Category: Writing

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a breakup

As the sun sets on our time in Charleston, I'm realizing how much I'm going to miss it.

Three years ago, I crazily agreed to move to Charleston, SC, sight unseen, for Jon to do a residency in pediatrics.  I hadn’t even laid eyes on the place until a marathon weekend when we came to buy a house (our first house!).  While the first year was so so so very hard, being my first year post-college, my second year of marriage, Jon’s super-hellish intern year, and the farthest we’d ever lived from all our nearest and dearest, we eventually realized it wasn’t so bad here.  After working a crappy real estate job for a year and a half, I got laid off due to the recession and found a much better (though lower-paying) job at a college with coworkers I enjoy and the opportunity to take some graduate English classes and realize that English lit really is my passion.  And it seems that now, just as I’ve hit my stride, we’ve begun the slow process of saying goodbye.

In some ways, I feel like we’re still living with a girlfriend we’ve already broken up with.  We’ve already got one foot out the door.  And even though our house is up for sale, and I’ve already taken to browsing cute houses in the neighborhood we’re hoping to live in in Little Rock (where Jon is now going to be doing a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine), it’s like Charleston is making a last-ditch effort to win our hearts and keep us from walking away.  She’s decking herself out in golden sunshine and gorgeous flowers- camellias and pear trees and azaleas– hoping to catch our eye with her beauty.  She’s warming up and whispering in our ears about lazy afternoons spent sitting on the beach.  She’s even started sweet talking us– my boss can’t stop lamenting my leaving and telling me what wonderful things I’ve done for the department.  And she’s trying to make us jealous, flirting with a new crop of medical residents and suggesting that maybe she’ll be just fine without us.

The truth is, I didn’t expect it, but I fell for Charleston.  I love the narrow streets and hundreds-of-years-old houses of downtown, with jasmine covered fences and gnarled live-oaks dripping with Spanish moss.  I love that there are 80+ amazing restaurants to visit and enjoy.  I love the weather.  I love being able to go to the beach every single weekend.  I love my neighborhood and my cute old house.  So while I’m ecstatic to be moving back home to Little Rock, closer to friends and family, and while I’m already scoping out the perfect Hillcrest bungalow, I’m also a little bit heartbroken to be giving up this unexpected love I found for an old Southern belle.  And as she keeps turning on her charms, it’s getting harder and harder to face the fact that we’re leaving at the end of June, no matter how excited I am to go back home.

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freedom and independence are not the only American values

Just for fun, I'm illustrating this with a pic of me pretending to be a Tea Partier in the Smithsonian gift shop. The fact that I carry Jasmine Green Tea around in my purse probably reveals that I'm really an elitist liberal.

My friend Adam posted a great link to his Facebook today.  It’s an open letter to the Tea Partiers by John H. Richardson in Esquire. Many of these protesters, opposed to what they call “big government” like to claim that things like health care are part of “big government,” are antithetical to American values, and are perhaps even unconstitutional.

Claims like those make me wonder if perhaps these patriotic protesters somehow missed US history.  Taking care of each other, interdependence, and community spirit are founding American values.  Most of our early colonies were founded as “commonwealths,” where the good of everyone was considered crucial to the good of the colony.  According to the Esquire piece:

Way back in colonial times, Americans spent between “10 and 35 percent of all municipal funds” on what was then called “relief,” according to Walter I. Trattner’s standard textbook on the subject, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America. Aid to the poor and sick was the largest single government expense, providing crucial sustenance to the widows and orphans of the Indian wars, the survivors of epidemics, starving immigrants, and a surprising number of abandoned bastard children (during the Revolutionary era, between a third and 50 percent of all first children were illegitimate — take that, nostalgists of family values!).

I’d also add that a democracy is only ever as strong as its citizens.  Only people who are free from basic want, secure from preventable disease, protected in the event of catastrophic illness, and ensured a basic level of education and employment are able to be the kind of citizens who can participate fully in a system of representative democracy.  Our constitution’s preamble asserts that the purpose of the document and the government it establishes includes a responsibility to “provide for the general welfare.”  It is for this reason that our founders, notably John Adams (who is my favorite and for whom I am crusading for a monument in Washington D.C., although that is a subject for another post), were so adamant that public education be a cornerstone of our democracy (which is why I am personally very passionate about the subject of public education and not a huge fan of private or home school, though of course people should have those as choices).  I see public health as an extension of that concept.  If medicine had been more of an established science at the time of our nation’s founding, I’m sure providing for the public health would have been more explicitly mentioned. (As an aside, I’d encourage any vaccine doubters to see the John Adams miniseries and observe what a miracle early innoculation was for this nation.)

The bottom line is, for all the rugged individual John Wayne-iness of this nation, there’s an equal tradition of people coming together to create communities dedicated to the good of all.  We can’t be the shining city on the hill if our image is tarnished by people in this great nation unable to access even basic medical care, with people always at risk of poverty and homelessness if a catastrophic illness should befall them or a loved one.

I sure hope we get a vote on a final health care reform bill this week.  Bills have already passed the House and the Senate, and now we just need those two bodies to come together to get something passed for President Obama to sign.

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wholesome like a glass of milk

THIS is what I think of when I hear the word "wholesome."

Recently, in class, I did a good deed.  A classmate was sniffling, and, being the always-prepared bus-commuter that I am, I had tissues in my giant Messenger Bag of Doom (my yoga teacher saw it and asked, “is that luggage?”), and I gave her one.  After class, thanking me, she asked me my name.  When I said, “Sarah,” she said, “I just knew you were a Sarah! You look so wholesome!”  After I mentioned this incident on Twitter, somewhat baffled and indignant that I have such an apparently wholesome image, a friend suggested I should be grateful she didn’t say something like, “I just knew you were a Sarah, because you’re so plain and tall!”  True.  The book Sarah Plain and Tall made my adolescent years somewhat less bearable thanks to the ready taunts available with the title.

I told my husband about the whole wholesome thing, and he didn’t get why it so baffled me.  “But you ARE wholesome!” he said.  I mean, I guess if you look at one collection of facts, the ones like the fact that I married my first and only boyfriend at age 21, that I’m basically Martha Stewart in the kitchen, or that I grew up in church, graduated cotillion, and was a debutante, well, then, I look pretty darn wholesome.  But on the other hand, I’m a feminist environmentalist equality-supporting emergent-theology-loving near-socialist, and to a lot of people, that’s not very wholesome.  Focus on the Family would probably not find me very wholesome.

My boss, on the other hand, thinks this whole “wholesome” thing is hilarious.  We already had a bit of a ribbing rapport, and he’s now taken to introducing me to people like, “This is Sarah, she’s very wholesome.”  Then he can barely contain his chuckles.  This morning he told me that my cardigan is very wholesome, but wondered if perhaps, earrings are not wholesome.  I said earrings can be wholesome provided one takes Coco Chanel’s famous advice to look in the mirror and remove one accessory before leaving the house.  He asked me if I followed that advice, and I thought about it for a second before admitting that while I didn’t take off any accessories this morning, I did swap out a bolder necklace for a more subdued choice.  He chuckled and remarked that perhaps I’m not so wholesome after all.

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a brief history of my activism

Image via flickr user chad davis, under a Creative Commons license.

Today, in class, while discussing the Black Arts movement and the fact that the revolution they hoped for never happened, and the fact that many of them went on to mainstream jobs in academia and renounced black nationalism, my (fabulous) professor told us a story about one of her former students.  As an undergrad, this young man had a long ponytail and carried around a copy of Thoreau everywhere he went.  He was an idealist, sure the world needed changing and sure this changing had to start with him.  He distrusted student government and formed his own organizations.  He taught kids to read and organized street cleanups.  And then he graduated, and, as you do, had to get a job, which he got, on campus.  He still works on campus, and my professor described going out to lunch with him, seeing him wearing a suit and tie for the first time, the ponytail gone, and remarking that he seemed all grown up.  He said to her, “You know, I have friends who are going without shoes in solidarity with people who have no shoes, but I’m not sure that’s working.  Sometimes you have to put on a tie and go to the meeting.”

In some ways, I think I identify with both the shoeless idealist and the guy in a tie at the meeting.  Either way, I think I’ve always been an activist. Continue reading “a brief history of my activism”

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when i’m an old woman, i shall join a biker gang

My role model. Image via NBC Chicago.

Here in the Charleston, I see them a lot, traveling in giggly packs wearing glittery brooches and carrying purses festooned with feathers, all matching their red hats and purple dresses.  They’re the famous Red Hat Society, inspired by this poem by Jenny Joseph.  And while those ladies seem to have a lot of fun, I’ve found some other role models for my golden years, thanks to the headline that made my morning when I saw it in a tweet from Roger Ebert: Nursing Home Residents form a Biker Gang.  You should really go read that story. It warmed my heart (ok, it could have also been that blessed cup of coffee) to read of old ladies getting tats and wearing leather and demanding dirty martinis from bartenders.  And how awesome is it that the bikers came out to dance and flirt with them and are planning to take them out on the bikes when the weather is warmer?

Now that I know what I want to be when I grow up, it’s good to know what I want to be even after that: basically, the little old lady from Pasadena.

WARNING
When I am an old woman I shall wear leather
With a tattoo which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on martinis and biker gloves
And black leather boots, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall hop on my hog when I’m tired
And guzzle up cocktails in dive bars and set off fireworks
And juice my ride along public motorways
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out with my gang every night
And dance with the easy riders at the Evil Olive . . .

The way I see it, motorcycles are way too dangerous for me now. Thanks to growing up with an ER doc for a dad, I know how deadly they can be, and you’d never get me on one. But why not throw caution to the wind when I am 80? I’m gonna be hell on wheels.  Too bad nobody told my Granny (my great grandmother) about this.  She’d have loved the biking grannies, I’m sure, though even without the leather and martinis, she was quite the character.  She dyed her hair a different color every time she went to the beauty parlor, always had a bright red manicure, had boyfriends with whom she played dominoes, flirted with her doctors, and was known to accost strangers in the grocery store over the things they chose to put in their buggies.  I’m going to channel her spirit, which surely resides in my genes, in a more “bat outta hell” direction when I’m an old woman.

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new look

If you’re not reading this in a reader, you might notice that the adventures of ernie bufflo has a new look! Much as I love actual buffalo, I decided I wanted something more fun, girly, and colorful. So I have decided that my ernie bufflo alter ego is a cowgirl.  Whaddaya think?

Edited: So. Before today, I had never heard of The Pioneer Woman, which is apparently shocking because she’s apparently famous. As a result, after I Google Image Searched “vintage cowgirl” upon having my cowgirl idea this morning, I found the image I was using as a header on a site that collects vintage cowgirl pinups. I thought it was adorable, it reminded me of a vintage cowgirl wallet I rocked in high school, I went with it.  Turns out I was jacking The Pioneer Woman’s steez (which, I apparently do all the time, as in my CSA cooking days, I joke about being a pioneer).  Now that I have been alerted, I have selected a different vintage cowgirl. I hope this prevents it from looking like I’m copying her on purpose.  That said, her blog seems wonderful, and I’ll be reading it from here on out.

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back from the land of the geeks

Have you missed me?  I’ve been absent from the blog the past few days because I went out of town for an 18th Century Studies conference.  I’m pretty sure there’s nothing geekier than an 18th Century Studies conference, except maybe a 17th Century Studies conference.  I’m not an 18th Century Studies expert, or even a student in the field really, but I took a class on 18th Century Women Writers last term and had the final paper I wrote (on the political critique in Aphra Behn’s late 1600s play The Rover) accepted to this conference.  I figured at the very least, presenting a paper at an academic conference could be a nice addition to my resume should I ever take the plunge and go from non-degree grad student to real grad student.  In fact, for most of the weekend, I had to tell people, when asked about my program, that I’m a fake grad student, not a real MA candidate. By the end of the weekend, I had pretty much realized that becoming a real grad student is probably inevitable.

See, I got a BA in English and Political Science and then had no idea what I wanted to do with myself.  This was actually somewhat convenient, as Jon had finished med school and we had to move to wherever he matched for residency– not leaving me many options even if I had been sure of a graduate program I was interested in pursuing.  And often times, I’ve told Jon how jealous I am of his surety that he wants to be a doctor. He’s known since at least college that he wanted, more than anything to be a doctor.  Meanwhile, I’ve waffled about what I want to be when I grow up pretty much since 8th grade Career Orientation class.  Whenever I whine about my lack of a life plan, Jon first suggests that I hire a life coach and then says something along the lines of, “You love literature.  You’re just going to eventually have to get a PhD and teach. You know that’s what you really like more than anything.”

And he’s pretty much right. I mean, I’m taking classes just for fun. I look forward to reading great works of literature, to analyzing them in class, to having spirited conversations about them, to writing papers and receiving feedback on my work.  The highlight of my week is getting to go talk about books for a couple of hours.  And, if I may be immodest for a moment, I’m pretty good at it too.  When one of my professors found out, at the end of the term, that I’m not a “real” graduate student, she said, “But you’re so good at it!”

Of course, my inclination toward more school is still complicated by the fact that I’m married to an MD who’s not quite through with his education.  In a few months we’re moving back to Arkansas (my home state, where both of us got our educations) for him to begin a 3 year fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine.  While Little Rock has the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, they do not have an MA program in English Lit.  We’d only be about a 45 minute drive from Conway, home of the University of Central Arkansas, which has a pretty good MA program, and the commute would be less than what I drove my senior year of undergrad. However, thanks to living in SC for 3 years, I’d have to pay nearly twice as much as an out of state student if I wanted to start in the fall, which I’m pretty much unwilling to do considering I lived in Arkansas for 21 years before we left. Add to that the fact that I had kinda been thinking about having a baby during those 3 years, since we’d be close to all of my family (a perk because I’m not sure how much longer my grandparents will be around, and I’d love for them to know at least one of my kids, and since Jon just turned 30 and we don’t want him to be “that old dad” by waiting for too terribly long), and I’ve got a quandry on my hands. Maybe I should just wait until Jon is completely done with all of his training. Then we’d have the luxury of him making a full peds ER salary and I could probably afford tuition and childcare and go to grad school full time.

Either way, I’m pretty sure I know what I want to be when I grow up. Then I could keep reading books, keep going to conferences, keep sitting on panels trying to keep a straight face while some other scholar presents “Delving into the Muff: A Freudian Exploration of Sophia’s Handwarmer in Fielding’s Tom Jones,” keep fielding hostile questions from PhDs who resemble Con Air Nic Cage and have issues with my paper.  I think it sounds like a good plan, whenever I enact it.

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I’m a two-partier

Gotta love a Flight of the Conchords reference. Image is available on a tshirt from snorgtees.com

Today, I posted a link to my Facebook, encouraging friends to check out the New York Times‘ story on the Tea Party (I’m using great restraint here to type Tea Party instead of my preferred Teabagger) Movement.  In linking to the piece, I wrote, “An interesting piece. I’m still hoping that these people won’t destroy the Republican party (I think we need two functional parties for democracy to function) or the country.” A friend (whom I respect! and like!) left this comment: “I’ve got to disagree with you. I’m with Evan Bayh: the 2 party partisan system is killing America. Most people don’t adhere 100% to one side or another. There is definitely room for a Centrist movement.”  Which is when I took to my blog to explain why I think a two-party system is crucial to the American way of government, and life. (I am leaving aside the part about how I think Evan Bayh is a hypocrite, a dirty rotten traitor, a selfish slimebag, and utterly in the pocket of big companies like Wellpoint.)

I got my college degree in both English and Political Science.  As such, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to take comparative government.  It was in this class that I learned that our Founders (look at me! talking about the Founders like a Tea Partier! let me fetch my tricorn hat!) very deliberately chose a two-party system.  More than anything, the Founders feared tyranny, and they believed that factionalism (we might say extremism) was the major cause of tyranny.  In crafting a two party system in which the majority rules, our Founders created a system that would tend toward centrism.  Each party would have to play toward the middle in order to secure the majority they needed to govern.  In trying to secure a majority of voters, each party would have to tend toward moderation.

In contrast, look at governments that have more than two parties.  I seem to remember my professor (himself a conservatve/libertarian, and yet my favorite in college) pointing at Italy as a particularly grievous example of the problem of more-than-two-party systems.  In these systems, any party that can secure a bare minimum of votes is rewarded with seats in the legislature.  This means that each party plays to its own small audience, and their specific needs and beliefs, in order to win their votes.  If they don’t, those voters can simply choose from among a plethora of possible parties.  In turn, with each party that can secure a bare minimum of votes being rewarded with seats, multiple parties have to form coalitions in order to govern– a coalition will elect the leader of the legislature and decide on committee heads, for example.  While these coalitions might sound great in theory, they have a tendency to fall apart regularly, with each party holding the whole process hostage to get what they want, or leaving the coalition and forcing new elections if they don’t.  Multi-party systems lead to every party playing toward the fringes, NOT centrism.

So this is why I believe a two-party system is the only way to centrism and moderation.  I may not always personally LIKE the slow, incremental, glacial pace of change that results from a two party system, but it’s nothing compared to the gridlock that results in systems with more parties.  The only reason I’d vote third-party is to teach my own party a lesson.  And here’s where I break faith with the folks waving tea bags: I think that the current Democratic party is pretty darn centrist.  Most of the proposals of the dreaded health care reform package, for example, are things Republicans were proposing back in the Clinton years.  If anything, I find the Democratic party too moderate, and might consider voting Green Party in order to teach them a lesson about abandoning their Progressive base.

(I feel like I just took a test in one of Dr. Gitz’s classes. Give me an A!)

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and they call it puppy love

Last night I was in a bit of a funk. Sitting on the couch, I announced to Jon, “I’m feeling a little bummed out.”  A few seconds later, he called out, “Ollllllive!” I thought he heard her barking in the back yard or something.  She came running eagerly out of the bedroom, and I said, “She was asleep! Why did you call her?” He replied, “To cheer you up! That’s her job!”  And she did. She licked and snuggled me into a better mood.  I guess it is her job.  Bessie is the most loyal dog around, but she sort of wants me to stop trying to cuddle her already, can’t you see she’s trying to nap here?  Olive, on the other hand, is a lovah.  She’s the snuggle pup I always wanted, and she’s the perfect cure to feeling bummed out.  My furry Valentine.

Updated to include a poem I had forgotten about, but was reminded of while chatting with my friend Stacy.

Falling in love is like owning a dog
by Taylor Mali

First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you’re all wound up and can’t move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

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on hating valentine’s day

You could print this out and give it to someone special!

One of the best things I ever wrote was a column in my high school paper about hating Valentine’s Day.  Fueled by all the angst of being 17 and never having had a boyfriend, I was downright inspired.  If I may say so myself, the imagery was excellent.  I may have mentioned that every January, pink and red displays pop up like pimples in stores, and stuffed animals “hang like convicts” over cash registers, begging shoppers to “Be Mine.”  I painted a scene of a smoky room in which a conspiracy was born, hashed out between the DeBeers diamond people, the greeting card industry, Victoria’s Secret, Godiva, and an international flower-growers cartel, Valentine’s Day was born.  I railed against a manufactured holiday, I exclaimed that love should be celebrated every day of the year, I complained that people without partners feel left out.  That piece won me an award from the Arkansas Scholastic Press Association.  It was all true.

And yet, a year later I met my true love, and a year after that, I had my first ever Valentine who wasn’t my dad.  And now? Now I kinda like Valentine’s day.  I like homemade cards with heartfelt inscriptions.  One year Jon gave me a glittered drawing of a train that said “I Choo Choo Choose You,” just like the card Lisa received on The Simpsons.  For our first Valentine’s in Charleston, he drew me a picture of Rainbow Row and thanked me for coming here with him.  I like thoughtful gifts, the smaller and sillier the better.  One year, Jon gave me a packet of zinnia seeds, knowing they were my favorite flowers, but unable to find any live ones in stores.  That packet of seeds made me happier than any bouquet could have, and I planted them, and grew many, many bouquets.  I also like excuses to go out to a rare fancy dinner (one of our favorite places here in Charleston is FIG, you should try it).  And really, beyond that, I try to avoid the manufactured-ness of corporate Valentine’s Day.  I want a homemade card, a thoughtful gift, if at all, and maybe a nice dinner, if at all.  I want to wear red and act schmoopy and call my husband my Valentine.  I don’t need any kisses that begin with Kay, thank you very much.

So what about my angsty self who used to rail against Hallmark Holidays? I wish I could tell 17 year old me to stop flipping out.  Valentine’s Day wasn’t really for me, then.  And that’s fine.  But it’s not like my bitterness about the holiday ever helped me land a Valentine of my own.  And it’s not like I was really that unhappy– I’m pretty sure I went and saw a chick flick with my best gal pals, and we laughed our heads off. There’s more than one kind of love worth celebrating on V-Day. This Wednesday I’ll be repeating the chick flick with the chicks tradition and seeing Valentine’s Day with my girlfriends at Cinebarre.

In fact, there are lots of fun things to do if you’ve got no Valentine to call your own.  Here in Charleston, you could see the Vagina Monologues at the College of Charleston, check out the Mellow Mushroom’s F-Cupid party, or go to the Valentine Sock Hop, get dolled up like a pinup and dance to some rockabilly with the Lowcountry High Rollers roller derby team (I secretly wish I could go to this event, but I’m pretty sure it’s not up my Valentine’s alley, and there will be burlesque dancers performing, so, not for us).  As for me and my Valentine, I made him a card and a little surprise, and we’ll probably be staying in.  Downtown restaurants will probably be insane since the big Southeastern Wildlife Exposition is in town, and I’m not in the mood to fight the camo-clad masses for a table.

Updated to Add: Check out this post on Redesigning Valentine’s Day. I agree with this part, to an extent:

Goal No. 1: Clarify expectations

Sorry single people, this day is not for you. Father’s Day isn’t for mothers and Mother’s Day isn’t for fathers… you have Spring Break, what else do you want?

Applies only to romantic love between two people, so if you want to celebrate friendship you will need to find another day.

Responsibility for displays of affection falls on both parties. Men screw up enough throughout the year to put the weight of a holiday on their shoulders.

On January 1st discuss with your partner whether you will celebrate Valentine’s Day. Sign a piece of paper if needed.