Lumpectomy

At the lumpectomy yesterday, at Mayo in Minnesota. The verdict was no cancer at all. Really really glad I went out-of-state for a second opinion. I don't understand it, but Mayo says that the tissue from the first biopsy was not sufficient to make a cancer diagnosis. I called the doctor to let them know, and the nurse told me "oh that's the pathology department."

It's been a roller coaster couple of weeks, but in the end I am super super grateful to the universe or whoever. And to you all here, for keeping me in your positive thoughts and nurturing wishes. It's also opened my eyes to the reality of what many other women go through.

For now, I'm just healing from the surgery. The surgeon to take my procedure also is the plastic surgeon, so he did a little bit of realigning things so that the results are cosmetically okay. A little discomfort and narcotic use, just for a few days, then it's all all over. Whew!

Wild, Wonderful... Guess where?

New since last post? I live in West Virginia now, moved from Seattle. It was a long drive, and the culture, language, building code enforcement, weather, are all different. Sun, some humidity, more sun. Found out my grandmother is from Appalachia on both sides, who knew?  Lots of things about race, isms and more here, funny thing to return here 150 years after my GGparents left.

Holy Greed

When I was a little girl kids would sing, "Lori, Lori, hallelujah." I remember that, but not who did it. Vaguely remember it being my brother, but other kids, too. Later on I had a good friend with a daughter named "Glory." That song really was about her.

Later on I thought it was a strange song, let alone hymn. Where were the lions lying down with the lambs we learned about in suday school?  How could something like that ever have a place in church? The gospel was Peace.

Recently I've gotten swept up in the "Mormon moment," alternatively the "anti-Mormon" moment, so I've been getting links and informed about a slew of historical, doctrinal and practical issues related to Mormonism. Today, though, i was just looking for information about Andy Williams, he just died, you know, and where did that search end? once again, in weird Mormon land. It started with remembering AW was friends with the Kennedys. I looked for him singing at Bobby's funeral, but apparently that wasn't recorded. There was a recording of him singing the same song he sang at the Kennedy funeral, though not from that occasion. The song was the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Given the context of Bobby's death, after his brother's, the struggles for justice and human rights they were engaged in, I can see how Andy's singing that song to Bobby's casket had a deeply personal meaning for all who were there.

Contrast this with all the other "Battle Hymn of the Republic" videos on the Tube. In fact, just google the title of the song and see what you get. Did you know that the very best version of that song on the internet is by... the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? Gosh, no, I didn't, before today. In fact, there were many different versions of them singing that song online.

Why? I can't imagine any other religion, except maybe some radical muslims, wanting to identify with.a terrible, swift sworded god. Mormon doctrine- about blood atonement.?

Sordid Slime

Oy vey, my head is too full of thoughts Mormon right now to begin to separate and weave something here. Suffice it to say they really, really like the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  Google it, the title of the song, see what you get. I ran into it today looking for a video of Andy Williams singing at Bobby Kennedy's funeral. His reference was deeply personal, about a family's literal, physical sacrifice for equal opportunities and peace. The Mormons  i think, have a very different connection to the song, more about holy wars and future one world order. 

I have some ideas about why, for another time, but for now wanted to share this. To me, it seems also appropriate for the Mormon big-business-church-state conglomeration. That's my bias, regardless, it's a witty little ditty. Take it to be about imminent domain posing as democracy, or add your own labels and share~   

Mark Twain's parody of the Battle Hymn of the Republic
written approximately 1900

-----------------------------------------------

Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger's wealth is stored; He hath loosed his fateful lightnings,
and with woe and death has scored; His lust is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps; I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps -- His night is marching on.

I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal; Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel; Lo, Greed is marching on!"

We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;* Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat; O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet! Our god is marching on!

In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch, With a longing in his bosom -- and for others' goods an itch.

As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich -- Our god is marching on.

Church, State, and Sacred Secrets

One of the finest examples of patriotism in our history is in the publication of the Nauvoo Expositor. I stumbled on the story researching genealogy and found it truly moving.

In short, a group of Mormons within the original church at Nauvoo grew concerned about a number of things after Joseph Smith announced his candidacy for president in 1844. Secretly practising polygamy, he denied it publicly. He abused his power as mayor of the city, to avoid extradition, and secretly taught about a Theocracy, with himself as President/ King.

After attempting to resolve these issues privately, the group published their concerns in the Nauvoo Expositor. They declared their loyalty to tenants of Mormonism and the U.S. constitution. They complained that Smith wielded "ecclesiastical control over civil and business affairs." They risked their personal safety to reveal those secrets, but as Americans felt obliged to reveal a politician who was on a path to usurp separation of church and state.

The Nauvoo writers, though obviously unprofessional, made strong points about their desire to honor the constitution of the United States, to differentiate themselves from Joseph Smith's desire to blend church and state, and to worship in a solidly Mormon way with no secrecy attached. I would encourage any Mormon to read the document for themself, not an interpretation, but the real deal. Those writers outlined the tenents of their faith as Mormons, and to me, at least, they seemed to cover the full range apart from then practiced, also then secret, polygamy.

Their side lost.

Their publication was legally declared a "public nuisance," the press officially ordered burned by Joseph Smith. Those printers were labeled apostates, still called "heretics" and “schizmatics” by the Mormon church. This was an example, in my mind, again, as an outsider, of the power of freedom of the press and the right to free speech being denied. That incident demonstrates to me the reason the writers of our first consitutional ammendment, designed for a free and democratic society, held free speech as something essential and, as such, guaranteed it for all of us. The writers of our first amendment held free speech as essential because free speech can check corruption.To burn a printing press, that's a huge thing. Our founding fathers, what would their response have been?

I believe that paper and the surrounding incidents have a powerful place in American history, but probably quite a different one than most Mormons do. I believe the burning of the Nauvoo Expositor to be an example of the power of free speech.

For Mormons, though, the man who ordered the press burned was their hero, the same man who saw himself as head of church and country at the same time. Joseph Smith is a "prophet turned martyr."

I come from a tradition that celebrates questioning, that of the Episcopal faith. Apparently Mormonism does not. This is the way it seems to me.

My daughter knows many more Mormons than I do, and tells me they are not all the same. So tell me, what is the range of Mormon political views? We on the outside wonder if there is difference among you or if, similar to the Prop 8 in California, you will vote and campaign. because your elders tell you it's good for your salvation, regardless of whether it is "from the pulpit" or not. We will watch for softer directives made manifest in funds.

How does this presidential election play out with you? Do you all vote the same? And where are your printing presses these days? To me, press today seems to be the internet, and not so easily burned. But Mormon internet presence, in my experience, often minimizes reader participation. Facebook Mormon pages, the official ones anyway, and Youtube as well, have comments blocked.

150 years after Nauvoo a Mormon runs for President, while you talk of the church's sphere of influence shrinking. Perhaps, but to an outsider this is even more confusing. Often I fear Mormons do the opposite of what they announce. We only have your actions (PACs and campaign funds) to look at, but we are watching.

UPDATE, from OPENSECRETS.org, Center for Responsive Politics: Federal Election Commission regulations only require disclosure of funds bundled by registered lobbyists. In 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain agreed to disclose any bundlers who raised over $50,000 for their campaigns. Obama's re-election campaign is again disclosing those bundlers for the 2012 election. No 2012 Republican presidential candidates have agreed to voluntarily disclose their entire bundlers lists. As such, the only bundlers listed for Republican candidates are registered lobbyists.

Les Zazous...

was the name of a counter-culture group in France during WW II. There are different versions of the evolution of the title Zazous. What is clear is that Cab Calloway was hot in Paris pre-war, and za-zou was part of the scat he included in HiDeHo, among other performances. The Zoot Suit, again Calloway, influenced their distinctive look. and flew in the face of the occupying forces at the time. They danced swing, usually in underground clubs, while Cab kept American troops hep around the world.

Cab Calloway's music had many inter-cultural references, implying that Jewish, African and Asian Americans interacted with each other in making music among other things. African American influence in society and culture was much more widely accepted in France than the U.S., something that definitely rubbed the Nazis the wrong way. Les Zazous signified something uniquely French, young and passionate. Le Jazz Hot was forbidden, so threatening that they had to change the titles of the songs to get Nazi permission to publish recordings.

It's difficult to find a lot of information about Les Zazous, there weren't that many of them at any one time, probably less than 300 at their peak. This is taken from Wikipedia:

"The male Zazous wore extra large jackets, which hung down to their knees and which were fitted out with many pockets and often several half-belts. The amount of material used was a direct comment on Government decrees on the rationing of clothing material. Their trousers were narrow, gathered at the waist, and so were their ties, which were cotton or heavy wool. The shirt collars were high and kept in place by a horizontal pin. They liked thick-soled suede shoes, with white or brightly-coloured socks. Their hairstyles were greased and long.

Female Zazous wore their hair in curls falling down to their shoulders, or in braids. Blonde was the favourite colour, and they wore bright red lipstick, as well as sunglasses, also favoured by some male Zazous. They wore jackets with extremely wide shoulders and short, pleated skirts. Their stockings were striped or sometimes net, and they wore shoes with thick wooden soles.

The Zazous were big fans of checkered patterns, on jacket, skirt or brolly. They started appearing in the vegetarian restaurants and developed a passion for grated carrot salad. They usually drank fruit juice or beer with grenadine syrup, a cocktail that they seem to have invented.

The Zazous were numbered in the hundreds rather than thousands and were generally between 17 and 20. There were Zazous from all classes, races, and genders but with apparently similar outlooks. Working class Zazous used theft of cloth and black market activities to get their outfits, sometimes stitching their own clothes. Some of the more bohemian Zazous in the Latin Quarter varied the outfit, with sheepskin jackets and multicoloured scarves. It was their ironic and sarcastic comments on the Nazi/Vichy rulers, their dandyism and hedonism, their suspicion of the work ethic and their love of �decadent� jazz that distinguished them as one of the prototype youth movements questioning capitalist society.

While they did not suffer like their contemporaries in Germany, the working class Edelweiss Pirates (some of whom were hanged by the Nazis), the Zazou subculture represented an important dissident minority in a society of widespread complicity and acquiescence."

They weren't a militant group, more of an artistic bunch of kids who identified with a look, sound and thought. The Nazis took them on, publicly shaving the heads of the Zazou men on the streets. Persistent Zazous were sent to work camps, not in large numbers, and the movement moved underground. I'll work on finding more pictures so you can see the look.

I found this tonight and thought I'd share it. It was a heartening little story, just one, representing a small town in rural America, one obviously committed to their kids, education and rodeo. Personally I've known nothing about rodeo, but my daughter is a new member on her school's barrel racing team, so I'm trying to learn fast. This little clip brought to mind a couple of other similar small town stories from my state, both places that used creativity and community to revitalize their economies. One, Toppenish, did it through art. Their motto: "Where the West STill LIves in the City of Murals and Museums." They hired local artists to paint murals on the sides of the buildings in town. These murals feature stories from the history of the area, and are painted in a 24-48 hour period, I believe. They set up bleachers for visitors to watch the mural unfold. The rest of the year they have horse drawn cart tours of the murals. It was named a "Must-See Old West Destination by True West Magazine in 2010." Pretty cool for a formerly disenfranchised bunch of 9,000, mostly Native Americans. Another small town, located in the mountains, created an economic upturn for themselves by adopting a cultural heritage as their own. They took a vote and agreed to turn themselves into a little Bavaria. All the architecture has Bavarian details, there are German restaurants, gift stores, music at the pavilion in summer evenings. The best is winter, of course, where they display all kinds of German Christmas decorations and tree ornaments, and have a great lighting ceremony. This brings in tourists also taking in local x country ski trails. I'm always tickled when I see art and ingenuity making money. Ever notice how in any given city whenever the artists stake out an area, within 5-10 years that area becomes the hot new place to be? Then the property values rise, restaurants cook, stores sell, services serve... So many times these kind of decisions are based on human factors. How a place feels, the "vibe." In the rodeo story it's about how the community feels, the warmth, the hope, the support they see for kids and family life. Economic drivers. what's your experience? Ever see an economy transformed by ideas?

Pimping for Powerful Peace

"an Arab man's attempt at bridging the cultural gap. Trying to make a difference. Failing a lot. Succeeding once in a while."

Mahmood Nasser Al-Yousif

CNN posted this article today, here is the first part. For those of you who are concerned about the plight of women in Arab countries, note the numbers of females. (Also that these voices do better in our language than we do.)

I've really enjoyed watching the process of dialog over the past months online. Feels like our founding fathers meeting the world. East and west, men and women, feminists and imams, Shia and sunni. (Interestingly never seen people claiming alliance with the Taliban on Twitter. Which reinforces my opinion about supplying Afghanistan with satellite internet and cheap laptops. )

The process is the same as posting and commenting here,just back and forth, trying to be civil and understand each other. Apologies for misunderstanding or rudeness.In systems theory we used to talk about feedback loops, old words maybe for learning from each other. Check it out~

(CNN) -- Political unrest across the Middle East has increased appetite in the wider world for comment from within the region, and some are turning to bloggers for insider views on the events unfolding on their television screens.

Social media -- including blogging, Twitter and Facebook -- has played an often-crucial role in organizing the protests sweeping the region. But it's not all politics, and blogs about the ups and downs of daily life can offer a fascinating glimpse of real life in the Middle East.

Here, we have drawn up an entirely unscientific list of 10 of the most interesting blogs from the region.The bloggers come from a variety of backgrounds and countries. Our only criteria were that they are based in the region, write mostly in English and have something worth saying.

Politics in Egypt and the wider Arab world
Arabist is popular for its insightful comment on Egyptian politics. Often thought provoking, it's a good place to monitor developments in post-revolution Egypt.

The principal blogger on this site is Issandr El Amrani, a freelance journalist and commentator for several international publications. El Amrani was born in Morocco, and has lived in Cairo, Egypt, since 2000.

I felt that I would rather represent myself instead of having others speak for me.
--Eman Al Nafjan, author of Saudiwoman

The Saudi woman who got tired of reading "expert" opinion on her country, Riyadh-based mother of three and post-graduate student Eman Al Nafjan, 32, set up her blog Saudiwoman as a response to reading non-Arabs and non-Saudis giving expert opinions on life and culture in the kingdom.

She said: "I felt that I would rather represent myself instead of having others speak for me. There was no long-term plan but eventually I became addicted to it. To me it's an outlet and a way to voice my concerns about everything, including Islamophobia, human rights violations and women's movement in Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict."

Saudiwoman was a finalist for Best Asian Blog in the 2011 Bloggies.

Bahrain's "Blogfather" Mahmood Nasser Al-Yousif, the author of Mahmood's Den, is a long-time blogger who has been described as the region's "Blogfather."

Al-Yousif was recently arrested and briefly detained by the Bahraini authorities. He describes his blog as "an Arab man's attempt at bridging the cultural gap. Trying to make a difference. Failing a lot. Succeeding once in a while."

Young Yemeni woman reporting on protests

Afrah Nasser is a 25-year-old journalist at the Yemen Observer. Nasser has been blogging for just over a year, featuring politics, news and views. Her recent posts have been about the protests in Yemen and include updates from Sanaa's Change Square, a focal point for protest in the capital.
She said: "I love to blog about political topics especially since the revo started. It's my gateway to express my views freely. However, that caused me trouble sometimes."
Nasser said she recently received a threatening message on her Facebook account. Her response? She just translated it from Arabic to English and posted it on her blog.

"Rantings" from Egypt

The Rantings of a Sandmonkey was an anonymous blog until its author Mahmoud Salem went public, saying he had been attacked close to Cairo's Tahrir Square during pro-democracy demonstrations in February this year.
Salem said his car was destroyed and he was beaten up by pro-government thugs in the days before the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.
Sandmonkey has just won the best English language blog -- a people's choice award -- in The Bobs, Deutsche Welle's Blog Awards.


* If you're interested, the Interim Government of Libya has set up a website, very well done. Not exactly AlQuaeda type language. This is from their home page, makes me proud to have lived there.

"In this important historical juncture which Libya is passing through right now, we find ourselves at a turning point with only two solutions. Either we achieve freedom and race to catch up with humanity and world developments, or we are shackled and enslaved under the feet of the tyrant Mu’ammar Gaddafi where we shall live in the midst of history."

How does love get made?

Backtracking on some bloggy friends entries of the past year I found this, a poem by Sharon Olds, "The Knowing." Ever find something you wish you had written yourself? this poem is like that. It cuts right in deep, not one superfluous sound.

Later I was thinking about that term, "making love." I say it or hear it so often I don't remember ever thinking about what it meant. I wondered who the first person was to coin that phrase? How did they come up with that? All of a sudden it struck me as amazing. Creating something like. Not the old fashioned marital manual version of sexual euphemisms. ahem. no, but making a thing that is love.

Love. Is it an emotion? Is it a phenomenon? Is it a commitment? A recognition? Is it something made? or uncovered? discovered? ignored? Love within a sexual relationship, is that different than friendship love? and falling? how is that different from making?


I know my own experience in it, that's all. The last time I was in love was about 7 years ago. We had compatibility in many amazing ways, but he was newly separated when we met. I had a dream shortly after our first lunch meeting. He was with me in my bed, although not physically, but in my dream it was so vivid that I thought he was truly there, and he said, "I love you." and i heard the words ringing in my actual ears. I felt, still do, that the dream meant we had a connection that moved through time and space. It was more than a year before I heard him say that for real.

When he did he said he didn't remember when it started, that he'd loved me for some time. He made me look him in the eyes when he said it.

Sometimes still I wake up in the middle of the night aching for that truth.

But I never felt that we "fell in" love. I just felt happy with him. I have had the experience of falling before. And the experience of comparing other loves to that feeling and believing they weren't enough. The "fall" was what made it real for me at that time. Not now. not since my last love.

I believe that we can fall in love many times and also find many people who are enough to love romantically without that falling thing. now, that's what I believe. and believing it, how does that shape the love we make? there's something here about meaning, the meaning we attribute to these experiences. Probably lots of these things are shaped in us before we can begin to articulate them- cultural norms. But romantic love is a universal theme, cross culture, time and place.

That's all I have for now. Except for this: all this talking about love and theorizing, is it my way of kind of having intimacy without risking actually meeting new people? and risking rejection or some other kind of hurt? maybe I want some vague prince charming to see through my words to my, dare I say it, need. ? someone smart and creative who isn't a drinker/ drugger/ married who could love me with pulling my hair out, unemployed and sleeping in my car while I'm 50 years old? now I remember why i do this. It's a semblance of remembering, maybe. Maybe it's my way of making love.

That's not the only thing I do here, i do really appreciate the whole of you and so many wonderful individuals here who write and think and feel. It's something I just have thought about this week, though.

back to the original ideas.. How about you? how do you think love is made?

Big Guns, revisited

Reposting this, because Libya's celebrating 40 years since the revolution this week.

When I was 8 we moved to Libya. We lived in temporary housing for the first months, downtown in Tripoli. My brother was 6 and my sister three months old. My brother and i were like fric and frac, always the same height, identical coloring, people asked if we were twins regularly. Our birthdays were two years and two weeks apart. The first night in our new home we heard this godawful wailing during what seemed like the middle of the night. Very loud, we were sure the place was haunted and ran into our parents bedroom. They had no idea what the noise was. Turns out our apartment (4rth floor) was right next to a mosque. With loudspeakers, of course, calling to prayer, right at our level.

One day my mom asked us to go to the store for her. It was a few blocks from our apt. So we went, and my brother knocked a bottle of pop onto the floor, where it broke and splashed onto my legs and feet and into my shoes. Ick. I took them off, it was summer, preferring barefoot to sticking shoes. So we're walking along, I'm fairly small, btw, for my age, about the size of my 6yo brother. All of a sudden I feel someone's hand in my underwear, from behind.

It happened so fast it was exactly like that, my first awareness of it was feeling it, this guy had come up from behind me and lifted my dress and put his hand in my pants in one fast move. In the next move I turned to his smirking face and swung those shoes into his head, yelling. He was pretty big, about 12 or 13, and looked shocked. Then took off running across the street into a vacant lot. Another Libyan kid was there and saw the whole thing, he ran after him as I was screaming, in English, for him to get him. They disappeared into an alley and we went home. For the longest time I was afraid I might be pregnant. Seriously. Instead, I got a vaginal staff infection and antibiotics.

months later. One morning i stayed home from school, my brother left for the bus stop as usual. After about five minutes he's back, telling my mother he couldn't go to school because soldiers were shooting at the kids at the bus stop. My mom was pretty incredulous, so he told her to look out the window. I looked with her. He was right. Well, except the shooting was with blanks, after lots of warnings to get inside. That was our introduction to Qaddafi. and his army of 14 year old boys. Some of it's a little fuzzy, but that part is pretty vivid, how young they were. Like they'd been let out of school to play war, they were pumped up, riding around in the back of trucks waving their rifles and machine guns.

Martial law was in place for a while, maybe a week or so, like 12 hour curfew. My smart dad had thought ahead to get a hard core short wave radio to bring with us. We got all our news from BBC in South Africa. That way we knew about the revolution, all of it. It wasn't so bad, better because we were in an apartment building, so we could go back and forth to neighbors and we all shared food and essential stuff. In the end there was only one death, from someone shooting them self accidentally, as i remember.

My next memory is one afternoon going downstairs to the lobby of our building to see a soldier sitting there shooting the shit with the doorman. He had a gun with him. It was as big as I was. Well, that's the way I remember it, anyway. I backed up toward the stairs. At that time I wore glasses. He wanted to look at them, gesturing to me, speaking in Arabic, to take them off and give them to him. That would have meant getting closer to him. The doorman, in English, encouraged me, telling me he wouldn't hurt me. Not convincing. It was very scary, felt like a catch 22. Was he more likely to shoot if I ran away, or if I was closer to him. Was he mad at me already because I didn't give him my glasses right away? I ran, his laughter chasing me up the stairs.

Everything new is old again.

Remembering my Nana, who identified herself as a "flapper." She later went on to fight the union to get a "man's" job with the railroad, in accounting. She supported her mother and two children as a young widow in the and 40s.

This is a long one, if you can't get all the way through, skip to the last few paragraphs. BTW, despite appearances, it's not about clothes.

FLAPPER JANE
"The New Republic" September, 1925
BY BRUCE BLIVEN

Jane's a flapper. That is a quaint, old-fashioned term, but I hope you remember its meaning. As you can tell by her appellation, Jane is 19. If she were 29, she would be Dorothy; 39, Doris; 49, Elaine; 59, Jane again--and so on around. This Jane, being 19, is a flapper, though she urgently denies that she is a member of the younger generation. The younger generation, she will tell you, is aged 15 to 17; and she professes to be decidedly shocked at the things they do and say. That is a fact which would interest her minister, if he knew it--poor man, he knows so little! For he regards Jane as a perfectly horrible example of wild youth--paint, cigarettes, cocktails, petting parties--oooh! Yet if the younger generation shocks her as she says, query: how wild is Jane?

Before we come to this exciting question, let us take a look at the young person as she strolls across the lawn of her parents' suburban home, having just put the car away after driving sixty miles in two hours. She is, for one thing, a very pretty girl. Beauty is the fashion in 1925. She is frankly, heavily made up, not to imitate nature, but for an altogether artificial effect--pallor mortis, poisonously scarlet lips, richly ringed eyes--the latter looking not so much debauched (which is the intention) as diabetic. Her walk duplicates the swagger supposed by innocent America to go with the female half of a Paris Apache dance. And there are, finally, her clothes.

These were estimated the other day by some statistician to weigh two pounds. Probably a libel; I doubt they come within half a pound of such bulk. Jane isn't wearing much, this summer. If you'd like to know exactly, it is: one dress, one step-in, two stockings, two shoes.

A step-in, if you are 99 and 44/1OOths percent ignorant, is underwear--one piece, light, exceedingly brief but roomy. Her dress, as you can't possibly help knowing if you have even one good eye, and get around at all outside the Old People's Home, is also brief. It is cut low where it might be high, and vice versa. The skirt comes just an inch below her knees, overlapping by a faint fraction her rolled and twisted stockings. The idea is that when she walks in a bit of a breeze, you shall now and then observe the knee (which is not rouged--that's just newspaper talk) but always in an accidental, Venus-surprised-at-the-bath sort of way. This is a bit of coyness which hardly fits in with Jane's general character.
flapper
A FLAPPER POWDERS HER KNEES

Jane's haircut is also abbreviated. She wears of course the very newest thing in bobs, even closer than last year's shingle. It leaves her just ahout no hair at all in the back, and 20 percent more than that in the front--about as much as is being worn this season by a cellist (male); less than a pianist; and much, much less than a violinist. Because of this new style, one can confirm a rumor heard last year: Jane has ears.

The corset is as dead as the dodo's grandfather; no feeble publicity pipings by the manufacturers, or calling it a "clasp around" will enable it, as Jane says, to "do a Lazarus." The petticoat is even more defunct. Not even a snicker can be raised by telling Jane that once the nation was shattered to its foundations by the shadow-skirt. The brassiere has been abandoned, since 1924. While stockings are usually worn, they are not a sine-qua-nothing-doing. In hot weather Jane reserves the right to discard them, just as all the chorus girls did in 1923. As stockings are only a frantic, successful attempt to duplicate the color and texture of Jane's own sunburned slim legs, few but expert boulevardiers can tell the difference.

These which I have described are Jane's clothes, but they are not merely a flapper uniform. They are The style, Summer of 1925 Eastern Seaboard. These things and none other are being worn by all of Jane's sisters and her cousins and her aunts. They are being worn by ladies who are three times Jane's age, and look ten years older; by those twice her age who look a hundred years older. Their use is so universal that in our larger cities the baggage transfer companies one and all declare they are being forced into bankruptcy. Ladies who used to go away for the summer with six trunks can now pack twenty dainty costumes in a bag.

Not since 1820 has feminine apparel been so frankly abbreviated as at present; and never, on this side of the Atlantic, until you go back to the little summer frocks of Pocahontas. This year's styles have gone quite a long step toward genuine nudity. Nor is this merely the sensible half of the population dressing as everyone ought to, in hot weather. Last winter's styles weren't so dissimilar, except that they were covered up by fur coats and you got the full effect only indoors. And improper costumes never have their full force unless worn on the street. Next year's styles, from all one hears, will be, as they already are on the continent, even More So.

Our great mentor has failed us: you will see none of the really up-to-date styles in the movies. For old-fashioned, conservative and dowdy dressing, go and watch the latest production featuring Bebe, Gloria or Pola. Under vigilant father Hays the ensilvered screen daren't reveal a costume equal to scores on Fifth Avenue, Broadway--or Wall Street.

Wall Street, by the way, is the one spot in which the New Nakedness seems most appropriate.

Where men's simple passions have the lowest boiling point; where the lust for possession is most frankly, brazenly revealed and indeed dominates the whole diurnal round--in such a place there is a high appropriateness in the fact that the priestesses in the temple of Mammon, though their service be no more than file clerk or stenographer, should be thus Dionysiac in apparelling themselves for their daily tasks.

Where will it all end? do you ask, thumbing the page ahead in an effort to know the worst. Apologetically I reply that no one can say where it will end. Nudity has been the custom of many countries and over long periods of time. No one who has read history can be very firm in saying that It Never Can Happen Again. We may of course mutter, in feeble tones of hope, that our climate is not propitious.

Few any more are so naive as not to realize that there are fashions in morals and that these have a limitless capacity for modification. Costume, of course, is A Moral. You can get a rough measure of our movement if you look at the history of the theatre and see how the tidemark of tolerance has risen. For instance:
* 1904--Performance of *Mrs. Warren's Profession* is halted by police.
* 1919--*Mrs. Warren* O. K. Town roused to frenzy by *Aphrodite*, in which one chorus girl is exposed for one minute in dim light and a union suit.
* 1923--Union suit O. K. Self-appointed censors have conniption fits over chorus girls naked from the waist up.
* 1925--Nudity from waist up taken for granted. Excitement caused by show in which girls wear only fig leaves.

Plotting the curve of tolerance and projecting it into the future, it is thus easy to see that complete nudity in the theatre will be reached on March 12, 1927. Just what will the appalling consequences be?

Perhaps about what they have been in the theatres of several European capitals, where such displays have long been familiar. Those who are interested in that sort of thing will go. Others will abstain. At this point Billy Sunday, discussing this theme, would certainly drop into anecdotage. Were we to do the same, we might see Jane on the sun porch talking to a mixed group of her mother's week-end guests. "Jane," says one, "I hear you cut yourself in bathing."

"I'll say I did," comes crisply back. "Look!" She lifts her skirt three or four inches, revealing both brown knees, and above one of them a half-healed deep scratch. Proper murmurs of sympathy. From one quarter a chilly silence which draws our attention to the enpurpled countenance of a lady guest in the throes of what Eddie Cantor calls "the sex complex." Jane's knees have thrown her all a-twitter; and mistaking the character of her emotion she thinks it is justified indignation. She is glad to display it openly for the reproof thereby administered.

flapper
SHOWING OFF OXFORD BAGS

"Well, damn it," says Jane, in a subsequent private moment, "anybody who can't stand a knee or two, nowadays, might as well quit. And besides, she goes to the beaches and never turns a hair."

Here is a real point. The recent history of the Great Disrobing Movement can be checked up in another way by looking at the bathing costumes which have been accepted without question at successive intervals. There are still a few beaches near New York City which insist on more clothes than anyone can safely swim in, and thereby help to drown several young women each year. But in most places- -universally in the West--a girl is noow compelled to wear no more than is a man. The enpurpled one, to be consistent, ought to have apoplexy every time she goes to the shore. But as Jane observes, she doesn't.

"Jane," say I, "I am a reporter representing American inquisitiveness. Why do all of you dress the way you do?"

"I don't know," says Jane. This reply means nothing: it is just the device by which the younger generation gains time to think. Almost at once she adds:

"The old girls are doing it because youth is. Everybody wants to be young, now--though they want all us young people to be something else. Funny, isn't it?

"In a way," says Jane, "it's just honesty. Women have come down off the pedestal lately. They are tired of this mysterious-feminine-charm stuff. Maybe it goes with independence, earning your own living and voting and all that. There was always a bit of the harem in that coverup- your-arms-and-legs business, don't you think?

"Women still want to be loved," goes on Jane, warming to her theme, "but they want it on a 50-50 basis, which includes being admired for the qualities they really possess. Dragging in this strange-allurement stuff doesn't seem sporting. It's like cheating in games, or lying."

"Ask me, did the War start all this?" says Jane helpfully.

"The answer is, how do I know ? How does anybody know?

"I read this book whaddaya-call-it by Rose Macaulay, and she showed where they'd been excited about wild youth for three generations anyhow--since 1870. I have a hunch maybe they've always been excited.

"Somebody wrote in a magazine how the War had upset the balance of the sexes in Europe and the girls over there were wearing the new styles as part of the competition for husbands. Sounds like the bunk to me. If you wanted to nail a man for life I think you'd do better to go in for the old-fashioned line: 'March' me to the altar, esteemed sir, before you learn whether I have limbs or not.'

"Of course, not so many girls are looking for a life mealticket nowadays. Lots of them prefer to earn their own living and omit the home-and-baby act. Well, anyhow, postpone it years and years. They think a bachelor girl can and should do everything a bachelor man does."

"It's funny," says Jane, "that just when women's clothes are getting scanty, men's should be going the other way. Look at the Oxford trousers!--as though a man had been caught by the ankles in a flannel quicksand."

Do the morals go with the clothes? Or the clothes with the morals? Or are they independent? These are questions I have not ventured to put to Jane, knowing that her answer would be "so's your old man." Generally speaking, however, it is safe to say that as regards the wildness of youth there is a good deal more smoke than fire. Anyhow, the new Era of Undressing, as already suggested, has spread far beyond the boundaries of Jane's group. The fashion is followed by hordes of unquestionably monogamous matrons, including many who join heartily in the general ululations as to what young people are coming to. Attempts to link the new freedom with prohibition, with the automobile, the decline of Fundamentalism, are certainly without foundation. These may be accessory, and indeed almost certainly are, but only after the fact.

That fact is, as Jane says, that women to-day are shaking off the shreds and patches of their age-old servitude. "Feminism" has won a victory so nearly complete that we have even forgotten the fierce challenge which once inhered in the very word. Women have highly resolved that they are just as good as men, and intend to be treated so. They don't mean to have any more unwanted children. They don't intend to be debarred from any profession or occupation which they choose to enter. They clearly mean (even though not all of them yet realize it) that in the great game of sexual selection they shall no longer be forced to play the role, simulated or real, of helpless quarry. If they want to wear their heads shaven, as a symbol of defiance against the former fate which for three millenia forced them to dress their heavy locks according to male decrees, they will have their way. If they should elect to go naked nothing is more certain than that naked they will go, while from the sidelines to which he has been relegated mere man is vouchsafed permission only to pipe a feeble
"Hurrah! Hurrah!"

Blaxploitation and Deliverance

Thinking more about Isaac Hayes, looking for that academy awards clip. Not interested in digesting all his biographies and dissecting his character. More to try to honor his role in America growing up. I'm a "child of the 60s." born in 1960 and a time of upheaval. remember attending mlk's memorial service with my parents, i was seven or eight. When we came home from the service i used musical notation for the first time to write the melody for "We Shall Overcome." I never wanted to lose the feeling of that time and place. yes, i identified with that kind of change being possible. as a little blond white girl in Orange, California. corny, cultural appropriation, insulting? maybe some of that, too, but it's what it was. so when a friend recently blogged about "Black Moses" i got curious. i mean, it felt right, having seen and felt popculture thru that time, but i wanted to get a little deeper. and now I want to put this thing here that i found. Because it gets at what I've tried to say but didn't nearly as well. Leading his people into the promised land of money making movies and music, at a time when black characters in pop culture were Sammy Davis Junior and Sidney Poitier. What it meant was that white folks were spending their money to hear and see the black man's reality.* For the first time ever. First, though, from Wiki: "Blaxploitation films, such as Mandingo, laid the foundation for future filmmakers to address racial controversies regarding inner city poverty, and in the early 1990s, a new wave of acclaimed black filmmakers focused on black urban life in their films (particularly Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood, among others)." The PopMatters Film Blog
The Front Page
11 August 2008
Funk Soul Brother: Isaac Hayes He was Black Moses, creator of some stellar Hot Buttered Soul. He gave Shaft his Oscar winning authority, and broke down color barriers in the highly conservative - and Caucasian - film composer’s club... With a combination of long form covers and stunning originals, (Isaac Hayes) helped a lagging label that had just lost Otis Redding to a plane crash...But it would be the opportunity to score a seemingly unimportant blaxploitation film that would change Hayes, and the face of Hollywood, forever. 1971’s Shaft remains significant for many important reasons. First, it was one of the first mostly minority films to take the groundwork laid by Melvin Van Pebbles with his indie masterpiece Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and turn it into a mainstream mandate. Second, it established the viability of the genre to those outside the urban setting - especially among the critical counterculture. Finally, it gave a soundtrack voice to the growing influence of R&B and soul. Hayes’ now classic wah-wah peddle tinged theme, containing lyrics that today are just as outrageous in their considered cool, became an instant smash. It earned the then 29 year old a much coveted gold statue, the first ever awarded to an African American outside of the AMPAS acting category. This is monumental for reasons that reach beyond Hayes’ own career. It opened the door for musicians of color, paving the way for Stevie Wonder’s win in 1984, Prince’s score prize the same year, Lionel Richie’s award the year after, and perhaps most remarkably, the Three 6 Mafia’s stunning upset in 2005 (Hayes actually appeared in Hustle and Flow)." Black Moses indeed. *Not that there is any one "reality" for any group of people. I don't mean to offend anyone here, and if so please let me know. This stuff is generality, of pop culture change and only that.

Obligatory Phillips

Getting ready Mom gave me Phillips Milk of Magnesia. She said she'd heard people get constipated when they travel. I think i hesitated a little, so she only gave us a little, as I remember. Me and my brother. He was six i was eight. Our sister was a baby, three months old. I remember random things, the drive there windy. A week or so before getting a haircut. A "pixie" haircut, the adults thought it would be practical because it was so hot in Libya. I cried. Smelling the exhaust fumes at LAX, they made me excited. And they still do.

The airplane was glamour to me. Like my aunt Jeanine's all white with blue balls christmas tree. Everything was lovely, quiet, kind, color coordinated. TWA light blue with navy and red accents. I was in awe. Every few minutes a new little comfort: drinks, warm towels, hot food, a toy plastic stewardess pin. We flew over the Atlantic.

It was a fairly empty plane, so the stewardesses made my brother and me little beds out of three across seats. They smelled like ladies. When tucking me in with a soft pillow and dimmed lights she said, "Sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite." I thought that was the coolest thing, never having heard it before. It felt delicious there in that blanket with those lovely women taking care of everything and the warm hum of the engines cocoon.

When I woke up the sun was bright. I was a little unsure of what to do. I thought there was some sort of schedule of life on the airplane. I waited for someone to come and announce something next. Peeking out the bright window all I saw was endless white. It was the tops of clouds, but then I thought it was frozen arctic water. The stewardess laughed when I asked her if it was ice and if it was time to wake up. Not in a mean way, in an "aren't you darling" way. She got us things for breakfast. I started to feel a little something in my stomach.

We went back to sitting with our parents, getting ready to land. She got me a bag and my mom told me about the proper use of it. I felt better. The seatbelt light came on, we started the long descent thing. I threw up. Didn't quite make the bag, not all the way. some, the rest ended up in my brand new white boots. I cried because my boots were ugly now and my tights all dirty. The stewardess brought me some water and mint gum to freshen my mouth. I felt better. Then threw up again, this time I got the bag thing figured out. Could have used some Dramamine.

I wonder if those women ever realized how beautiful they were.

Birthday Business

Today is Mike P.'s birthday. Mine is tomorrow. I "lost my virginity" to him 34 years ago. We had sex twice. It was a complicated thing. Not physically, emotionally. My family was very messed up at the time, and i was in a whirlwind of emotions, too much to go into all now. In the end, we broke up because my dad was violent and Mike was getting threatened after they found out i was at his house alone with him. Pretty much a mutual thing. I didn't want him to have to deal with that.

Never a passionate affair, we mostly sat in his friend Mark's car and held hands and talked during lunch. We had sex because it seemed the thing to do. Luckily he was smart and considerate, got the condom, put it on, took his time, all that. He was a fantastic garage band guitarist. LOVED Queen, totally turned me on to them.

A few years later I sang in a show he played for. I took it by storm, if i do say so myself. All Alice Cooper, there was one point at the end/ climax of a song where I was supposed to hold this note out for 8 measures. At the end of the phrase i had more. Only problem was there was a big bunch of musicians playing, being conducted, and we'd practiced it with the 8 measure thing. I phased a little down watching the little red baton light. When saw it swing back up it was like nothing else. All those musicians had to go with it while I kept it out there for 8 more. All together I held it more than two minutes. Well, that's what it seems like now, anyway. We were all so stoked, the auditorium was packed and the audience was crazy. we got a standing ovation for another two minutes.

Mike and I, we're still friendly. He has waist length red hair and does the sound system for the Crystal Cathedral, also music for a very old school Christian radio show.

My best friend Beth's birthday was the day before yesterday. Same year. She was smart like a whip. With a little attitude. She made/ let her boyfriend Mark do anything sexually that made her feel good. No intercourse, not much for him, but she got hers. She turned me on to Lou Reed. She's teaching English at a women's college in Japan now. She didn't return my last email.

And I'm unemployed in Seattle, dirt poor, sitting in a coffee shop online because my internet is shut off for nonpayment.

My daughter made me a beautiful card the other day in her painting class. Just a little generic thank-you card, it said "Thanks." but inside she had painted a sky with golds and oranges, dark blues and a little grey, then light, entitled Blue Skies. Underneath the painting, in the message part, she wrote: "For Giving Me Life."

It's a Happy Birth Day

Another Big Gun

So I met this man a few weeks ago. From a place not unlike this one. He wanted to "cam." I didnt' have a cam, but I looked at his. he looked very tired. we chatted/ Imd for an hour or two, he sent me links to some Romanian bands on YouTube. Turns out he was Romanian. From Transylvania. Did i know anything about transylvania? yes. Vlad in a casket minus his head, i knew that story. some others.

I had no idea before that, his chat English was like that. he wanted to talk on the phone. So we talked. He had an accent, his English was in process, for sure, but he got it. He told me he's only been talking on the phone for two months, he taught himself English by watching TV and repeating everything, over the past 9 months. I figured he was smart.

So I agreed to meet him. He called me the next day, and the next. We met for coffee at Victrola. He wasn't dressed for a "date," definitely. I saw him out the window before I left and changed clothes fast. Was he attractive? to me? well, yes. Amazing eyes, bad teeth, latinlike in a certain way, everything is about me, you know that way, holding my drink, getting my napkins, opening doors, like that. he held out his hand, he wanted to touch mine. We sat in front, on the sidewalk, across the street was a little Lyndon LaRouche campaign table in front of the grocery store. He said it still seemed strange to him to see people campaigning openly like that, free speech being free. We talked about Qadaffi and Ceausescu.

We walked to the park, a lot of history there. Makes me feel rooted i guess. He pulls me behind him and slips his hand in between our bodies to my breast. It feels tight and comfortable, clever. and i like the way his touch feels. But then, we're at a park, where there's not only kids but a history of public sex. So we walk more and talk.

He talks about being in the army in Romania, carrying big guns, they were empty. They gave them guns but no ammunition. He didn't say why.

He told me about a time when he was involved with a yoga/ tantra teacher. How his endurance developed to a point where he would last for four or five hours. then he couldn't orgazm, at all, then he had nightmares about demons or something like that. He felt he was playing with something beyond his control, and he stopped. that's what he said.

He kept touching me, trying to touch my breasts and sex. How do i feel about that? It irritated me, though i liked the feel and i can't help making noises like that, but it definitely irritated me. He said, "I understand, this is your neighborhood, where you live." He stopped. Then he wanted me to get in his car in the parking lot at the grocery store. For what? More semi-public semi-sex? We said goodbye.

I came home to my neighbor and her baby locked out of their apt by their drunk dad/ husband. We went for a walk and she talked. We came back and he'd opened the door and passed out.

I come inside and he'd called already. We talked a while, i told him about my neighbor. He said, "oh, my little lady." My girl calls me her "cute little lady." He wanted me to come to his house the next night. he wanted to sleep with his face in my neck.

That was a couple of weeks ago, I think. I lost count of the days and the times he's called me. I like him. But his teeth are bad. ?

Big Guns

When I was 8 we moved to Libya. We lived in temporary housing for the first months, downtown in Tripoli. My brother was 6 and my sister three months old. My brother and i were like fric and frac, always the same height, identical coloring, people asked if we were twins regularly. Our birthdays were two years and two weeks apart. The first night in our new home we heard this godawful wailing during what seemed like the middle of the night. Very loud, we were sure the place was haunted and ran into our parents bedroom. They had no idea what the noise was. Turns out our apartment (4rth floor) was right next to a mosque. With loudspeakers, of course, calling to prayer, right at our level.

One day my mom asked us to go to the store for her. It was a few blocks from our apt. So we went, and my brother knocked a bottle of pop onto the floor, where it broke and splashed onto my legs and feet and into my shoes. Ick. I took them off, it was summer, preferring barefoot to sticking shoes. So we're walking along, I'm fairly small, btw, for my age, about the size of my 6yo brother. All of a sudden I feel someone's hand in my underwear, from behind.

It happened so fast it was exactly like that, my first awareness of it was feeling it, this guy had come up from behind me and lifted my dress and put his hand in my pants in one fast move. I didn't think, just turned and saw his smirking face. I took my shoes and hit him in the head, yelling. He was pretty big, about 12 or 13, and looked shocked. Then took off running across the street into a vacant lot. Another Libyan kid was there and saw the whole thing, he ran after him as I was screaming, in English, for him to get him. They disappeared into an alley and we went home. For the longest time I was afraid I might be pregnant. Seriously.

a few weeks later. One morning i stayed home from school, my brother left for the bus stop as usual. After about five minutes he's back, telling my mother he couldn't go to school because soldiers were shooting at the kids at the bus stop. My mom was pretty incredulous, so he told her to look out the window. I looked with her. He was right. Well, except the shooting was with blanks, after lots of warnings to get inside. That was our introduction to Qaddafi. and his army of 14 year old boys. Some of it's a little fuzzy, but that part is pretty vivid, how young they were. Like they'd been let out of school to play war, they were pumped up, riding around in the back of trucks waving their rifles and machine guns.

Martial law was in place for a while, maybe a week or so, like 12 hour curfew. My smart dad had thought ahead to get a hard core short wave radio to bring with us. We got all our news from BBC in South Africa. That way we knew about the revolution, all of it. It wasn't so bad, better because we were in an apartment building, so we could go back and forth to neighbors and we all shared food and essential stuff. In the end there was only one death, from someone shooting them self accidentally, as i remember.

My next memory is one afternoon going downstairs to the lobby of our building to see a soldier sitting there shooting the shit with the doorman. He had a gun with him. It was as big as I was. Well, that's the way I remember it, anyway. I backed up toward the stairs. At that time I wore glasses. He wanted to look at them, gesturing to me, speaking in Arabic, to take them off and give them to him. That would have meant getting closer to him. The doorman, in English, encouraged me, telling me he wouldn't hurt me. Not convincing. It was very scary, felt like a catch 22. Was he more likely to shoot if I ran away, or if I was closer to him. Was he mad at me already because I didn't give him my glasses right away? I ran upstairs, his laughter chasing me. No shooting.

The Elephant and the Centipede

my daughter, she says the darnedest things. like about this commercial- for Glade somethingorother, i think. anyway, it has this woman elephant (you can tell her gender from the pearls)talking about how smelly her husband's shoes are. he's a centipede.

She says, "Every time I see that commercial I get concerned about the sexual well being of that couple."

Intercourse

"Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex... Let them not imagine that they know aught of the delights which intercourse with the other sex can give, until they have felt the sympathy of mind with mind, and heart with heart; until they bring into that intercourse every affection, every talent, every confidence, every refinement, every respect."

Frances Wright, 1829

"Do you love it? Is it hot? Is it sexy?"

Paris Hilton, 2006

Unconditional love?

the other day i saw it in the grocery store. a woman with a loud child, a little boy. Probably autistic or asperger's, about 7 or 8, crying a lot. She's also got another one, about 4 or 5.

She's trying to buy food and flowers for someone, Mother's day coming up and all. Trying to keep him quiet to avoid disturbing all the shoppers without disabled children. Giving him hugs and trying to calm him. I want to tell her, "It's only noise. Their opinions about you and him don't mean shit." But I, too, stick to the script. I don't know her so that would be inappropriate.

She gets in line and the clerk drops a jar of pickles from the customer just ahead of her. Pickle juice and shards added to her long list of stressors. She says? "For once it's not me who did something like that." Then she continues soothing her son, keeping the other one out of the broken glass.

Today

is beautiful outside. I'm inside, for too long now. Just kind of in a bubble. Need to get a job, just got another "you're overqualified" message. No sex for a while. Not that i'm really interested in fucking for fuck's sake. There's an intriguing possibility on a back burner out in email land, but should i wait til i lose 10 pounds to meet him, or til i get a job or..?

My dad is very sick, dying, but in a kind of unpredictable way. 2 days to 2 years kind of thing. His girlfriend/"adopted daughter" finally decided to marry him. He loves me. After i got back from visiting him i slept several 10+ hour days. In this bubble.

How come with all these mood options i can't find one that fits?