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MY America

We have overcome much, but we have much yet to overcome. Image from President Obamas Grant Park Victory Rally, via Obama Pics Daily.
We have overcome much, but we have much yet to overcome. Image from President Obama's Grant Park Victory Rally, via Obama Pics Daily.

Hooooooo boy.  Lookout.  I am in the lather of a righteous rage and ain’t nothin’ gonna stop me now.  You’ll have to imagine this entire post in my best Southern drawl, because the accent which is usually barely perceptible really comes out when I’m mad.  Heeeere we goooo.

Jezebel.com has a new guest blogger (though she’s contributed before), Latoya Peterson usually of the blog Racialicious.  And she had a post this mornin’ that really has me fired up.  She started out with the video of an embarrassing woman from Arkansas, even more embarrassing, because that’s my home state.  This woman got all weepy at a town hall meeting about health care and said she was “scared” about what “my America” is “being turned into.”  YOUR AMERICA???

Then Latoya mentioned the story of a twelve year old who died because of a toothache.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren’t so hard to find.

If his mother hadn’t been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

By the time Deamonte’s own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George’s County boy died.

And this tragedy happened in MY AMERICA.

Let me tell you something about MY America.

It is the land of the free, home of the brave.  It is one nation under God, a God who cares for the least and the lost, who sides with the oppressed over the powerful, the poor over the wealthy, the weak over the strong.

It was founded by a religious minority who created a commonwealth.  A COMMON-WEALTH.  A place where everyone gives up a little so that everyone can be better off.  A place where people come together and take care of one another, be that a Little House on the Prairie-style barnraising, or a public health care option where we all share risks and costs so that we all might be healthy.

It is a place that holds certain truths to be self-evident.  A place where all are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.  A place where, among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  What are life and happiness without HEALTH?

It is a place that was founded by We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.  Is not the general welfare the general HEALTH CARE?

It is a place with liberty and justice for all.  What is justice without social justice?

It is a place that is to be a shining city upon a hill.  Right now this light is dimmed by the incredible injustice of our healthcare system.

In my America, children should not go hungry, families should not have to choose between paying for healthcare and food, families should not face losing their homes or delcaring bankruptcy because of the cost of healthcare.  In my America, healthcare should not be a luxury available only to those fortunate enough to be wealthy or have employers who provide them with coverage.  In my America, paper pushers concerned with profit margins would not be able to deny people who had paid all their premiums the care they need, right when they need it most.  It is not a place where some people are “uninsurable.” It is not a place where 47 million people don’t have any health coverage at all.  It is not a place where the price of a procedure or a prescription depends on who’s asking.

That’s MY America.  And if that America doesn’t look like yours, I’d like to ask you to please open your eyes and look around, and maybe even look inside your own heart.  We must do something.

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You go, Claire McCaskill!

So the town hall “let’s go get yelled at by crazies” gauntlet continues for members of congress.  Sen. Claire McCaskill had one yesterday, and this is her take: Picture 1 Really, Sen. McCaskill?  Because I think you sounded juuuuussst right:

When a crowd is acting like a bunch of unruly elementary schoolers, the correct approach is to talk to them like they’re one count-to-three away from losing recess.  I remember in elementary school, they had a system for dealing with us when we got too loud in the cafeteria.  They had the letters R-A-M-S (our mascot) hanging on the wall.  If we got too loud, one of the monitors would go remove a letter.  If we lost all the letters in one lunch period, we weren’t allowed to talk the rest of the lunch period.  This happened VERY rarely.  But then again, maybe we elementary schoolers were better behaved than the teabagging health care reform opponents who only want to shut down debate, because they have no actual ideas to contribute to the discussion.

Anyway, don’t feel bad, Sen. McCaskill.   You struck exactly the right tone.  You go on with your bad self.

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my first rodeo

Image via Flicker user chispita_666.
Image via Flicker user chispita_666.

When I woke up this morning, I remembered the strangest snippet of a dream I had last night.  Jon and I were at a rodeo, walking around “backstage,” petting horses and meeting cowboys.  And one cowboy would just not stop making fun of me because I was wearing flip flops.

Now, I spent many years of my girlhood riding horses, and though I tended more toward equestrian than cowgirl, I know enough not to wear flip flops to a rodeo.  My husband even teases me because I kind of like the smell of horse manure because it reminds me of the smell of a barn: grassy and leathery and dusty with hay.

If I were to get all psycoanalysis-y on my dream, I’d say it’s really about an upcoming trip we’re taking.  My husband is about to turn 30, and as part of the celebration, we’re taking a weekend trip to NYC with our two best friends.  I’ve never been before, and I guess you could say it’s sorta like going to my first rodeo.

I’ve been to London, where I was mistaken as a local several times by fellow tourists.  I’ve been to Washington D.C.  But I’ve never been to the city that never sleeps. Mostly, I’m a girl who grew up in a small town who has not-too-often traveled out of the South.

I do not want to be a lame tourist.  So, I’m counting on anyone who reads this blog to help me figure out what the “flip flops” would be concerning this rodeo.  I mean, I know not to wear a fanny pack, a scrunchi (thanks SATC!), or mom jeans.  My friend who is going with us said she was planning to pack skinny jeans, tees, and scarves, but I don’t want to be balls hot, so I was thinking I’d stick with my usual summer uniform of solid jersey dresses with ballet flats.  Will this get me made fun of by “cowboys”?

Not to mention, beyond figuring out what to wear, I have to figure out what we’re gonna DO!  I want to really plan ahead so as not to waste a MINUTE of this trip, so I need suggestions of what to do!  Our group will include two girls and two guys.  I’m a literature nerd.  My friend is a design nerd and music buff and tends toward the hipster end of the spectrum.  My husband thinks he wants to go to a Yankees game, which shocked me considering he’s a Rockies fan and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard him rant some variation on the theme “teams like the Red Sox and Yankees buy all their wins and they don’t have to nurture talent from the ground up and they’re everything that’s wrong with baseball.”  Anyway, suggestions are much appreciated.

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I just wrote my senator

I just wrote an email to my senator, Lindsey Graham.  If you want health care reform, I urge you to be doing the same.  We have to speak up to our representatives, not in the form of mob behavior, as health care reform opponets are doing, but through respectful civic engagement.  I’m posting what I wrote to Senator Graham here in hopes that it will inspire others to write.

Dear Sen. Graham,

First of all I want to thank you for voting to confirm Sonya Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Only 9 members of your party did so, and this shows that you have the courage to vote to confirm a competent justice rather than use the Supreme Court to play party politics. I really appreciate it.

The real reason for me writing this letter is to encourage you to continue to show your courage by supporting real health care reform which includes a public option. Please don’t listen to the loud voices of mobs, but to the quiet voices of citizens who really need reform. My husband is a pediatrician. We both believe that a public option is the only way to get real reform. This is why:

Insurance only “works” by creating really really large pools of risk. The larger the pool, the lower the costs, and the lower the premiums. For this reason, the insurance industry tends toward consolidation. Mergers lead to lower administrative costs and higher profits. They also have every incentive NOT to pay for actual healthcare at every possible opportunity. This is where we get ridiculous concepts like recision, which should absolutely be illegal, and the general run of the mill having to BEG your insurer to actually cover anything at all. I do not pretend that my insurer would actually pay for anything I didn’t fight tooth and nail for.

Because of the tendency toward consolidation, there is little to no competition in the industry in some 97% of markets. I have Blue Cross Blue Shield through my employer, but were I to actually go out on the private market and attempt to secure my own insurance, I’d probably also end up with BCBS, as it’s all there is here. And it’s not like a new startup could just come to SC and compete. They’d never be able to scrape together a large enough pool on the spot to compete premium wise with BCBS. The only entity big enough to create a large enough pool to be a viable alternative and inject some competition into the health insurance market is the federal government, period. To pretend that somehow the free market will produce competition in this area is laughable.

Not to mention that by some magic an alternative were available, it basically takes a law degree to understand the forms. I have an entire BOOK from BCBS explaining to me in legalese all the myriad ways they’d love to screw me over. Not to mention, it’s not like hospitals have a menu, so you can compare say, MRI prices from one to another. There is just very little way to be a smart consumer in the free market in this area, which is why some sort of federal base line standards and prices would do a world of good.

Finally, as someone who recently experienced unemployment, I truly believe that we have to get away from tying insurance coverage to employment. I lost my health insurance right at the time I was most financially vulnerable. 50% of bankruptcies are related to health care costs, and I can see why. I could not have afforded COBRA on my unemployment benefits. It would have taken my entire allotment and then some. I am fortunate that my husband is a state employee and I could get on his insurance, because many people do not have that luxury. What if my entire family had depended on my employer-provided coverage? With unemployment on the rise, now is the time to make this change. 14,000 people lose their insurance each month. I was one of them. Insurance should be portable!

Again, thank you for your courage in confirming Sonia Sotomayor. Please keep up the good work and support real health reform in the form of a public option.

Sincerely,
[Ernie Bufflo]

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mornin’

If I saw these ladies, Id say Mornin! Image via Googles Life Photo Collection.
If I saw these ladies, I'd say "Mornin'!" Image via Google's Life Photo Collection.

The bus rumbles through the intersection and I reach up to pull the cord; a loud “ding” tells the driver to let me off at the next stop.  We lurch to a halt, and I stand, stumbling, and make my way to the doors, which swing open, allowing a blast of humid air to rush onto the blessedly well-air-conditioned bus.  “Thanks!” I say to the driver with a wave as I step out into the heat for my short walk to the office.  “Have a great day!” she says as she closes the door and pulls away.  A few feet away a young mother struggles to keep two toddlers in hand and moving in the right direction.  “Good mornin'” she says as I pass, my pace quicker than that of the toddlers.  “Good mornin'” I say with a smile at the kids.  Farther down the road I pass a woman I see every morning as we walk to our respective offices.  She smiles at me.  “Good Mornin'” I say.  “How ya doin’?” she asks.  We smile at each other and keep on walking.  As I wait at the corner to cross the street, a jogger whizzes by and breathlessly says “Mornin'” as she whips past.  As I walk down King I pass two older men, who nod at me.  “Mornin’!” I say with a smile.  “Mornin’!” they reply.  In the parking lot I see a parking enforcement officer writing tickets.  I am briefly thankful that riding the bus means no parking tickets.  “Mornin’!” he says with a nod.  “Mornin’!” I reply.  I smile as I walk into my building and press the button for the elevator.

It occurred to me on my walk from bus stop to office that it must be hard being an introvert in the South.  In the short 2 block walk down George St. all the people I passed said, “Good Mornin'” to me, with a smile.  I’ve always had a habit of talking to strangers, so I love that it’s normal and acceptable and even expected here that you say “Good Morning” to people as you pass them on the street, that you will chat with the person you sit next to on the bus, that you will make small talk with the person standing behind you in the checkout line, and that you will have an ongoing rapport with the person who swipes your parking pass or cleans out the trash cans in your office.

I know about the trials and tribulations of many of the regulars on my bus.  Like the woman with diabetes and an adorable new grandbaby.  Or the lady with 17 cats and an ailing mother with dementia.  Or the church lady who has a hard time with the fact that her husband is retired and she isn’t.

I haven’t lived outside the South, but it only took one week of riding the Metro while in Washington D.C. to realize that it’s not normal or acceptable elsewhere to chat with strangers.  Not only did I stand out in a sea of black wool coats by wearing bright red, I also shocked Beltway types by daring to chat with them on the bus.  They looked at me like I had four heads.  I cut it out by the first stop.

Now I’m not saying I think Southern people are kinder or nicer or more friendly than people in other parts of the country.  You only have to get to know the proper usage of “bless her heart” or “God love him” to know that we can sugar-coat a bitter pill better than many folks.  But I do think that we have a social expectation of talkin’ to each other that others don’t, and I have to admit, I love it.  By the time I get to my office, how can I NOT have a smile on my face after saying “good mornin'” to seven different people?  As we face a possible move in the next year, one that very well may take me out of the South for the first time, I think what I’ll miss more than anything is the chit chat.

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amen sista!

Via my friend PPG, I read the following, and it is just so, so, so awesome that I am posting it here because I think as many people who can read this should read it.  ESPECIALLY in the wake of the gym shooting in Pennsylvania, which in my mind was absolutely a hate crime against women.  And the following doesn’t just go for men.  I’d say it absolutely goes for women too, and I’ll expound on that after you read THIS, by Kate Harding, whose blog I found recently and have fallen in love with (I censored the profanity because I know some of my readers have issues with it, not because I’m personally opposed to profanity):

You, dear male reader, are totally not one of those men. I know this, and I appreciate it. I really do. But here’s where all this victimy girl s**t concerns you:

  • every time you don’t tell your buddies it’s not okay to talk shit about women, even if it’s kinda funny;
  • every time you roll your eyes and think “PMS!” instead of listening to why a woman’s upset;
  • every time you call Ann Coulter a tranny c*** instead of a halfwit demagogue;
  • every time you say any woman–Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Phyllis Schlafly, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, any of us–”deserves whatever she gets” for being so detestable, instead of acknowledging there are things that no human being deserves and only women get;
  • every time you joke about how you’ll never let your daughter out of the house or anywhere near a man, ’cause ha ha, that’ll solve everything;
  • every time you say, “I don’t understand why thousands of women are insisting this is some kind of woman thing”;
  • every time you tell a woman you love she’s being crazy/hysterical/irrational, when you know deep down you haven’t heard a word she’s said in the past 15 minutes, and all you’re really thinking about is how seeing her yell and/or cry is incredibly unsettling to you, and you just want that shit to stop;
  • every time you dismiss a woman as “playing the victim,” even if you’re right about that particular woman…

You are missing an opportunity to help stop the bad guys.

You’re missing an opportunity to stop the real misogynists, the f*****g sickos, the ones who really, truly hate women just for being women. The ones whose ranks you do not belong to and never would. The ones who might hurt women you love in the future, or might have already.

‘Cause the thing is, you and the guys you hang out with may not really mean anything by it when you talk about crazy b*****s and dumb sluts and heh-heh-I’d-hit-that and you just can’t reason with them and you can’t live with ‘em can’t shoot ‘em and she’s obviously only dressed like that because she wants to get laid and if they can’t stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen and if they can’t play by the rules they don’t belong here and if they can’t take a little teasing they should quit and heh heh they’re only good for f*****g and cleaning and they’re not fit to be leaders and they’re too emotional to run a business and they just want to get their hands on our money and if they’d just stop overreacting and telling themselves they’re victims they’d realize they actually have all the power in this society and white men aren’t even allowed to do anything anymore and and and…

I get that you don’t really mean that s**t. I get that you’re just talking out your ass.

But please listen, and please trust me on this one: you have probably, at some point in your life, engaged in that kind of talk with a man who really, truly hates women–to the extent of having beaten and/or raped at least one. And you probably didn’t know which one he was.

And that guy? Thought you were on his side.

Anyway, I really hope you read all that. ALL of it. Even if you’re a woman. Because we all have guy friends, and we’ve all heard them say things like what’s described above, and we’ve probably even giggled along because we want to save face, or look cool, or seem cute.  But when we let stuff like that slide, we’re saying it’s OK.  And it’s NOT OK.  And we have more power than we know over the people in our circles to help them see how even they, charming, wonderful, sensitive they, are contributing to a culture in which a guy might get the idea that it’s OK to walk into a gym and shoot a bunch of women, because he believes it’s women’s fault he hasn’t had a relationship or sex in over a decade, as if that is every man’s right, even if he’s despicable scum.

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the fogey man

Some people manage to avoid it, but I fear I have to admit this fact: somewhere along the way, Jon and I became old fogeys.

Last night we had dinner with some friends, and then met up with a larger group because it was a friend’s birthday and they were going out for dessert and drinks.  At this point it was after nine, which on any normal Tuesday is around the time I start thinking about putting on my pjs.  I yawned through the 30 minutes we spent chatting with our friends, before I looked over at a yawning Jon and asked if it was time for us to go home yet.

On the way home we both marveled at how crowded the streets were.  WHAT THE HECK ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE DOING OUT THIS LATE ON A TUESDAY?  Clearly, we have spent so many weeknights snuggled in at home we had no idea the world continues to go on, even on Tuesdays.

It’s only a matter of time til I can’t find where I put my teeth, I’m helping Jon find his bifocals, and we’re yelling at the damn kids to get off our lawn.

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off with her…hair

I have this pattern that I always repeat.  I get bored with my hair, hack it off, enjoy the new do for a little while, decide I hate it, and then start growing my hair out again.  About a year ago I had a cute “Posh” bob, but got frustrated with having to straighten it every single day in order for it to look right, and decided to grow my hair out so I wouldn’t even have to blow dry.  Now, it’s just past my collarbone, long enough to startle me when it brushes on my arm because I think it’s a bug crawling on me, long enough to hang down the back of my neck and hold in heat, long enough to get trapped under my body when I’m lying down and necessitate a position change so I don’t feel like I’m pulling my own hair.  Sure, it looks pretty, I’ve embraced my natural waves, it’s healthy.  But I’m beginning to be annoyed.

And I’m kind of wondering if now isn’t the time to just do something crazy and radical and hack it all off for once in my life, just to see what that’s like.  August in Charleston would be a great time to not have hair hanging down my neck.  Jon says I should go for it.  He’s not hung up on long hair as the one way a woman should look, and he’s not one of those retrograde men who tell their women how to wear their hair, which is wonderful, but sometimes infuriating because I’m indecisive and need a little input now and again.  I often wish I could be a contestant on a makeover show, just so someone would do my hair FOR me, without me having to decide.  But I figure, hey, that’s what the internets are for, right?

So, just like with the buying of a purse, I figured I’d ask the interwebz for advice.  I will say that I have fine hair that is on the thin side with a natural loose wave to it that I describe as “wrinkly” because it is neither straight nor curly.

My hair currently looks like this:

It looks like this when I straighten it:

This is the shortest it’s ever been:

And these pics sort of illustrate what I’m fantasizing about doing with my hair:kiera hair

keira-knightley-short-hair-photos-01

Anja Rubiksienna hair

agyness deyn hair

Am I insane? Would this be cute?  Could I pull it off?  Would this exacerbate my irrational insecurity about the shape of my chin?  Would these styles work if I didn’t want to straighten/blow dry? Do you have better suggestions?  Do you know of a kickass stylist in Charleston I should go to?  Right now I go to MasterCuts, and I’m not sure I trust them with radical change of this nature.

Of course I may just chicken out altogether.

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still haven’t found what i’m looking for

Today my boss took me out to lunch.  It’s something he does every month or so, because he says I’m underpaid, and he wants me to know how much he appreciates me and all that I do for the department.  It’s just another way in which he’s awesome, one of the kindest and most genuine people I’ve ever worked with or known.  Because of his kindness, and also because of a GK Chesterton book I spied on his desk, I have pretty much always suspected that my boss is a Christian, something that’s been slowly confirmed as he’s remarked on books he’s seen me reading, or in our conversations about current events, or as I see him interact with students and colleagues.  I really respect that he’s a man who lives up to the saying, “Preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary.”  I respect the kind of person who doesn’t have to give you a manifesto on what they believe in order for you to know what they stand for.  They just…stand for it.

Anyway, over lunch we were talking about the South and churches and South Carolina and C-Street.  I wanted to be like OMG YES I’VE BEEN BLOGGING ABOUT THAT STUFF, but I didn’t really want to tell my boss all about my blog.  Anyway, long story short, my boss is almost as obsessed with The Family as I am, and said he really has no idea what Bible these guys are reading.  Which is really how I feel about the whole thing– I can get how, from the Old Testament, you might get the idea that it’s OK to do whatever you want to do as long as you are a powerful man and feel called by God, but I’m not sure you could ever get from Jesus the idea that he sides with the powerful over the powerless, the wealthy over the poor.  We both agreed that while these people may claim to follow Jesus, they do not follow the teachings of the Jesus of the Bible–at least not any Bible we’ve ever read.

However, the truly sad part is that in my experience, these people who so loudly proclaim their faith but don’t live it out are far more common than they should be.  I told my boss about the summer I spent working in a Christian bookstore, and what a soul-killing experience it was.  I was hit on men who were there to pick out devotionals for their wives.  I was treated like an imbecile by people buying Bibles, simply because at the time I was operating a cash register for a living.  I was berated by old women who cared more about a coupon than how they spoke to the person behind the counter.  I was informed by one lady that she didn’t listen to Amy Grant anymore, because Amy had been divorced– as if we carried the music of any sinless artists in the store.  And perhaps the worst part of all was experiencing the culture of a business that claimed to be Christian but in reality cared about nothing other than the bottom line.

One day, a particularly hot, humid, Arkansas day, a homeless guy who spoke very little English asked me if it would be OK for him to sit at a table in the airconditioning and read the Bible and maybe have a glass of water.  I didn’t really think it took a Bible scholar to decide that the human thing to do in such a situation is to give the man a glass of water and a quiet place to cool off.  Not to mention the entire concept of “What Would Jesus Do?” that I was selling printed on bracelets and t-shirts and candy bars.  But I got into trouble with management for letting this man hang out in our store because he might “scare” the regular customers.  As if the kind of people shopping for devotionals and Thomas Kincaid paintings wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if confronted with one of the “least of these” in a Bible bookstore.  Perhaps there is an episode of “Veggie Tales” to address this kind of predicament?

I guess all of this is part of why I’m sort of without a church at this point.  We sporadically attend Bible Studies and Community Groups, but have not really been regular church attenders in a while.  And I could very easily blame this on Jon’s schedule and say that he works a lot of Sundays, and how that’s made it very difficult for us to find a church to call home.  And I could point to the church we attended for about a year, whose services we LOVED, but where, even after a year, we still hadn’t made any friends or found any sort of community.  So we spent six months looking for a church, a year attending one that turned out not to be right, and another year halfheartedly attending another church that seems to be about like the one before it.

But the weird thing is that my churchless season has also been one of the most spiritually rich of my life.  After a dark period sparked by my grandfather’s death, in which I felt far from God and clung fitfully to my faith, and after a rough first few months in a new city in which I can say pretty confidently in retrospect that I was depressed, I’m actually feeling closer to God than ever before.  I’ve been reading books about faith, reading my Bible, and listening eagerly to sermons via podcast.  I’ve been spending a lot of time talking with my husband about faith, working out what we think about things together.  We’ve both been going through this sort of revival together, and it’s really brought us closer.  Strangely, this is perhaps the most spiritually active time I’ve had since high school, and yet it’s all taking place outside the context of a church.

And as someone who grew up in church, this seriously distresses me.  The problem is, I’m looking for a group of people like me, like Jon, and aside from a few dear friends (who unfortunately live far away), I’m having trouble finding it.  I’m tired of church sermons that don’t touch on the realities of modern life, or respect their audience as a group of people who don’t need to be told what to think, but need to be taught how to wrestle with the moral contradictions of modern life.  I’m tired of a church that exploits hot button political issues but fails to feed the hungry and comfort the grieving.  I’m looking for a church that challenges my privilege and wealth, that makes me uncomfortable with the things I own, that urges me to give more of myself away.  I’m looking for a church that tells me that I’m not guaranteed safety, or comfort, or even happiness in this life, but urges me to live like crazy anyway.  I want a group of people to sit around on porches and drink wine and go deep with.  A group of people who see my passion and tell me they want to join me in it, rather than suggesting that maybe Jesus died to take away my personality.  A group of people to really live out a faith with, to preach the gospel at all times with, to sometimes use words.

Basically I’m fed up with Pharisees.  I’m tired of slogans and bumper stickers and the things you buy at Bible bookstores.  I want to get active in the renewal of all things.

And I have no idea where to start.