crisis on the stay-or-go question on top of the real CCfB crisis, which was maybe not totally unjustified, but a little blown out of proportion. Brent's sensible comment was: CCfB is still what it is, and if that's not connected enough to the CofC to satisfy people, then there are a whole bunch of other things they're not going to hire you for anyhow. So why sweat it. And this is so obviously true that I stopped sweating it right then and there. I resolved a long time ago that the CofC was going to have to take me "just as I am." I do not want to find myself feeling compelled to dissemble, evade and deny my theological convictions in order to land a job, keep a job, or just in general stay a part of the church tradition that I consider my home. Just as I am--or not.

So maybe it wasn't the wine. Maybe I just have an awesome husband who, in addition to being able to absolve sins and stuff, can absolve anxieties as well.

Happy Valentine's Day, babe. I'm glad I remembered to buy you some chocolate. Thanks for sticking with me.

V-Day

I know it's actually tomorrow, but St. Stephens Preschool is celebrating today, and Clare and I have spent the last couple evenings at the kitchen table making 43 valentines for the intermediate class of 2's and 3's. Yes, I said 43. We did it too. It took some time, and I'm now completely out of stickers, and our construction paper hearts with random stickers on them (Easter stickers, NYC stickers, cowboy stickers, ABC stickers, animals and birds and flowers and everything in the world except, you know, hearts!) are not going to win any arts-and-crafts prizes, but she put the stickers on them her own self, and proudly posted them into her friends' paper bags this morning. It was delightful.

So, that's great and all, and I like how having a little kid's perspective on Valentine's makes it so sweetly about friendship and inclusion--it's a nice break from the cloying romance and chocolate version, which of course puts my back up not only because I, like practically every other woman I know, has had some dreadful and traumatic Valentine's Day experience to poison it, but also because all the romance and chivalry and whatnot is so dependent on notions of the feminine and masculine and I would prefer to trash the medieval pedestal rather than climb upon it. But really, V-Day was redeemed for me when I participated in PTS's production of the Vagina Monologues, three years ago now I guess (it was B.C.--before Clare--by about 4 months). I like the irony of taking a day that consistently places women in that submissive recipient position and making it about empowerment.

If you've never seen the Monologues or have no idea what V-Day is, check it out. Chances are there's a production near you.

It's a hard thing to have a blog specifically for processing the stuff you find hard to talk about (or lack the audience for talking about with?) and then find yourself with the need to process something that you feel is too iffy for the blog, for whatever reason. This is partly why I try not to remember how many people I know who seem to read this blog (for whatever reason; it kindof mystifies me) even though I've discovered in doing this that I need to feel that there is some kind of "audience" for these words in order to have the motivation to set them down...but I digress. Get used to it because for this post I'm not aiming for coherence or any kind of narrative structure or any kind of thematic point whatsoever. I just need to barf it all up. That seems to be my motif this week. I'm over my physical stomach bug at this point, with its attendant nausea and the vomiting so violent I wet my pants every time I hurled, but I'm a bit soul-sick and there's no cure for nausea of the spirit. Other than just trying to get it all out, I guess.

It's been a week since CCfB learned that we were losing Joe and Laura. Like everyone else, I guess, my first reaction was simply anger. Not at them; it's clear that they are doing the only possible and sensible thing given the situation. My anger is more for them--born out of a sense that they deserve better than to be dropped without ceremony at a particularly vulnerable time. Secondarily, I feel a bit of the same on behalf of CCfB as a community, that we deserve better than to be dropped without warning at a particularly critical time. But even that is secondary to just being plain pissed off, with the frustrated sense that, in the body of Christ, we're supposed to be about taking care of people, not shoving them out the door with apparent indifference to the personal and communal consequences.

For all of that it is only fair to say that I know pretty much nothing about how and why Manhattan CofC chose this time to begin termination of their financial support for CCfB, and my anger about it--I know myself well enough to know this--is more about my personal tendency for coping with grief than it is about anything anyone has actually done, or not done. Like all the women in my family, I do mad a whole lot easier than sad. Hand me a tragedy and I'll hit you back with some righteous rage. It's not, probably, the most balanced way to handle shit, but I have never claimed to be balanced.

So was mad for a few days and then I was throwing up, and then everyone else was throwing up, and that kind of eclipsed things. It wasn't till I was sitting in church today that the sadness actually hit, and then I found that I couldn't trust myself to speak enough to answer the question, "how are you processing things?" I figured it probably wasn't going to be helpful to have someone start weeping on the front row, so I took a few minutes in the back to compose myself. It's nice to be known as such a die-hard coffee addict that no one thinks twice when you get up in the middle of church, just figures you're going for a refill.

So now I'm sad, which I find much harder to handle than mad, and having spent some time on the train in transit without the distraction of Clare, I'm realizing just how much of a crisis this is--for me, a realization I've been staving off with the help of anger (and vomit).

First, it's impossible to avoid realizing now how much harder it's been to remain a real part of CCfB after our move to NJ than I thought it would be, and admitting that really, the last few months, I'm barely there. There's not much I volunteer for anymore, because I know how unreliable I am and I figure it's worse to say you'll do something and not than to not confuse the issue by volunteering when I shouldn't. I would love to be on the teaching rotation again, but my attendance, while theoretically every other week, gets preempted by everything from stomach bugs to choir concerts and somehow, inevitably, it seems I am there one Sunday out of four every month. Realizing this makes me sad.

Second. I've been very conscious the last few years of what a haven CCfB has been for me as a somewhat alienated theologian within the Churches of Christ. (side note: "alienated theologian" is a reference to a bit of commentary in Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology, vol. 1; it's not a complaint, just descriptive of the odd relation in which theologians often find themselves with respect to their ecclesial communities.) On a personal level, being involved in a church in which I did not feel obligated to hide either my interest in theology nor my actual theological opinions offered a kind of healing I didn't even know I needed until I experienced it; being able to preach, to create liturgies, to pray--all that offered a healing that I knew I needed and had never been hopeful of getting. On a pragmatic level, being a theologian hopeful of gainful employment someday in the future and hoping that CofC schools would consider me a candidate, CCfB functioned as my official tie to the institution. (For my non-CofC readers, in a denomination with no denominational structure, an institution that exists without any actual institution-ing, the only way to be officially CofC is to be a recognized member of a CofC congregation.) For years now I have been able to say "I'm a member of a Manhattan CofC sponsored church plant" when inquiring minds wanted to know. Now my dodge won't work anymore. Personally, I think CCfB as a community needs to go its own way at this point, and not regret the loss of official (=financial) ties to the Churches of Christ. But what that means for me personally is that I am now faced with the necessity of finding another way to validate my ties to the CofC world--or entertain a question I was hoping to avoid for at least another decade: is it time for me to leave the Churches of Christ? I am not ready to face that question. Part of the CCfB crisis for me is that it seems I cannot avoid it, because my haven is disappearing.

Finally. As if the above were not existential/spiritual/pragmatic-career-choice crisis enough, I found myself crying on the way home when I realized that there's a reason I introduce Joe to the people he's met here in Summit, not simply as my friend, but as my "pastor." Because he is, has been. And, though this may sound odd to you, he's the only pastor I have ever had. Things are different when you're a PK, and married to a priest. And in losing Joe and Laura for the reasons we are--we simply cannot support a full-time minister on our own yet--means that it's not just that I am losing my first and only pastor in exchange for some unknown replacement. There is no replacement. There is no successor. I am losing my pastor.

I have no doubt that CCfB will continue. And I have no doubt that the future is a beautiful one. I wish that I could be a stronger participant in bringing it about, but the truth is, I probably can't be--though I plan to stick around, at least. Despite my confidence in this community that I dearly love, the unwanted unwelcome truth is that CCfB will no longer be the haven for me that it has been, and I have some hard questions to confront.

The American Way of Life, Obama, and a short list that ends with poop

Here's a short list of the easiest things I've done over the years to green up my lifestyle and household:

1. Buy the squiggly light bulbs. Duh.
2. Tack the city's recycling info sheet on the fridge right next to the trash can. I've been amazed at how many items I've automatically gone to the trash with, and then stopped when I realized that they were recyclable and I just hadn't made the connection.
3. Washing in cold water only. It really does get clothes just as clean, so unless there's a reason to sanitize in hot water, I don't.
   
4. Buying a CSA share. We loved our first summer at Honey Brook, but the year after waited too long and couldn't get a share. After that we were too transitional to figure it out. This year we're splitting a boxed share from Honey Brook with our neighbors (who, if you're a Calvary person, you of course know, but I like to be careful with putting people's names on this blog unless I have permission, or know them well enough to not care if they hate it.) If you're not local, you can check out localharvest.org to find a CSA near you.
   
5. Cloth napkins. Brent's mom finds a reliable abundant supply of these at estate sales, so they are free (to us), washable of course, a lot nicer to look at than paper, and do a better job of getting Clare's hands and face clean.
   
6. Hanging the tote bags for the grocery store on the door handle. It's the only thing that cured my constant forgetfulness when I was trying to cultivate the habit. Now it's a habit, and the tote bags live in a less intrusive place. They are so much easier than either paper or plastic, IMO, because they hold a ton more stuff and there is no worry about breakage. I can almost always bring the groceries in from the car to the kitchen in one trip. Nice when I'm generally also herding Clare into the house at the same time.
   
7. Sigg bottles. Thank you Sylva's Nana! I love mine, Brent loves his, Clare loves hers. We have lessened our demand for wasteful plastic bottles and are better hydrated to boot.
   
8. Always printing on both sides of the (recycled) printer paper, or, if using less than a full page for multiple copies of something, squishing it down and using half sheets to hand out. Joe's made fun of my CCfB handouts for this (but in a mostly nice way. I think.)
9. Using and loving Method products. Like the wood floor cleaner and the mop with the reusable cloth you toss in the wash. And the dishwasher pellets. And laundry detergent. And rediscovering how awesome baking soda is for kitchen and bathroom cleaning, and laundry.
   
10. Breastfeeding. Think about it. No bottle, no formula packages...
11. The Diva Cup!!!! I can't tell you how happy I am with this. Been using it for 2 years now. How many tampons have I not used in that time? No idea, but what I really love about it is the luxury of actually forgetting I am on my period for hours at a time. Seriously. Comfortable, simple, easy.
    
12. Putting the poop in the potty before putting the diaper in the pail. Yep, Clare's not pooping direct yet, but her poop goes in the potty. Turns out this is 'sposed to be how you handle all 'sposies.
    

So, I was thinking about this in the shower (perhaps washing with the Holy Cross Monastery's blackberry sage soap inspired my holier-than-thou thoughts?) and this was my short list. It's not really meant as self-congratulatory at all, because all of these things are very small things. Not like getting rid of the family car, or something. Plus, one thing I really wish I could list, but can't: cloth diapers. We didn't do it because of our living situation (communal laundry seemed an insuperable stumbling block), but it would have saved us tons of money, Clare would perhaps be potty trained already, and of course, no enormous bags of stinky disposable diapers piling up week after week.

I would love to hear back from some of you if there are other easy, simple things you've done that you would include on your own list.

But there's a larger point lurking here as well, and that is, these little things represent a deliberate modification of what we might label "JTB's Way of Life." I may have bitched about this phrase, "way of life," on this blog before--I don't remember. I don't remember because I bitch about it so often that I'm like one of those absentminded professors, or preachers, who keeps telling the same anecdotes to an audience who's heard it all before. Because I hate it. I especially hate it in the specific version we hear so often, "The American Way of Life." My automatic reaction to this phrase at this point is to snort derisively and mutter, "and WTF does that mean anyway?"

And then, damn it, Obama went and used it in his inauguration speech. And worse, defended it. And worse, said we won't apologize for it. If I were a cartoon character, my eyes would have bugged out and there would have been funny sound effects accompanying my "whaaaaaa?" headshake.

Because "The American Way of Life" is never defined, simply invoked--whenever we need an ironclad, ask-no-more-questions reason for doing, you know, X (fill in the blank: go to war, torture people, enact a law or amend the constitution or...you get it.) Our American Way of Life may be a blank concept, but it's a sacred blank concept, and one that you can properly consider the possibility of consigning your eternal soul to hell for defending, if that's what it takes.

But here's the thing. While Obama's inauguration speech overtly praised and promised to defend Our Sacred American Way of Life, it also more subtly made a case for the ways in which we must redefine that way of life and the reasons why. So...I'm on board with that, and kudos to the man once again for some kick-ass rhetorical strategy. Once we have a collective way of life that doesn't require apologizing for, I'm all for defending it without apology.

It seems to me that there's an assumption that making any kind of real change to how we live means massive inconvenience and difficulty, and so people avoid even contemplating it. Let's just not think about it, because if we did, then we would have to change, and that would just be too much to ask...I mean, really, that would be asking us to Change Our Way of Life. But my point is that redefining The American Way of Life doesn't have to be scary or too difficult to bother contemplating. There's not a single thing in my opening list that has made the quality of my life worse by doing it. There's not a single thing on that list that even qualifies as inconvenient. Sure, it takes a little work to remember the tote bags. But they work better. For me, and for everyone else too.

why Facebook is awesome (and you can win a Spa Day)

Facebook is awesome, and even more awesome now that both my parental units are on it. (Maybe my dad will be a more faithful Scrabble partner than Mom? I can only hope.) But in case you're still not convinced, (Joe Hays), here's another reason to love Facebook: it will tell you things about people you've known all your life that you didn't know before (perhaps in an itemized list of 25).

And it lets you participate in people's lives in ways you might not, without it.

Until this morning, I didn't know this was happening. I rarely get to see these cousins 'o mine any longer (a shame!!!) but I have fond memories of spending some formative growing-up years on Archer Ave watching Rob on skateboard and saggy homemade ramp made of discarded plywood from the heap in our adjoining backyard with the Beastie Boys blasting loudly from the boombox. Rob was just older than me enough to be untouchably cool. Now, of course, we're all grown up, with spouses and kids and jobs. The kind of life that often gets all-consuming even while it is very contented, or perhaps because it so very contented. Except--like others I know--my cousin and his family aren't content to be consumed with themselves. Instead, they are full of the unbounded love that spills out over family walls, washing over the whole rest of the world. I love it that I am connected--however virtually--to people like this. And I love it that I can--however slightly--help make something this important and life-changing happen.

And you can too.

thinking ahead

Trying to be practical puts me in danger of seriously straining the ol' gray matter, and since it is the gray matter by which I eventually propose to make a living, I usually try to avoid practicality at all costs.

Today however I am trying to think practically about several different things.

1) Clare's parent-teacher meeting. The most important practical question was about potty training. She's got all the skills she needs, and the concepts, the bottom line is--she's just totally not interested in going all the way. I wanted advice from toddler experts on how to cross the finish line here.

2) I meet with my advisor tomorrow. A lot of the meeting I expect will be feedback on the chapter, but I also want to chat about my timeline, set some concrete goals, and maybe even hammer out a prospective date for defending (sometime in the 2009-10 school year).

3) Thinking about next year, and the need to pick up some adjunct work. Gathering info about local schools, writing emails, networking, reworking the CV, reviewing and finetuning my list of teaching competencies. This is the part of academia I hate. I mean, despite the hum-drum routine of sitting in front of a computer, thinking and writing all day--this is really what I like to do. Interrupting real work with the ugh-work of job-hunting is...blah. But utterly necessary. As is the long-term thinking ahead, and networking. Which I--in all honesty--do my best to avoid.

4) Thinking about money. I'm a reluctant spender of money, to be honest. I am fanatical about menu-planning and grocery-list making. (Whether preaching or shopping, I follow a script. To the letter.) And I will stand in a grocery aisle and stare and stare until I find THE cheapest can of tomatoes on sale that day (if you have done this, you know this takes some time. There are always a bajillion different brands and sizes and sales on canned tomatoes.) Beyond that, I normally don't think twice about money. But all the economy scare talk has me, well, scared. So I'm thinking about where to cut corners. And that's kind of hard, when you generally try to live without corners to cut already. I'm sure there is plenty of unnecessary expenditure going on, but it's not intentional--so the question is, how to catch it and stop it.

5) thinking about what practical steps to take in the coming year to green this household. I've gotten good at remembering my tote bags when shopping. We take full advantage of Summit's amazing recycling opportunities. We do little things, like the swirly light-bulbs and laundering in cold water, turning lights off, etc. I have found that the Ideal Bite emails are pretty helpful (especially the new "Mama Bites")...and as always in this matter, Marti Stanley is my guru. I'd like to 1) drive as little as possible; 2) eliminate ziplock bags from my life; 3) do some sustainable gardening in the spring; 4) look into joining a CSA.

All this practicality has interfered with doing any writing today on personhood theory, philosophy of identity, postgender posthuman stuff, or epistemology. But I did do some good practical thinking about the larger structure of the dissertation and how to communicate that to my professor, and that's certainly good. One of the struggles I constantly have while writing is keeping that larger structure and purpose firmly in view while digging down into the nitty-gritty of each individual section in a satisfyingly thorough way. Sometimes you get lost in that stuff, and when I get lost, my writing loses focus and direction. That's when I start hitting the delete key as often as I complete a sentence. And that's just maddening.

watching it, part 2

Brent's laptop battery died at that point, so it was just as well that being overcome with emotion I couldn't really concentrate on commenting.

So glad they used his full name. Liked hearing the Hussein as part of the oath-swearing.

Liked that they had a little liturgical oops, too. Clearly, Obama wanted to get it done right. Not just a "say the words after he says the words" routine matter. It's an oath, let's take it seriously, let's get it right. Words really can mean things, if you let them.

Liked the poem, but I found listening to it sortof like hearing James T. Kirk's long-lost twin sister at a poetry recital. Probably had to do with her instructions about acoustics or whatever, but I was very distracted by the halting nature of the phrases as delivered, even though I quite liked the poem as a text. Will have to read it again as text.

Was bummed that no prayer was being led by a woman until Rev Joseph Lowery prayed. That man made me weep (again) and then laugh. Like Dolly, "laughter through tears is my favorite emotion." What a perfect, perfect way to end it. Brilliant.

Now: to get to that world-changing business...

watching it (not quite being there)

Like other transformative moments--weddings, funerals--I sense a hyper-real, intense focus on the meaningless bits and minutiae of the day as they stream by, because a focus on the meaning of the thing just can't be sustained. Car exhaust, is the hat coming back?, lemon-meringue color, Cuban-American designer, cold weather. The crowd watching the motorcade pass takes a bit to register its presence and meaning before waving their flags and whooping and hollering.

I'm on my couch, Obama T-shirt, knitting at hand, fire in fireplace, happily breakfasted and enjoying a fresh new pot of coffee. Peaceful and a sense of physical well-being. Clare again went to bed easily and slept well and was supremely happy this morning. Yay for school. Should have put her in her Kids for Obama Tshirt this morning, but it's so cold...

Chris Matthews thinks George W. is "not interesting."

I adore Rachel Maddow.

David Gregory look like he wishes feeling that "sense of history" would keep his feet warm.

Text from a friend: the national nightmare is almost over. Text back: Amen.

Wow. America can do "spectacle" too. Though there is an absence of multicolor-costumed acrobats.

Bush Sr. apparently looks old. Or is just walking old. Maddow: he's just bundled up--that's how I walk when I'm bundled up for the cold.

Clintons arrive. "President Clinton looking unusually somber."

Perfect sunny weather. No divine tears today I reckon.

introductions: "...and Mrs. Roslyn Carter." Interesting. No "Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy"? Are we finally done with the archaic and horrible practice of formally obliterating ALL of the wife's name? "...and Mrs. Barbara Bush." "and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton." AWESOME. She gets to be introduced with her OWN FULL NAME. Yaaaaaaaaaaah!

Brent's breaking out the wine glasses. Must drink coffee in the next few minutes in preparation for our celebratory beverage.

Okay I really like that dress. It remind me a little of the classy get-up my mom wore at my wedding: very flattering but not fussy.

Booing President Bush? Maddow: not classy--not what I expected. Agreed. People, make this an event we can be proud of. If you want to protest, do it in some substantive way, don't just be obnoxious and ugly.

This just in: Brent says Obama told Katie C. that he'll be wearing long johns, because he gets cold easily.

Who is the dude with the voiceover? It sounds like a football game voice! Couldn't we get a version with more pomp-n-circumstance to it than the alma mater fight song? Plus he stumbled over "Mitch McConnell"--not exactly a difficult furriner name.

"this is all really happening"--Keith O. See what I mean? We push the moment away and focus on the meaningless--until it overwhelms us, and we push it back down.

Barack H. Obama. Damn! Where's the Hussein? I changed my Facebook name for you!

There's a part of me even now that resists the name-chanting. Too much adulation? Too much blind faith? Too much mob-mentality behind it?

He looks pensive.

Brent: can you imagine being George Bush in the middle of all this? Ouch.

Here comes Rick Warren...hold your horses folks...Almighty God has balls...God loves all he has made...how often does one pause for applause in wording a prayer?...there's shouting in heaven...are those sirens in the background??? while Warren prays for God to protect him & fam...help us to share, to serve and to seek the good of all (except gays who want to marry?)...what's with the Jesus-of-many-names (bookend to +Robinson's "God of many understandings?)...ending with Lord's Prayer.

Whooo! ARETHA!

this is it.

That's a Big Ol' Bible.

We have a new VP.

Aretha, then chamber music...I love the plaintive but serene quality of this arrangement, moving into happy chipper mode, very celebratory and optimistic. Good choice: American folk song, classy folksy. Gorgeous.

pleas stand...but how will I blog it???

can't.

thinking about parenting today

Any ideas on how to keep Clare in her bed at night that don't involve shackles?

This morning, Clare wore a "new" shirt (she is growing so fast! nearly all her pants are too short, esp. for cold winter weather, so I hit the thrift store yesterday--3 pairs pants, 3 tops, $18). She was so excited about the bling-bling heart on the front that as soon as she got to school she ripped off her jacket, found her BFF, threw her arms out wide and squealed, "I'M A PRINCESS!" (while I groaned in the background, "but I'm a feminist.") What she doesn't know is that two pairs of her new pants are "boy pants." Including the ones she is wearing today. Hahahaha! Gender subversion will occur at every opportunity around here, princess.

Clare does a great "villain laugh." I wonder where she got that.

She has, for reasons still obscure to me, started proudly proclaiming that she's got "a big ol' belly." I like her big ol' belly, and mine too. We like to compare. Mine is bigger.

Yesterday afternoon one of the teachers asked what we were doing re potty training, since apparently most of the time they check Clare's diapers at school, she's dry and clean. She certainly gets the whole potty thing, and willingly perches on the potty (esp. when she wants an effective excuse for getting out of bed), but generally, she still comes to me to announce she's poopy after the fact. She likes the whole plop-plop poopy-in-the-potty thing (we have our own little song for this), but she seems to prefer plopping it in the potty from her diaper rather than poop direct. We were making slow but steady progress till December, when everything went topsy-turvy in terms of daily routine. Now our slow but steady progress seems to have stalled.

We caught a couple episodes of an unfamiliar cartoon on Noggin the other day, Spider Something Sunny Patch. I've been "Mommy Spider" and Clare, "Baby Spider," and all her teachers, "Teacher Spiders," ever since. We eat Buggy Snacks and drink Buggy Water and go to our Snuggy-Buggy Bed. I've been wondering if I should try to explain this to her teachers, so they won't be offended when she calls them spiders, or alarmed when she tells them she's drinking Buggy Water.

We got a mid-year progress reoprt from St. Stephens and have a parent-teacher conference scheduled for next week. It's interesting to look at the items checked off on Clare's developmental skills list--some things she does at school that she doesn't at home (perhaps pottying?), and some things that she's always doing at home that she apparently doesn't at school (communicate in short sentences, sing parts of songs. At home, the girl is talking nonstop, unless she's eating, and sometimes then too.) It's nice to see that she is on schedule with all the physical and social stuff. It's even nicer to get a glimpse of how other people perceive your child.

Personally, I have discovered an absolutely necessary strategy for maintaining my sanity in the face of mounting frustration during Clare confrontations: the Jesus prayer. At first I resorted to something like, "God give me patience to be a good mother to my child" but that was too connected to my sense of frustration to be helpful--it focused on it rather than alleviating it and making it possible to redirect my energy in interacting with Clare. "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner," for whatever reason, works. I think it has to do with the way it simultaneously reminds me that 1) taking frustration out on my daughter, no matter how frustrating a 2 1/2 year old can be, is sinful, unhelpful, pointless, and harmful; and 2) I am forgiven for being so frustrated. Somehow, that does the trick of producing heretofore unknown powers of transcending the frustration, thinking creatively, and communicating love while negotiating acceptable compromise with my precocious Clare. I'm no mystic by nature (something I sort of lament); but stuff like this is my experience of the reality of the Spirit and her power to transform.

Mothering, as always, defies my analysis when I contemplate it. No wonder no parents could say anything coherent about it to me while I was pregnant, other than the promise "it will change your life." It does, but not just because you will be chronically sleep-deprived for the next eighteen years (minimum). It is its own sort of ontological change--without the choirs and prayers and laying on of hands, of course.

This Sunday on the train back from the city I noticed a poster advertisement in the train car. A lot of times these posters are for TV shows, or just some random product. It's the kind of advertising you stare at mindlessly for awhile before it sinks in that you're staring at it and your brain is absorbing it for no reason--other than that you're on NJ Transit bored out of your skull. This time, though, the poster wasn't for some new Fox show or whatever. It was a poster advertising surrogacy. This piqued my interest because the topic of surrogate motherhood is one of those places where all my various interests intersect: biotechnology, birthing and motherhood, feminism, social justice, genetics and ties of kinship, categories of same and other.

The idea of surrogacy doesn't freak me out. Sure, it's "unnatural" but I don't use that word in the "bad way" that reactionary folks seem to. But the more I consider it, the more uneasy I become about it as a potential social reality. See, I can imagine becoming a surrogate mother as a kind of gift to another woman--someone who longs for a child but for whom that isn't biologically possible in the "natural" way. Especially since--unlike some women--pregnancy was a almost completely positive bodily experience for me. But in that imagining, there are some parameters assumed: that it is my decision, that it is a gift, that it is based upon or itself creates a relationship between me and the mother, that there is no question of a beloved and secure future for the child. And that may indeed be beautiful, but it dreams up an isolated gift economy for the context of this imagined surrogacy. And we don't live in a gift economy. We live in the good ol' US of A.

Coming down from my dream high, it strikes me that the first problem with a widespread practice of surrogacy is the way in which our capitalistic economy has always defined bodies. We "own" our bodies as the irreducible unit of economic exchange: our bodies are what enable us to work, to become wage-earning labor. As we gain skills we increase our value as workers and blah blah. Those without skills--unskilled laborers--have just their bodies to market as their basic exchange. Those who have nothing else to offer the job market in exchange for the necessities of life sell their bodies. Physical laborers. Migrant workers. Prostitutes. Biotech advances don't change that--they simply open up new markets. Selling organs on the black market. Surrogacy seems to fit that pattern all too easily; yet another way women's bodies are particularly exploitable.

That's serious enough, but as I sat on the train and thought about the motives someone might have for entering into surrogacy on both sides, I realized that surrogacy also serves to further our cultural preoccupation with genetic identity. Why would you opt for surrogacy rather than adoption, if not to secure the genetic identity of your offspring? Why would this matter so much? I observe that it does, but I have ceased to understand it. It seems to me at this point that genetic identity is just another arena in which we inscribe the "we are the same so I love you" and "we are not the same so I don't have to care" dynamics that poison so much of our society already.

So despite my technophilia and my fascination with pregnancy, I am becoming more doubtful about the beneficence of surrogacy as a widespread social phenomenon. It is, after all, being advertised on train posters as an economic opportunity in a time of worldwide economic crisis. Surrogacy: biotech's newest twist on the world's oldest profession?

same and different

Clare's really into this now: same, and different. [I'm not; in the "game time" segments on Noggin, invariably the different object is always missing something. Not just different, but deficient: an implicit message that to deviate means to be lesser. To be different is to lack. "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong"...we've updated the words nowadays to be less harsh, but the message is still there.]

She really likes having two pink pacifiers, so that she can point out that they are the same, but the blue and the pink 'fiers are different. Yes, my daughter chose to abbreviate pacifier into "fire" instead of "passy." Hmmm.

She has been doing this for a long time with her stuffed animals, though without the categorical labels of "same and different." Awhile back she started intuitively grouping them into "families" by kind, and then defining their familial relationships by relative size. Daddy Tick and baby Tick were the first. (In case you're wondering, The Tick was--is--my favorite cartoon, dating back to college days and one of the few happy legacies of an ill-fated relationship. I have two Tick figurines, one large and one small.) Then the trend spread to other groups, like The Elmos, of which we have three: Mommy Elmo, who despite her diaper is still the largest, Brother Elmo and Baby Elmo. And her doggies. And her bears. And well, anything at all really. I'm always having to explain that the categories of "big" and "little" are expressed as "daddy" and "baby" in Clare-ish.

Recently, however, Clare has bucked the trend and announced cross-stuffed-species familial ties. Two frogs now have a baby duck. (She has also started using a gender-inclusive word for sibling relationship: brister, though Brent doesn't believe me.)

Donna Haraway would be proud. And so am I.

Maybe I'm overthinking it (oh, who would believe that? of course I'm overthinking it! why else would I have a blog?), but I find in this the same evidence for openness to relationship and capacity to identify with the other that I saw in Clare's unhesitating finger when she points to the little black boy holding his daddy's hand and says "that's Clare, that's Daddy." Does it matter that she's female, blond and blue-eyed and looks nothing like that little boy? Does it matter that two frogs will never beget a duck? Only if we make it matter. Only if someone comes along and tells Clare, "no, honey, that's not you. you're a white girl." Only if someone comes along and tells her that frogs could never love baby ducks. Because they're not the same, they're different.

I won't be. I won't be telling her anything, because on this matter I think she's telling me.

And now I'm telling you.

Frogs can love baby ducks.

Christmas happies

One of the best things about the holidays is the way getting together with your family provides those moments which then live on forever in idiosyncratic family culture. Here's a few of our new historic family moments...and please do share your own.

1. Clare: "when I grow up, be taller, I play organ, eat corn nuts and own knitting needles."
2. I watched my brother-in-law pantomime the sex act during "Time's Up" in front of my parents. I guess he now is comfortable with being one of the fam now. Woo-hoo!
3. "The big toe never dips into the millet."
4. Clare, in a performance marked by spontaneity, perfect timing and impeccable delivery: "I'm a Texas gal, Grandad!"

And though I can't isolate a particular moment to single out, our Christmas was made more festive this year because Casey joined us, and apparently we didn't frighten her. I knew she was a special kind of person, but if you can take the Thweatt clan first thing in the morning in jammies with bedhead and not yet coffee-ed up, you ought to get some kind of public recognition for reckless bravery. Plus, we only get worse as we wake up, and start making ridiculous puns. Casey, thanks for being here. And come back next Christmas. Oh, and come back before next Christmas too.

Virgil O. Stamps

Looking for that perfect one-of-a-kind, kind-to-the-earth gift item for that way-too-conscientious earthy artsy person in your life? (you know we all have one, nowadays. if not, maybe it's you.)

Check out Virgil O. Stamps.

I asked Virgil to make me a guestbook for The Gwynne House, and a week later, I had my one-of-a-kind handbound art object in hand (pssst, Virgil, you forgot to tell me how much I owe you...). It is beautiful--exactly the kind of thing I wanted without having any idea what I was envisioning. Virgil is not only creative and kind to the earth--he reads minds too! On the outside cover is "The Gwynne House," and inside the pages have that marvelous old-book thick texture, interspersed with (see pic below) pages from an old children's Bible A-B-C book. Nifty!


On my wish list still...in case anyone's interested...are some business cards backed by recycled kid's art from the little artists residing in Virgil's Brooklyn neighborhood. Or maybe the thrown-out kids books...or maybe (in my stuffy academicky moods) the old German texts...nope, definitely the kiddie art. [Let me know if you do this for me, because if no one does, I'm buying them for myself. Vistaprint was fine...till I met Virgil.]

for the unsung heroes of Endnote tech support

a moment to express my thanks for the technical support available for Endnote software. Wow.

After a couple weeks of almost total hiatus from actual work, I sat down to open up my dissertation files and lo and behold, Word and Endnote were no longer talking to each other. At least not very satisfactorily. Communication breakdown. I'm not completely dumb with computer programs, but neither am I a wiz, and my knowledge is limited to what it is strictly necessary. So unexpected Endnote issues put me in a panic. Those files are important--Endnote enshrines the totality of my dissertation research to date. I don't want to monkey around with that. But the whole point of Endnote is to CWYW. Footnoting while writing text means a break in the composition process, and Endnote not only minimizes that to manageable blips in the thought process, it relieves me of having to parenthetically document inside the text and go back later and convert to footnotes AND keep all the bibliographic info updated and ordered somewhere accessible. It's an amazing thing and after two years I am completely dependent on it. If I had to create footnotes and bibliography on my own without this tool, it would add a whole 'nother year to the dissertation process. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but still. It saves me a hell of a lot of work.

When it works.

Which it didn't, but now it does again.

I don't know why things got jacked up, but now that they're okay (with the help of a friendly tech support guy who did not make fun of me and told me which things to go click and unclick), it's all good, and at 2:32 p.m., I can finally try to get some actual writing done today.

If I knew the guy's name, I would totally include him in my acknowledgments.

Top Ten Questions to Ask Someone Recently Experiencing Ontological Change

1. Do you feel taller?
2. Do I know you?
3. This means no more marital fighting, right?
4. What happens if you cuss? Does God take it back?
5. Can you change water into wine now? 'Cause that would be practical and useful.
6. Can you be my personal superhero?
7. Where's your halo? And do I have to launder it?
   
8. Did it hurt?
9. You know, you don't look any different...are you sure it took?
10. If I call you 'Father,' you know I'm just trying to annoy you, right?
    

this is only a test

I just sent my text on transhumanism off to an H+ blogger I struck up an email correspondence with pretty much out of the blue. He's been marvelous to chat with and seemed very willing to look over my stuff for accuracy. And although I initiated all that, I felt very reluctant to take action on it. I sent the chapter to vH over a week ago, but only now have I managed to hit the "send" button to email it to my virtual acquaintance. The reason for my reluctance is the same reason I thought it would be a good idea to ask for his opinion in the first place: I remain very critical of the H+ movement, but I want my description of the movement to be accurate and fair--beyond that, even, a good-faith effort to portray the movement sympathetically. I feel like this is putting into practice the basic principle of interdisciplinary engagement. I'm not interested in picking the easiest target to shoot at, because that doesn't produce a very helpful or a long-term dialogue. There are some real and substantive issues to be gotten at, and beating up straw men doesn't get you there. Sending the text to be vetted feel really risky, a personal test of scholarship and integrity. And like any test situation I am nervous. Will I pass? I did my best, was it good enough?

on destiny

People sitting on the toilet can say with all validity “everything in my life has led up to this moment” but that doesn’t mean their destiny is to sit there and take a crap.

have I stumbled into an alternate reality

or some kind of parallel universe, or perhaps just some crazy hallucination from which I have not yet awoken, or become the unreliable narrator of an SF novel?

Because the air of unreality around me keeps building: we've elected our first African-American President? There's really water on Mars? We have actual proof of planets outside our solar system? I actually finished a draft of the chapter that's been two years in the writing?

Which one of these things is even the most unbelievable at this point anyway?

If I heard an NPR story this morning about first alien contact, I'm not sure I'd even blink. I would, however, hope that those aliens are part of my blog audience.

4:32 p.m., November 13

chapter 1 sent to advisor.

on to chapter 2.

once upon a time

Clare has started telling stories. It's cute. But now that she's learned that there is such a thing as narrative, everything must be processed through it. This makes for long bedtime routines wherein we recap everything Clare did that day. Her signal for needing this is to beg: "once upon a time, Mama, once upon a tiiiiiiiiiime?" Whereupon I sigh, and begin: Once upon a time, there was a good brave smart funny cute little girl named Clare, and she..." did whatever she did. It's an unlooked-for reminder to me how important narrative is for all of us in the construction of our personal realities, Clare's insistent need for narrative and the re-telling of her own life to herself. Usually she still prompts me to do this for her, but she has started telling her own stories. They usually involve teachers at school (Miss Melissa is a star protagonist) and sometimes friends from school. A couple days ago on the way home she told me this story: "Once upon a time, Clare go to school, and Emma bite you. Playing in the kitchen, pink plate, blue, yellow. I want yellow. Emma's. Emma bite my finger. Clare say I sorry Emma." She's been telling versions of this story for two days now, and I'm still unsure exactly what went down. Someone bit someone's finger, and that finger was probably Clare's, but it's Clare who says I'm sorry to Emma...so somewhere something seems to not fit. And herein lies the delicate necessity of parental investigation of fault in an unwitnessed conflict. But I am also too aware of how influential my narrative structures become on Clare's unformed stories: once I articulate a version, it becomes the official narrative...so if my interpretation is wrong, it changes how Clare constructs her narrative reality as a result. What really happened, and who bit who, will forever be a mystery. But never fear: the story ends well. When asked if Clare and Emma are still friends, Clare's answer is yes. Will they play together in the kitchen today? Yes. Will Clare forgive Emma for biting Clare's finger? "I forgive you Emma" says Clare to the empty air--thus constructing a fictional scene of reconciliation which nonetheless becomes her reality, as we drive to school.

Summit, NJ on Election Day, 2008

Took this right after voting, in front of Calvary Church. See? Even the trees were full of hope that day! Well, it's no GKB photo, but sometimes you don't need talent to capture beauty. ;)

a prayer

A few days ago, Joe emailed to see if I would be willing to lead a prayer specifically about the change our country will undergo with the election of Obama as President. I let things simmer on the mental back burner until Sunday, when I scribbled out what I thought I wanted to say to God about this past week on behalf of the community at CCfB. It's kind of an awesome thing to pray communally, especially in a tradition where you don't necessarily have the resources of a Book of Common Prayer to reach for when you need words. I often go to the BCP when working on prayers for CCfB, but this time--regarding this momentous occasion--I wanted words of my own, to speak from the heart (though not, clearly, from the hip, so to speak. Heh heh.)

Here it is.

God in Heaven:

We know that you are with us, throughout our lives and in the turning points of history. We thank you for this determination to be continually present with us in these moments, and we pray that we will always be aware of and responsive to your gracious presence.

We pray now for the future of this country and for the world: for your creation, and your creatures within it. We pray that the leaders newly elected and appointed will govern with wisdom.

But even more than for President-Elect Obama and the newly elected leaders in Congress, we pray for ourselves, the people of this nation: those born here and all those who live here. We pray that we will lose the vocabulary of victory in our conversations with one another, knowing that all human achievements, even the most stirring, are transient and imperfect; true victory, and true justice, remain in your hands. Give us humility.

And while we rejoice in the symbolism of electing our first African-American president, we pray that we will not be satisfied with symbolism only, but that we will be energized, empowered, and determined to break down the boundaries between us that should never have been drawn. May we transgress those boundaries joyfully, and without fear.

We pray these things in the name of Him through whom all things are possible, your son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

and so it begins

The mantra seems to be that we as a people have again affirmed the American Dream narrative in a new and rather more significant way: that anyone can indeed become anything, whatever they want, in this country. Well, that plays well. An oldie but a goodie, and everyone knows how to dance to that tune, so I reckon we should just go with it.

But for me personally, the major achievement represented by the election of a man named Barack Hussein Obama is somewhat different than the above. I just heard an exchange on MSNBC with some guy named Tucker Carlson who kept insisting that celebrating the election as "historic" (meaning, it's important that we have elected our first African-American president) tends toward the implication that all those who didn't vote for Obama now find themselves on "the wrong side of history" (an interesting new euphemism employed in this conversation to avoid using the blunt label, "racist"--because despite it all, we still cannot discuss race and racism in this country without euphemisms). Carlson insisted on also at the same time interpreting the election in pragmatic terms--that many people did not self-consciously cast "a historic vote" but simply a vote for the candidate that they agreed with, whose policies they judged to be right for the country, so that people "on the wrong side of history" aren't made to feel like racists.

I think he's right at the same time that he's wrong.

The real achievement of this election is that people did cast a pragmatic vote for the candidate they agreed with, whose policies they judged to be better for the country--and that this judgment could be made across multiple demographics without necessary reference to the identity category of "African-American." To separate the pragmatic from the historic vote is a mistake, because it misses the point that up till now, a black man was always black first, and then whatever else second. Now we have proven--not just to the world, but to ourselves as a country--that we can put aside the category, the label, the box, and make a judgment based on more than that.

This is the real achievement of the campaign itself, and it would have stood as monumental even with a loss at the end of it, though it would have been harder to see, and harder to celebrate, without the final vindication of a win.

I'm not saying that it doesn't matter that Obama is the son of a black Kenyan and a white Kansan. It does--but it doesn't matter in the same way that it would matter in the old, constricting framework of identity politics as usual. He didn't win because he was black. Neither did he win despite being black. I think enough Americans experienced the breakthrough that this fact of his biography did not preclude a common vision, did not mean that he could never see from a white person's point of view, that a white person could never see from a black, or Hispanic-, or Asian-American, or even international point of view. We can, at least in part, if we choose to try. We can relocate our gaze, in a gesture of kinship. This is the change that has become real, because we finally believed enough in the possibility to choose it.

I voted...Clare will be proud of her mama.

Ameritocracy's Last Look

below is Ameritocracy.com's compare/contrast of the candidate's statements on various issues. Hopefully the links will work and connect you to ameritocracy.com's collective judgment on the accuracy/relevance of each quote if you wish to check it out. Because now the clock is really ticking...and you have until the polls close in your area to make up your mind and vote.


TAXES

BARACK OBAMA	JOHN McCAIN
"I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class."	"[European leaders] use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway"
"Senator McCain is proposing -- and this is a fundamental difference between us -- $300 billion in tax cuts to some of the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the country, $300 billion."	"[Sen. Obama] has voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000 a year."

HEALTH CARE

BARACK OBAMA	JOHN McCAIN
"I exempt small businesses from the requirement for large businesses that can afford to provide healthcare to the employees but are not doing it."	"[With my proposed refundable tax credit], do the math. 95% of the American people will have increased funds to go out and buy the insurance of their choice."
"With McCain's health plan "families will have to go out into the marketplace with that $5,000 tax credit and buy insurance on your own. But what Senator McCain doesn't tell you is that the average cost of a family health care plan is...$12,680."	"I want to give every American a $5,000 refundable tax credit that they can take anywhere, across state lines."

IRAQ

BARACK OBAMA	JOHN McCAIN
"We are currently spending $10 billion a month in Iraq when they have a $79 billion surplus. It seems to me that if we're going to be strong at home as well as strong abroad, that we have to look at bringing that war to a close."	"Senator Obama, who after promising not to vote to cut off funds for the troops, did the incredible thing of voting to cut off the funds for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan."
"Look, over the last eight years this administration, including John McCain, have been solely focused on Iraq. That has been our priority. That has been where all our resources have gone. In the meantime, bin Laden is still out there."	"If we had done what Senator Obama wanted done in Iraq, and that was set a date for withdrawal...then we would have had a wider war, we would have been back, Iranian influence would have increased, al-Quaeda would have reestablished the base."

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

BARACK OBAMA	JOHN McCAIN
"We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country."	"[Senator Obama] voted against a ban on partial birth abortion, one of the late term abortion, a really one of the bad procedures, a terrible one."
"I am completely supportive of a ban on late-term abortions, partial birth or otherwise, as long as there's an exception for the mother's health and life."	"[Senator Obama]'s talking about the health for the mother. That's been stretched by the pro abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That's the extreme pro abortion position, "health"."

THE RUNNING MATES' PITCH

JOE BIDEN	SARAH PALIN
"Reinstating the middle class, making sure that they get a fair break, making sure that they have access to affordable health insurance, making sure they get serious tax breaks, making sure... we can help their children to get to college."	"Voters on November 4th are going to have that choice to either support a [that] supports policies that create jobs.... Or you support a ticket that policies that will kill jobs by increasing taxes... and saying no to energy independence."

TERRORISM

BARACK OBAMA	JOHN McCAIN
"The war against terrorism began in [Afghanistan] and that's where it will end." (view details)	"The central front in the war on terrorism is in Iraq."(view details)
"We've spent over $600 billion... soon to be $1 trillion. We have lost over 4,000 lives... seen 30,000 wounded, and most importantly, from a strategic national security perspective, al Qaeda is resurgent, stronger now than at any time since 2001."(view details)	"The consequences of defeat would have been increased Iranian influence. It would have been increase in sectarian violence. It would have been a wider war, which the United States of America might have had to come back." (view details)

THE BUSH LEGACY

BARACK OBAMA	JOHN McCAIN
"But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time."(view details)	"Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." (view details)
"Senator McCain and President Bush suggested that it wasn't that important to catch bin Laden right now and that we could muddle through, and that has cost us."(view details)	"Do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course. But I've stood up against my party, not just President Bush but others, and I've got the scars to prove it." (view details)

DIPLOMACY

BARACK OBAMA	JOHN McCAIN
"But we are also going to have to, I believe, engage in tough direct diplomacy with Iran and this is a major difference I have with Senator McCain." (view details)	"Let me say that we obviously would not wait for the United Nations Security Council. I think ... both Russia and China would probably pose significant obstacles."(view details)
"We're not going to defeat terrorist networks that operate in 80 countries through occupation of Iraq. We're not going to deny the ambitions of Iran by refusing to pursue direct diplomacy along side our allies."(view details)	"I have proposed a league of democracies...a group of countries that share common interests, common values, common ideals, [and] control a lot of the world's economic power. We could impose significant meaningful, painful sanctions on [Iran]..." (view details)

SECURITY

BARACK OBAMA	JOHN McCAIN
"Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity." (view details)	"There are some areas where the statutes don’t apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is."(view details)
"For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East." (view details)	"Senator Obama was wrong about Iraq and the surge, he was wrong about Russia when they committed aggression against Georgia, and in his short career he does not understand our national security challenges." (view details)

THE RUNNING MATES' ON THEIR OPPONENTS

JOE BIDEN	SARAH PALIN
"When John McCain proposes $200 billion in new tax breaks for corporate America, $1 billion alone for just eight of the largest companies, but no relief for 100 million American families, that's not change; that's more of the same." (view details)	"[Obama] is someone who sees American as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country." (view more)

AAR

1. beyond awesome to see LP and EKB again. It has to be understated because there's not enough exclamation points to do it justice.
2. and The Feminarian!, Ken R, all three members of my dissertation committee, Fred, JR, LeRon Shults who seemed to know exactly who I was, lunch with Dr. Noreen Herzfeld (wow!), great conversations with Amy DeBaets, other PTS folks, met Chris K (editor for forthcoming co-authored article), and marvelous hang out time with the Mercedes-Bohannon-Nolan fam (plus Sylva remembers me! I'm Clare's mama!)
   
3. paper went well.
4. schmoozing went well.
5. lots of Obama t-shirts visible on venerable scholars on Monday morning.
6. big, big, big happy smiles from Clare on picking me up from the airport. Spontaneous hugs and I love yous. Heart-melting stuff, even for an unsentimental hostile-dominant type like myself.