Only liberal sometimes

My married high school friends who just bought a house and made me feel super old had their housewarming party last night. My friend Robin and I had joked that soon all we'd be hearing about would be the home improvements, as that is how we stereotype people who own houses but don't have kids. So I asked Travis about his plans right away. You know, to get it out of the way.

Travis, a former Marine who will happily take the conservative side on some issues where I would not, takes me out to the back yard and says, "See that tree in the corner? Part of it will have to go." I start to flinch in the dark. "That way I can put in a whole row of solar panels. They should catch the sun up until early afternoon."

He goes on with the other solar panels he wants on the other side of the yard, and then talks about selling the excess to MG&E (and if they won't give him a competitive rate, he'll just get himself mostly off the grid) and how he wants to replace all the appliances with more efficient ones. Oh, and then he wants to brick up part of the basement, the part with the weird fireplace, and turn it into a reading room. And if he ever had a load of money, it would be totally sweet to turn another part of the basement into an armory for all his knives.

The way he puts it, while he runs conservative on many things, he'll always be pro-choice, and he knows the country's fucked if we don't start making better choices about energy. Like I told him to his face, I think those are really great priorities if you're only liberal sometimes.

It's really nice to talk to old friends after a long time of not being much in touch and find you haven't both changed so much that you have nothing in common anymore.

The Gulf of Mexico disaster as BP would like you to see it

It's very hard not to look at pictures from the Gulf of Mexico and feel like some flavor of "the end of the world as we know it" is approaching. The red muck on the open sea, the smoke and flames. The diagrams of enormous potential "plumes" suspended deep underwater, and all the maps of surface oil, like Rorschach blobs or tea leaves spelling out, at this point, a dismal but still unknowable future. The wetlands, already browning. The expected but haunting oiled birds, who are, for all their charismatic woe, still luckier than everything we can't scrub off one at a time because it is either too small, too fragile, or still an unknown problem.

If you go to BP's spill response website, though, it's easier to be cheerful!


Wow, look at all that scrubbing! I don't know what that white thing is or why it needs to be cleaned off, but those workers in their hazmat suits definitely look effective.

And look! BP is crunching a lot of data in a fancy war room! Surely they must know exactly what to do to fix everything, after crunching all of that data with their multiple flat-screened computer monitors.

BP doesn't tell us what is in those bags, but there are so many of them. And they look so clean and white! If they're full of oil, then surely that oil can't be so bad, either, because otherwise the bags would be all saggy and hydrocarbon-colored.


All this picture needs is a rainbow where that caution tape is. Look how blue that sky is. And we can't see much of the ocean, so it must be fine. There's some brown mucky stuff in the lower right, but those workers (again looking very efficient in their clean biohazard suits) who are probably actually displaced shrimp fishermen being paid far too little per day, will have that right-hand corner cleaned up in no time. There are so many of them, so just chill, everyone.

And if you read the short version of what they have to say about Operation Top Kill, you still have to wait until the very last clause of the very last sentence to understand that the operation failed. A very good use of inverted syntax, first taking you past all of the very good things they did in attempting this failed operation. The Columbia Journalism Review has a damning list of their other informational sins re: this disaster.

I'm just saying, thank thank thank thank somebody for journalists.

gremlins

I really connected to this HTMLGiant post by Lily Hoang, though I am not avant-garde, nor am I Othered."

I have this thing against cuteness. Cuteness is dismissable, cast to the side as irrelevant. And I suppose, to be fair, what was the last cute thing you actually took seriously? There seems to be something inherent to cuteness that begs to be cuddled and pet, smooshed and distorted. Taken seriously, though, nah. Nope.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been described as “cute.” And I admit, I have something to do with it. I’m short, compact, I have a collection second-hand t-shirts, brightly colored with some kiddie design on it. When I’m nervous—and I’m always nervous—I fold, make myself smaller, and my voice goes higher, “cuter.” And yet, I’ve tried to balance this with being an “adult.” I’ve changed my wardrobe. These days, instead of emerald green short skirts, I wear drab slacks. Instead of bright blue t-shirts, I wear black or grey. I’ve learned that as a woman—a young woman, an Othered woman, a “cute” woman—in order to be taken seriously, I have to dress the part. Being a writer certainly doesn’t help. If anything, it makes other people see me as more quirky, more “cute.”

I'm 5' tall, 24, female, and fighting the "cute" monster every time I go to a school board meeting or have interviews in which I am standing up and writing and straining my neck every time I want to make eye contact with the other person. People with whom I must engage professionally are, a little too often, prone to patting my shoulder like I am an earnest, adorable niece. I tend to overcompensate with serious expressions. It's part of why I love film noir and related dark things so much. All these stories of people taking each other far too seriously. I like putting teeth and determination into my art that I'm not quite able to make everyone see in person.

this is all one big @carrie

I learned the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is red, "rust-colored." It's like the ocean floor woke up one morning and decided to be a portent or a plague. Also, what the hell kind of name is "Deepwater Horizon"? It sounds like a spaceship. It definitely sounds like a rig that would explode in a Ben Affleck movie. I hope there's a heart-warming speech at the end.

Don't worry, though, it's not half as bad as Exxon-Valdez, if all you look at is millions of gallons of crude oil.

But no more of this.

Coming soon to a poem near you.

offer to the betrayed world / a rose

Also, this blog post by poet Linh Dinh about the recent plane crash in Poland (killing the president, his wife, many of the country's leaders) is simple (some excerpts of Polish poetry) but pretty soberingly lovely at the same time.

"Seldomly do we see this kind of gravity in American poetry. Clear, direct and free of personal references, it’s also aimed at the widest public, at the nation."

faster, faster

Thoreau went to the woods in 1845, and stayed until 1847. He then spent the next seven years polishing his manuscript. Today, he would have been expected to tweet the whole time: "Pulled bean field weeds, thought of great line about hearing/stepping to different drummer, need Indian meal 4 bread, pond looks nice today." - Bill Leuders

I think there's a place for the rapidfire communication we're evolving into. One of the big drivers of innovation is the exchange of ideas, the introduction of novel thoughts and problems into your sphere of understanding. This could mean reading books, but it could also mean reading your friend's Facebook status, or an offhand comment in an e-mail. Or a meandering Gchat that turns into an idea for a short film. Isn't that how it happens in most movies? Someone is conversing about something completely unrelated to their problems, and then, AHA, problem solved, they run off excitedly to their chalkboard full of numbers. I can never find anything I'm missing until the moment after I've asked someone else if they've seen it.

But I agree that any trend toward valuing the immediate at the expense of slow, thoughtful ideachewing and factverifying (when you are in a field that requires factverifying) is not just sad, but frightening. I shudder at how many asinine political slogans are being ReTweeted as absolute truth, with a "word, sister" tacked on at the end. Republican or Democrat, I don't care. And the Thoreaus of the world (writers or inventors or chemists) all need time to be alone with the creative energy they've gained from communication, to turn fodder into fuel.

Even poem-a-day-writers will be spending the next four months on revisions.

Here is a good day off:

Not pictured: sunshine, bicycle, cats, fresh coffee, Baraboo River, birdsong, crabapple blossoms, a couple decent rough drafts, a good, good friend I will soon be seeing.

I love movies, and I love voting, and I love me some Cheetos. But you read numbers like, "Candidates for the 2008 presidential race raised more than $1 billion" and you start thinking about all the other things that could be done with that money, or who James Cameron and his investors could have fed instead of making Avatar, or how many textbooks a company's marketing budget could get for schools that haven't had new ones in decades.

Obama criticizes Republican obstructionist tactics

This is worth spending 90 minutes on, if you're remotely interested in the state of political dialogue in this country. Even if you dislike the two-party system, Democrats or Obama, you don't get to see faceoffs like this very often, especially outside an actual campaign, and Obama's breakdown of some of the rhetorical problems with how elected officials are handling big, important issues...well, as one friend of mine put it, "It was like he tore off one of their arms and beat them with it. Repeatedly."

Spoiler alert

Edit: why don't I actually link to the article in question?

There's an awesome piece up at Feministe today about the Golden Globes and how women directors (in this case, Kathryn Bigelow) have some pretty systematic biases to overcome in getting credit for their work. And for the most part they have not gotten that credit. Even if you haven't seen any of the movies Sady's referencing, it's an amazing piece of work and worth reading.

Spoiler alert: Avatar is dumb, and The Hurt Locker is not.

"Avatar is a movie that’s designed to be seen, and understood, by everyone. Everybody understands that dinosaurs are awesome and corporate goons are bad and when they fight and go splodey, you root for the dinosaurs, especially if they are really cool-looking. And that’s the level Avatar operates on, and that’s fine."

vs.

"The Hurt Locker has better characters and scarier action scenes and it can definitively establish a man’s character and make a statement about the alienation of modern life and basically explain what the entire movie is about with a shot of a dude looking at some cereal in a grocery store. It is a movie that gets you very excited even though there are no dinosaur fights in it!"

"Corpses piled like little mountains."

And yeah, Haiti is still in trouble, guys.

My donation to Partners in Health finally exited my bank account. I'm not sure why it took 4 days. I'm not happy about it.

I'm fixated on this particular disaster

MSNBC reports,

"Haiti seems especially prone to catastrophe — from natural disasters like hurricanes, storms, floods and mudslides to crushing poverty, unstable governments, poor building standards and low literacy rates."

I'm sorry, what? I'm new to this game, but I'm pretty sure you do not sweep systematic social problems with a whole history of causation including abuse by foreign powers into the same sentence as natural catastrophe, using only a flimsy "seems to be prone to" for context. And then move on to another subject sans any further elaboration.

Ma famille set me free / Throw my ashes into the sea

This morning I watched a woman win $10,000 from the Publisher’s Clearinghouse and say she was going to spend most of it on catching up on her bills because it’s been a tough year. Then I read 21349081231 stories about Haiti. How much did you know about Haiti before it was hit by this earthquake? I didn’t know much, just bare bones, just, “Revolution, more revolution, revolution, francais, revolution.” I still don’t know much, just, “Death, sorrow, rubble, dust, disaster disaster, SOS.” If “our understanding of Haiti” is a rubble heap, then I feel part of the work should be in digging it out and gaining a sense of the place in which this devastation lives, and being invested in paying attention to the longterm effects in coming years, a la Katrina and 9/11.

I’m trying to think of & track down all the fantastic essays I’ve ever read on how developed nations conceive of disaster in other countries. There will be new ones, I’m sure, about how Haiti should have received this help before there was ever any such thing as an earthquake, and how in some ways our discourse on the subject often carries colonialist overtones, and how it’s almost certain there will be misuse of aid money at some point in this whole process, because it’s all being thrown at overwhelmed agencies all at once. (Democracy Now has already touched on the subject).

But either way, money is still wanted and needed and should be given if you can spare anything. I’m sure those few of you who seem to follow this blog have already found tons of lists recommending where to send your money, and have heard the warnings to make sure it’s a legitimate agency. So I’m not going to repeat any of that, except add to the urging that you research where you’re putting your money and do whatever you can to ensure it’s going somewhere effective and useful.

I make a cub reporter’s salary and owe everyone and my mother money, but I’m donating, and it’s an amount that I’m probably going to look back on and wince at.

Not that I wasn't worried about the State of the Union Address potentially bumping OMG LOST SEASON PREMIER on Feb. 2, but I really hope today's reassuring announcement from the White House was did not stem solely from the overwhelming pressure of irate Hurley fans. Because when it comes down to it, that would be bullshit.

Yes yes yes yes

USA lifts HIV 22-year-old travel / immigration ban.

Business time

This morning I walked into the Wisconsin Department of Revenue headquarters to file my taxes for the third time this year. The first two times, my returns disappeared and the DOR never ever could find me in their computer system, even after the Post Office confirmed that my delivery had been delivered. Do not pass go, do not collect $650 owed to you by the state of Wisconsin, do not repay your creditors.

This time, a very nice woman entered all sorts of meta data into a file devoted specially to me, stamped my paperwork, and handed me a photocopy of that stamp so I could prove that my return had been physically received by a living breathing person who knew in what hole to pigeon me.

The key to my success? I suspect BUSINESS HAT.

Heart hung humble as a button

A friend was reading me this poem yesterday and I kind of
wept into my Bulleit.

War Is Kind, Stephen Crane
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
       Hoarse, booming drums of the
       regiment,
   Little souls who thirst for fight,
   These men were born to drill and die.
   The unexplained glory files above
      them,
   Great is the battle-god, great, and his
       kingdom--
   A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow
trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
       Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
   Eagle with crest of red and gold,
   These men were born to drill and die.
   Point for them the virtue of the slaughter,
    Make plain to them the excellence of killing
   And a field where a thousand corpses
       lie.
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Major test of my fledgling journalistic abilities. Passed?

Special Report: Illness, fixed income equals struggle for local couple

Christie Taylor
Baraboo News Republic

For 50-year-old Baraboo resident Chuck Slinde, it all started with a day in May when he couldn’t stop vomiting, not even after his stomach was completely empty. He had no other symptoms, just intense nausea, and was throwing up two or three times an hour.

After doctors at St. Clare removed his appendix, to no avail, the diagnosis came from specialists in Madison...More (it's a long one)

Thanksgiving post #41231908

This has been a week for appreciating what I have, sort of regardless of the season but also conveniently tied into it.

E.g. Wednesday night, I was in the ER waiting room waiting for a friend of a friend, L, to find out why her stomach was so swollen and hurt so damn much. She ended up having to stay all of Thanksgiving in the hospital, waiting for the specialist to return from his holiday. L and her husband are jobless and crashing somewhere rent-free right now after moving from Idaho with $500 to their name. With only a few words of explanation from me, my mom and sister eagerly helped pack up a big bagful of our Thanksgiving food – before we’d even sat down to dinner ourselves – so L’s husband could stay at the hospital with her without starving/squandering precious money on food. Turkey included, and my sister made a special trip to the grocery store to buy a couple thermoses for cider and coffee. I am ridiculously proud of my mom and sister, and also very aware that my only problem yesterday was fitting into my schedule (and stomach, ouch) all the dinners to which I was invited before I had to head home so I could work today.

E.g. Not to get mushy about my family, but we have it pretty good considering where all we’ve been since my parents filed for divorce more than a decade ago. For example, we usually get along, and agree that life’s going to be totally sweet when the Death Panels finally arrive. My sister and I go for hour-long walks in suburbia to catch up and drink soccer-mom-power-walk coffee. My brother, 18, shocks us all with a pitch-perfect Carl Sagan impression during a game of ApplesToApples, straight outta the high school Cosmos videos. And while I’m not sure there will ever be a way to celebrate Thanksgiving such that both parents will feel like they got their fair share, these things seem to balance out in the long run.

E.g. The basics. 10 fingers, 10 toes, my 3 new cavities will mostly be covered by insurance (though still cost too much), amazing friends, strong legs, employment in industry related to my college major and lifelong ambitions, exciting and/or meaningful extracurriculars.

Healthcare Monday II

I just scheduled a dentist appointment for the first time as an adult who has insurance that is not her parents'. This is great, because I can investigate the strange sensation my jaw's been reporting to me when I am too quick to stand up or change my general orientation to the world. The nurse also promised my teeth would be shiny and white just in time for Thanksgiving. This seems like a fine idea. My relatives are sure to approve of my clean-looking teeth.

But really I feel really privileged and lucky to be able to call up a dentist and say "yes, I have insurance through XXX," and then they say, "We can see you Wednesday!" and I say, "awesome, this is like, close to free."

Next year I'm switching from a pretty decent medical plan to the scary high-deductible version because I decided it was the closest I could bring myself to sacrificing something in solidarity with the millions of Americans who don't have any choices. But when you're young and healthy, it doesn't actually feel like much of a sacrifice until you unexpectedly get hit by a car or a baby or manic depression.

In the meantime, I'm getting as many chest x-rays and hip replacements as I can before Jan 1. 2010 hits. Right right right?