Whoa. In Which I Realize How Naive I Can Be.

While we were in Austin a couple weeks ago, Midland had a huge hail storm. We didn’t know anything about it and were baffled when we came home and found pieces of white stuff all over the yard and then saw that the siding looked like someone had beaten it with a baseball bat.
They say it was The Worst Hail Storm in Ten Years, for what that’s worth.
So I’m taking a walk a couple of days later, and I’m talking to this guy who lives in the neighborhood, and he’s telling me the hail damaged some of his roses--he has the most beautiful yard on the planet—here’s one of his roses that he gave me when he was showing us how the paint he’s using on his house will match the colors in this rose:

Anyway, I said, “Yeah, it took a bunch of chunks out of our siding.” And he said, “Well, at least you’ll get new siding out of it.”
And I thought, “Huh. Maybe I’d better call the insurance company.” I’d asked The EGE if he thought I should call, and he said he doubted they’d pay for any of it and then they’d raise the payments anyway. So I’d forgotten all about it.
See, I thought insurance is for if your house 1) burns down or 2) gets carried off by a tornado. Because years ago we had a leak in the living room ceiling. Turns out it was the ductwork for the evaporative cooler, but at the time I didn’t know that. I called the insurance company, and the woman told me that if I filed a claim, my premiums would go up. So I’ve never even thought about filing a claim for anything. Ever.
Oh, sure:  we’ve had a couple claims on the vehicles:  when The EGE was parked at the stadium for track and there was a baseball game going on and Cody Joe hit an out-of-the-park homer that went across the stadium parking lot, through the back windshield of The EGE’s truck, and came to rest on the dashboard.
And the time we parked The Wizard in the parking lot at Permian High School in Odessa for a basketball game, and someone who thought we were Permian fans keyed my new car and scratched “MHS” into the paint on the fender.
Other than that, though? Nothing . And nothing ever on the house.
So I called a couple of weeks ago, not expecting much, and the guy said, “Oh, you need a new roof.” And I said, “No. My husband didn’t see anything wrong with the roof. It’s the siding.”
“We’ll set up an appointment to look at the roof.”
“Um, no. It’s just the siding.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ll NEED a new roof.”
So I  said, “OK. Come look at the roof.”
And today the insurance inspector guy came out and looked at the roof. He climbed all over the house and measured everything, and he totaled out the roof on the house and porch and carport AND the Fucking Edifice, which, amazingly, has dents, unbeknownst to us. Plus the windows and screens on the west and south, PLUS all the siding except that on the front. Plus the gutter guard on the back of the house—he even wrote that in. Who ever thinks about the gutter guard?
Whoa, indeed.
Now it’s a matter of coughing up the deductible and finding someone to do the work. I’m thinking every decent roofer in town is backed up until fall—everywhere you go, they’re on roofs, working like madmen.
(You can drive around the loop and see tents set up with card tables so people can just drive their vehicles under the tent and have the dents checked out.)
Yowza.
OK, so you’re laughing like a crazy person and slapping your thigh in hilarity at how naive I am. Go ahead. There are just some things I know nothing about.
Filing your own paperwork for probate? Done that.
Buying and selling real estate? No problem.
But wills and homeowner’s insurance? I’m clueless.
Guess it’s time I learned, huh?

Making Wills?

Yeah, yeah, yeah:  I know I’m a slacker. Oh, sure:  when it’s Work, I’m on it. But when it’s anything else, esp. something about which I know nothing? Eh.
So I know we need wills. We should have had them years ago. When we had our taxes done this year, I mentioned that I needed to make an appointment to have this done, and Karen, who does our taxes, told me to do it online. Instead of spending $1000 to have simple wills drawn up (and ours would be very simple, indeed), you can do it yourself online, completely legally, for about $50. So I hunted around, and sheesh:  I have no idea where to start. What’s legitimate, and what’s not? What’s fraud, and what’s phishing? Holy moly.
So:  anyone out there actually done the Will Thang online, successfully? If you have, and if you can point me in the right direction, I will love your forever.
XO

What Are These People Thinking?

I honestly do not have a single clue. It’s beyond me, it really is. I was totally baffled by Bill Clinton’s carryings-on with Monica. Oh, sure:  I know power is sexy and sex is, well, sexy. And people screw around all the time and blah, blah, blah. But what kind of a fool thinks they’re not going to get caught? That’s what I don’t understand. I think there are two kinds of people in the world:  those who think they’ll never get caught. And those who know they will.
Bet you can’t guess which one I am.
If I were president, I’d never do ANYTHING wrong. I wouldn’t even cuss, not even when I was in the shower all by myself, with the door closed and locked and Barry White playing at top volume on my little shower radio. Nope, not even if The Other Party were calling me Booger Head and laughing at my agenda and thwarting my every proposal.
OK, well, then I might cuss in the shower. But only a Medium Cuss Word, like “damn.” I’d NEVER say “fuck.” Uh-uh, not while I was in office. Because I’d be the one they’d decided to bug by putting little micro-recorders in my soap-on-a-rope.
So last week when The EGE came home from Midland High School and told me about the teacher who’d been arrested that morning, as in: Texas Rangers coming into her classroom and leading her out in handcuffs—yowza!—and then told me this teacher had been arrested for HAVING SEX WITH A STUDENT, I was astounded. Oh, not that I’m so naive that I don’t believe there are pedophilic teachers who refuse to even try to control their fetishes. I know that.
What floored me was that anybody on the planet would be so amazingly, mind-bogglingly stupid to think they could have sex with a student and Not Get Caught.
Because:  this teacher confided in another teacher, who’d just happened to have become suddenly very friendly and was asking a lot of questions and listening with, oh! such a sympathetic ear.
It’s spelled w-e-a-s-e-l.
OK. Before I go on, let’s stop and see what pictures you’ve got in your head. Bald, paunchy 40-something male teacher, a little too friendly and reminding you of that uncle you made sure to stay far away from?
Uh, no. Try this:  23-year-old female geography teacher and cheerleading sponsor. Yeah. Having sex with a 17-year-old male student.
It’s still wrong, but it’s not nearly as creepy, esp. since I can think of other examples of couples with that age span. Just not students and teachers. Students + teachers = Always Wrong. Never mind we all can name several couples made up of teachers and their former students who went on to get married.
Eh.
Here’s what I don’t get:  how in the world did this woman think she wasn’t going to go down for this? (Quit snorting! I hear you!) She’s texting the guy all the time, giving him money, taking him to her house WHEN HER HUSBAND IS GONE (yeah, sweeties:  there is a husband, too), meeting him in the park for, as the newspaper put it, “fondling” and then—AND THEN!—confiding all this in the other teacher who’s suddenly her New Best Friend.
Holy crap.
So I google this for The EGE, as it was all anyone talked about all day at school, but without providing any real information, and it takes me to her Facebook page, where it shows that we have One Friend in Common. And I’m all like, “Huh? I have a friend in common with this Stupid Person?” And I click and holy jesus:  it’s one of my nephews.
So I send him a note:  “?” And the best thing ever:  he hadn’t heard about it yet. Yes! Here I am, his Aunt Who Is the Opposite of Hip, and I know something he doesn’t. Something that made him actually quote Flava Flav, which meant nothing to me. But still.
He was baffled. They were good friends in high school, he said, and he said that she was smart back then. Wow. If she was smart, I’d hate to think what the stupid ones were doing. Lighting themselves on fire to save money on blankets? Poking themselves in the eyes so they don’t have to wear sunglasses? 
Shooting themselves in the foot so they don’t have to walk?
The mind boggles.
Seriously.
Here’s my only explanation:  her family—parents, husband, friends, whatever—insisted, for whatever odd reason, that she become a teacher. She didn’t want to become a teacher; she thought it was boring. She thought it would be fun—because she’s not the brightest person on the planet, remember—to become a trader on Wall Street. Or something equally blood-curdling, like an exotic dancer in Salt Lake City. But they insisted, and so she got a job teaching. With cheerleading thrown in for comic relief. But she hated it, and she wanted to get out as quickly as possible and make sure that She’d Never  Have to Teach Again. And she needed an accomplice, someone easily manipulated and willing to do pretty much anything in return for sex and a $175 pair of athletic shoes. Including, well,  having sex . With An Older Woman.
Enter a 17-year-old boy.
Now it all makes sense, right?

A Former English Teacher Reads the Headlines

I got a Breaking News Alert Headline, which come in throughout the day and which I forward to The EGE after the most cursory of glances. This one said:

Sources: Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan Would Oust CEO, Install Fiat Management

And I’m like, “Wow. That’s kind of harsh.”

Lucky for me I was perplexed enough that I read on, discovering that they were actually talking about the Italian automaker.

Ah.

One Way to Terrorize Evil People

It’s kind of weird around the Voodoo Cafe, what with Garfunkel crying and Moe puking (he’s had the whole stomach-and-intestinal thing today, something that sometimes happens to The Fat Boy) and me Trying to Maintain. It was actually a good day, as I have a deadline and a piece to work on that’s been fun to do and kept me busy all morning.
The vet put Cutie Pie’s body in this little cardboard coffin. It was kind of lame, but it seemed to make him feel better, having something to fold up and put together, Tab A into Slot B, the busywork stuff you do when you’re nervous. So when we got home, I put the coffin on the front porch and took off the lid so Garfunkel could see that his brother was dead. I always do this, and they always act exactly like, “What’s this piece of fur? Why are you showing me this?” (This makes perfect sense to me. When I have to have a cat euthanized, I cry like an idiot right up until the moment the vet says, “He’s gone.” And then it’s over, like a tap turned off.)
He (Garf, not the vet) stepped in and sniffed Cutie Pie’s body and then sat down in the lid and starting taking a bath. So we left the lid out there—he has a thing for cardboard:  he loves to sharpen his claws on it, really ferociously, with his ears back, so he has various pieces of shredded boxes scattered around.
So periodically when I walk through the house, I’ll look out and see him, temporarily quiet—whoa!—lying in the lid of the coffin. Once he was in that exact Dead Cat posture his brother had lain in. Pretty creepy. It doesn’t help that he looks like his brother, as does Lennie Lulu (from a distance, across the room, they were hard to tell apart when they were sleeping; we’d often say, “No, that’s Cutie Pie, not Lennie,” or vice versa. Which doesn’t help matters when Lennie Lulu walks into the room this week).
So, to distract itself, my brain has been thinking this afternoon of Ways to Terrorize Evil People, not that I have any Specific Evil People in mind, but just saying that if you were, oh, a Crazy Skanky Cat Killer who was living in the house she inherited from her dead father, who was a nice, animal-loving person, what would it feel like if you got a letter from someone, a letter addressed to your (now-dead) father from someone who, from reading the letter, seems to have communicated with him recently? Like, say, the letter said something like, “Dear Joe—I’m so sorry I missed your call last week. I couldn’t call you back because the number was blocked, and this is the only address I have for you, so I hope you get this OK. I understand the position you’re in—that’s really amazing, what you’ve been through these last couple of years!—and I won’t say anything specific here, knowing how concerned you are that they not find you. I think I can help, though. It’s possible that it can still be worked out, if you’ll get in touch again. Please call me on my cell this time: 123.456.7890”
The number would be to something like, oh, I don’t know:  a sheriff’s office in a little town in Nebraska, maybe? And then there’d be the phone calls, with caller ID blocked, where someone named Tom would ask for Joe and then hang up. 3 am. Midnight. In the middle of the afternoon. Day after day after day.
(Don’t worry:  I do not know either his first or his last name. Plus I don’t have the time. Still: doesn’t it sound excellent?)
My brain apparently remembered a weird letter my mother received after she’d moved to Lubbock, a letter addressed to someone with my father’s name but from a little girl  who called him Daddy (I was already married). Very creepy. And it was thinking about how creeped out I would be if I got a letter addressed to my mother (I’m still getting mail for her, albeit junk mail; and I’m always tempted to write on it, in big, Sharpie letters: “SHE’S DEAD ALREADY!” and send it back) that seemed as if the writer had heard from her recently. My brain noticed how creepy I thought this would be, so it figured other people would be similarly creeped out and went from there.
Yeah, my brain definitely needs a hobby or something. Left to its own devices, it’s a dangerous thing. Way more voodoo than Zen, I’m sorry to say.
Although, in its defense, it did convince us not to kill the black widow spider nesting in the chair we found while cleaning out the carport yesterday. The EGE was going to step on her, as there was nowhere to put her and she was guarding the husk of what we assume was her former mate, not a good way to win the husband’s sympathy. And of course I was all like, “Black widow spider!” just like always; but at the last moment my brain intervened and said, “Nah, let me take her.” And I took her by her web and put her on the side of the carport and told her, “You owe us now.” I’m expecting her to eat a LOT of mosquitoes this summer. Her and all her 14,356,968 children. Plus stay out of my furniture.
That’s my brain:  terrorize the neighbors, suck up to the poisonous spiders. Sheesh.

Hey, Christy!

I posted a comment to you, but then I realized you might not read the comments. And I don’t have your e-mail. So please send me one at voodoocafe@clearwire.net. Religion and politics?  Pshaw. All Garf cares about is not being alone.

XO

What To Do About Garfunkel

Maybe somebody will have an idea that hasn’t occurred to us yet. Garfunkel is out there screaming, as he does most of the time. The only thing that could get him to stop was when Cutie Pie, his brother, went out on the porch with him. So he’s missing his brother, on top of his general misery. Here are the facts:
Garf and Cutie Pie and the other triplet brother, Simon, were born on our neighbor’s porch. Yes, the Skanky Cat-Killing Neighbor, but back when it was her father’s house. He was a nice guy who loved cats and fed these and took care of them. When they were adolescents, they started coming into our yard. I made friends with them and had them all neutered and brought Cutie Pie into the house because he was gimpy.
Garf and Simon were inseparable. Then, a couple of years ago, we found Simon dead in the street. Garf started living with the people across the alley, who called him “Mouse.” We’d see him ever now and then. Two years ago he vanished for a couple of weeks. Those people had moved, and when Garf showed up, he was bone thin and could hardly walk. We think he got locked in the house when they moved out. We got him back in good shape, and then the neighbor started trapping cats. He got caught once—he still went over there, probably looking for the old man who raised him and his missing brother, Simon. I let him out of the trap, and of course the neighbor had a fit. Too bad for her.
We tried bringing Garf into the house. We thought he did really well—no fighting, using the litter box, no craziness. But then Lennie Lulu pointed out to us that Someone had sprayed on the side of the chair. And on our bed. The kitchen door. And ON MY DESK. Nobody who lived in the house had ever sprayed anywhere, ever.
That’s when we enclosed the front porch with chicken netting. He’d been staying on the porch all along, spending most of his time there when he wasn’t out hunting. When we enclosed the porch, we’d keep him there at night and then let him out during the day, figuring he’d be OK. But he got trapped again, and this time (you remember the video) she let him sit out in the trap in her backyard, yelling, until Animal Control showed up (I went over and told her that my cat was in her trap and asked her to let him go, and she said, “OK, just a minute” and went in the house and shut the door and then came out and took him in the house and kept him there until Animal Control showed up. They released him to me, but I had to go to court and pay $95.) So he’s been on the porch (8’ x 30’) ever since. And then The EGE enclosed the side of the house, with trees and grass, and he and Cutie Pie had access to that the last couple of months. It’s a nice little run—about 10’ x 30’.
But he’s miserable. We’ve tried herbal cat tranquilizers. We’ve tried Prozac. The only thing that helped was when Cutie Pie went out, and that helped only a little. The only time Garf is happy is when 1) he’s out roaming or 2) we’re out there with him.
The neighbor has turned us in to Animal Control for the yelling. Fortunately for me, Garf never yells when anyone is with him—duh:  he yells only when he’s lonely—and so the AC guy thought the neighbor was nuts. Little did he know.
1—If we turn him loose, the neighbors will trap him. The trap is set in their backyard.
2—We can’t bring him in the house because he sprays constantly. The only thing the vet knows that might help prevent this is Prozac (remember, he’s been neutered since before he was a year old). Giving him the liquid Prozac compounded by the pharmacy was silly—he drooled most of it right back out. And he still sprayed. And yelled.
3—I’ve worked at Animal Control and the SPCA, so I know how that works. Nobody is going to adopt an adult cat who yells and sprays. You can’t randomly give away cats, as the pit bull owners here will get free cats from the want ads and use them to “train” their dogs.
4—He adores us and loves lying in our laps, but if we’re outside the porch, where he can’t reach us, he’ll try to spray us—marking us, making us  his. If we take a chair out on the porch and come back into the house to get something, he’ll have already sprayed the chair by the time we get back. When he’s really frustrated, all he does is yell, pace, and spray. Like an OCD loop. Hence, I suppose, the treatment with Prozac.
5—We can’t put him in the backyard with the other cats, the four who live in The Cat Palace, because they’ve never been together, and Monk, the alpha cat in the backyard, is a tough fighter (of course all of these have been neutered since they were six months old).  There would be fighting, and then Garf would spray all over everything in the backyard, and then those cats would spray in retaliation, and everything in the backyard (the lawn chairs, the doors, etc.) would be covered in cat piss just like everything on the front porch.
I am, frankly, at my wits’ end. I’m here all day long with him, and he’s miserable pretty much all day long. If he’s quiet, I don’t dare go near the front of the house, lest I wake him up and set him off all over again. I find myself tiptoeing through the living room, trying not to make a noise.
I feel horribly guilty keeping him confined. My mother wouldn’t even keep cats confined to the house—she always had inside-outside cats, since she believed cats need to be outdoors. If I believed in life after death, I’d know my mother was really upset with me, preparing to haunt me until I set him free. I know he wants to be free, just as he was for the first years of his life. And he should be—he’s a good cat. I’m wondering if I should just let him go—if I should practice non-attachment and open the gate and let him come and go as he pleases. The neighbors will do their best to trap him, and then they’ll do whatever they do. But would that be preferable, for Garf, to being miserable and lonely for another 15 years or so?
I’d love to have the porch back—to be able to sit out there and to actually use the front door (I go through the kitchen and the carport instead). I’d love to find a home for him in the country—somewhere with other animals and people and kids, where he could be free but would never be alone. He loves people and gets along with other cats. He loves to hunt, and he likes to sit in your lap. If he didn’t spray dozens of times every day, he’d be a perfect little cat.
And, on a purely selfish note, The EGE and I deserve some peace, and some peace of mind. I hate feeling guilty every single damn day because I can’t make this cat happy. I hate not being able to use my porch, which I so adored. I hate that when the wind blows from the south, even with the windows closed, the odor of cat pee fills the house, just as if we never cleaned cat boxes. (We’ve suspended clear plastic along the wall out there, with hooks and grommets so it can be removed and taken to the driveway and scrubbed, but he’s sprayed every single inch of the porch). You see? It controls our lives. And Cutie Pie, the only one who could help at all, is gone. And Garf is yelling for him to come out, and it’s breaking my heart.

Brian Dettmer in Chicago

Oh, honeys:  if you live in or near Chicago, you’ve GOT to go to the reception of this show this weekend:
Brian Dettmer Adaptations
at Packer Schopf- 942 West Lake St., www.packergallery.com
Reception during Art Chicago: Saturday, May 2, 6-9 pm

He’s actually going to be there, and if he’s not swamped (yeah, right), you might get a chance to talk to him about what he does. I talked to Brian for Somerset Studio (and tried to get him in this next book; he didn’t have time, not after appearing in the NYT Magazine. Duh.)
Go here to see more.
Or here.
Or here.
Or here. 
And here. 

Good-Bye to Cutie Pie

Tough decision to make, but we just couldn’t control the pain for him. He was such a good cat.

With a shaved leg after one of his surgeries.
 


 

This Week’s Give-Away: Another Handmade Journal

In our continued cleaning and sorting, I found a bin of these journals I made years and years ago.

For a couple of years, I worked on these every day. On any given day, there were books in every stage of construction. I made the paper for the covers. I sewed the signatures. In short, I worked for a couple of years to perfect my traditional bookbinding skills.

Of course, I could have learned a lot more, had I kept at it. But when I got to a certain point, where I could consistently create a sewn-signature hardbound book that looked the way I wanted it to and was functional, well, that was it. The challenge was gone, and I was overwhelmed with books.

I had dozens, all over the house. I started selling them—the ones I’m going to give away here, over the next weeks, have price stickers in them from someone who was selling them for me—I have no memory of this, but I know the stickers—and the prices—aren’t mine. I’m assuming they were in some gallery somewhere and didn’t sell. These are the only ones left out of dozens and dozens and omigod dozens. A lot of books, is what I’m saying.

This one has a gold handmade paper cover. I don’t know if that was paper I made or not, but the endpaper covers are:  those are flowers I picked and pressed and used as inclusions when I was making paper.

I don’t guess I need to tell you that I used to make a LOT of paper.

The pages are just colored text paper.

That’s what I was using at the time for my journals. I wouldn’t use it again—if I were going to go to all the trouble to make books completely by hand today, I would get some really nice paper for the pages.

That little gold loop on the top of the spine is for hanging a bead or charm. There are ribbons to tie it closed, a tiny envelope inside the back cover, and a library pocket with a bookmark in the front. Oh—and a tiny page corner bookmark, too. I made tons of these, as well.

Good lord. I sure have made a ton of stuff in my life. Will I ever find homes for it all? Will you help me?

Please?

Oh, good. Thank you!

Book Report

For far, far too long I have rationed my reading as if by prescription, as if I’d been told to limit it to a few groggy moments before falling asleep. I know the reason:  I’ve always loved reading, and, for me, something I love can be only an indulgence. And indulgences must be rationed. I have so admired my friend Wendy for sitting down in the middle of the day with whatever book she’s currently reading, slipping away from life and into the pages of a book.
It is a luxury, indeed. And I have missed it. I can remember—oh, so vaguely!—the days when I would come home from school and shut myself in my room and read for hours. In order to make this possible, I would do all my homework in class—this was back in the day when the teachers all wrote the night’s homework on the board next to the day’s lesson, so people like me could listen and work at the same time, getting everything done and freeing up the evening for more exciting adventures.
Which, for me, almost always were between the pages of a book. Or, more accurately, several books. Are you like that, too? Do you love to have a stack of books waiting, and then several underway at the same time?
This is what the side of my bed looks like right this minute.

(Click on it.)
The stacks all make sense:  there’s a specific order that I could describe only if looking at each one. The other books, the ones not being read or waiting to be read, are in the bookcases, of course.

I’m not good at describing books. I can tell you only what I like and what I don’t like. The things that are important to me are idiosyncratic:  the book must be well-written, with no rough patches where I’m aware of the writing. The characters must be likeable.
In short, I want a good story, well told. I’ve been so happy lately, having hit a good streak after a long drought, thanks to your recommendations and BookMooch and my copying down of titles at the Favorites table at the Border’s in Austin. Here are three I can recommend.
I’ve mentioned The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexis.
 
I finished it, and it was good: I went to the library the next day and got all his other novels, which are in one of those stacks.
Next I began Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally, by Patti Digh.

I almost didn’t get this book because of the frightening cover with the vintage (!) photo of the little girl with wings and a crown. Yikes. But I picked it up again in Dallas and read one of the stories she tells, and I was hooked. She tells great stories that really make you think about how you live your life. I even sent her a fan e-mail. Too bad I never heard back, but that’s OK.
Today I finished City of Thieves, by David Benioff, which is the best novel I’ve read in a long, long time.

It’s set during during the invasion of Russia by the Nazis during WWII. The characters are both believable and entertaining, as well as likeable. The horror is kept to a minimum—it’s a balancing act, writing about war:  you have to go for verisimilitude without being terrifyingly disgusting and depressing. He does an excellent job.
This afternoon—yes! reading in the afternoon! yay, me!—after I walked to the library and the post office, I started A Beautiful Blue Death, by Charles Finch. 

Three chapters, and so far, so good. It reminds me heavily of another upper-class British detective series that, for the life of me, escapes me in every detail. I’m sure one of y’all will know exactly which ones I mean.
Now I’m waiting on a bunch of Noam Chomsky’s stuff to come from amazon.com, and I’ll start another stack.
Since these are all proving to be so promising, I’m spurred to make more reading time before the library books come due. I don’t know how long this luxurious reading binge will last (I mean, truthfully, I’m reading less than an hour during the day and about that at night as well—so it’s a very small, tidy binge; but nevertheless:  for me, it’s a start, I hope. I remember the early days of marriage when I would read every minute I was home and The EGE was not. Before Stitching and Writing completely took over my life, I think. But hearing Chomsky’s wife talk about how much he reads every day inspired me:  a brilliant, productive person who spends most of his time sitting in a chair, reading. Sure, it’s not the same kind of reading I’m doing, but still. There is hope.)
Now for a walk and yoga. And, perhaps, a page before dinner. Hope you’re reading something splendid, as well.

More About Art vs.. Craft: Outsider Artists

I’ve been thinking some more about art and craft, “fine” art and whatever that means. And I thought about outsider artists.
Google it to find examples—I couldn’t find any sites I liked.
Some people think “outsider art” means “not really art,” or they condescend to the people creating it, treating the artists as if they’re some curiosity in a petting zoo. You know, the whole Artist as Half-Wit attitude. But here’s another way of thinking about outsider artists:  they’re artists, compelled to make art, who have absolutely no desire to be accepted by The Fine Art World, you know:  the one everyone in Santa Fe is so eager and anxious to fit into.
When we did the signing in Santa Fe and talked to artists there, I was amazed at the prevailing desire to be accepted by this world. Making art isn’t enough. Sharing art isn’t enough. Even SELLING art isn’t enough. The only thing that’s enough is being accepted by The Fine Art World and having your work shown in Important Galleries.
I’ve been in Important Galleries, and I’ve seen a lot of stuff that astounds me. I don’t have any interest in Discussing Art, so I won’t go further here. But I’ll just say that paint splatters are never going to do it for me. On canvas, on clay, on paper. You can tell me what it means and how famous the artist is and what school he’s following. I won’t care. It’s paint splatters. And you can extrapolate from there and kind of see I’m one of those naifs who is never going to be an Appreciator of Fine Art.
Whatever.
I’m sure that there are some “outsider artists” who are not creating art—i.e., who don’t really care about what they’re doing—but who are scribbling on planks of wood with old crayons in the hope of selling their stuff for The Big Bucks. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about people whose names you never know, and about people like Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, who’s probably not technically an outsider artist but illustrates what I’m talking about nonetheless:  someone who can’t not do what they do. It doesn’t matter what other people think about what they do. They have to do it. And keep doing it.
Got any favorite examples? I’d love to see them.

What’s Your Story?

I used to know a man who believed that everyone has A Story. Just one story, but one that sums up their whole lives. When we’d talk about someone, he’d always ask me, eagerly, “What’s his story?” He loved these stories, and I think about this idea a lot.
I believe people have lots of stories, rather than just one. But I believe the One Story idea because you can learn a lot by the one main story someone tells you about their life. Is it a story about success? Fame? Victimhood? Misery? Love lost? Sexual adventures? Being misunderstood? Finding Jesus?
In thinking about this, I’ve thought about the stories I’ve told all my life, the ones I’ve used to explain myself and my life to new acquaintances, and I’ve resolved that some of those stories are old and worn-out and, really, have nothing to do with me any more. They tell nothing about me or my life or anything I care about. They’re just habit. But you’ve gotta have a story, right? When someone engages you in conversation and is trying to get to know you? And I’ve come up with a short and utterly true story that should tell anyone all they need to know about me.
1. I hate carrots. I hate the way they taste and their texture and especially that odd little core in the middle that makes me think of some weird skeletal structure. Or maybe bone marrow. They’re too sweet to be a legitimate vegetable and not sweet enough to be a fruit. The only thing I like about carrots is the color, and that’s not enough to redeem them.
2. Carrots are good for you. I know that.
3. I eat carrots every day.

The End.

What’s your story?

Free Hugs

Secede My Butt

Pardon me while I rant just the teeniest little bit.
This morning on my First Walk I took a photo of this:

for a fellow BookMoocher—I mooched James Michener’s Texas from her, and she made me laugh out loud by saying she’d try to get it in the mail quickly before Texas secedes and she has to pay international postage.
Hee.
But not. Not so funny at all when you realize these people are serious about this shit. There are people who really think it’s time to secede from the union. Oh, sure—many of them are just using the term to demonstrate their displeasure with The Way Things Are Going--but there are some, indeed, who are serious.
I want to find them all and slap them. They claim their displeasure is with the federal government and its dealing with the financial crisis and putting us further in debt and giving handouts and blah, blah, blah.
That’s bullshit. If that were what this was about, they’d have been pitching fits back in the 90’s, when the budget surplus Bush inherited from Clinton began the long slide into the deficit with which he left office. They’d have been yelling about the deregulation of well, pretty much everything. About how the rich were getting richer and richer while more and more of us—”us” being The Worker Drones—watched helplessly as our jobs vanished. They’d have been talking about seceding from a nation that thought, for far too long, that things were going pretty much OK.
Did they do any of that? Hell, no. But here they are now, with their TEA Parties and their silly outfits and their moronic signs. And that’s OK. They can do whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t involve the rest of us. Meaning the signs and parties and costumes and speeches are a perfectly good way for them to spend their time.
What is NOT OK is that they’re being dishonest in their reasons for promoting secession. There is no way in hell that this is not because these backward yahoos have suddenly found themselves living in a nation with A Black President.
[Never mind that he’s as white as he is black. Never forget that.]
No. That doesn’t matter at all to them. To them, it’s still the One Drop Rule. One Drop Now, One Drop Forever. Ol’ George had such a catchy way with words.
And here’s what I say. If I didn’t live in and love Texas, the Texas of Molly Ivins and Ann Richards, the Texas of wide open spaces and the freedom to be a little bit different, back in the days before it became all conservative and religious and filled with thin-lipped tight-assed money-grubbing jerks who’ve been reaping the rewards of oil boom after oil boom, I’d say, “Fine. Let them secede.” Let them pull away from the US government and all the federal dollars and help and support, and let them heave a big sigh of freedom for the approximately 22 minutes they’d have before the waves of narcotraficantes washed across the southern border and set about transforming the New Republic of Texas into the new distribution hub for all the drugs North America can’t live without. Let them call on the US government for help , and let that government pick up the phone and say, “’Texas?’ I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone named ‘Texas.’”

Art vs.. Craft Redux

Aimee, at Artsyville, sent me a link to Jennifer New’s post about Art vs. craft. Jennifer New is the author of the excellent book, Drawing From Life:  The Journal as Art. Aimee knew I couldn’t leave this one alone.
And of course it made me rant, if only inside my head. Art vs. craft. Moms vs. everyone else. Making stuff vs. making art. It just goes on and on and on.
How do I feel about it? Oh, I could claim that I think it’s all equal, that anything anyone wants to make, whether it’s fine jewelry or crocheted toilet paper roll covers, is all the same. It’s all about creativity, and it’s all Good. I could claim that.
But I don’t. I don’t believe it, and you don’t either. Making stuff with hot glue and pipe cleaners following a pattern you found on someone’s blog isn’t the same thing as making art, and you know it. Oh, you may argue with me. Go ahead. But we both know that there’s a difference between the stuff you do when you take someone else’s idea for making use of the stuff you’ve got lying around your kitchen after you finish with the Easter baskets and the kind of creations that you can’t get out of your head until you bring them to life with your own hands.
What’s the difference? Ah. That’s the problem. Some people want to say it’s about painting—that oil painting is The True Art, and everything else is just slumming. Some people want to claim that art is what gets shown in museums. Some—and I have known them—claim that Art is what is made by people who have MFA’s in art. Yeah.
Here’s what I claim:  art is in the intention. It’s in the making. If you’re making art, you know it. If you’re crafting, you know it. It’s not about worth—crafting has worth, just as does art-making. It’s not about fame or money or value. It’s about intention—about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and how you feel about the process. If you’re crafting, you could be as happy making jewelry as you are sewing or painting furniture. If you’re making art, though, it’s most often the case that you don’t have a choice. There’s something you’ve found that has grabbed you and won’t let you go. If it’s working with fabric, you could no more abandon it than you could leave your children standing naked on the Brooklyn Bridge during rush hour. If you paint, you paint because you can’t NOT paint. Sure, there can be cross-over. Painters can work with clay. Quilt artists can work with metal. But somewhere in there is something you can’t ignore, something that has latched onto your soul and whispers to you night and day, telling you dreams and ideas that won’t leave your head. Ever.
If it’s craft to you, it’s easy to let it lie. You can go weeks, months, years without it. Or you can do it every day, making stuff. It’s OK.
But if making art has grabbed you? You have no choice. It’s like breathing. You don’t do it, and your soul shrivels up.
That’s the difference. It’s not the output. It’s not what you end up with. It’s the process, and the itch you’re scratching to get there. Art is the expression of something inside you that won’t let you alone until you do something with it. It doesn’t start with a pattern for a cute apron on someone else’s blog. It starts with a dream or an idea or something you saw out of the corner of your eye. There’s no pattern for it. There’s no blueprint for how to make it. There’s only the spark of an idea that won’t let you rest.
That’s art.

We ♥ Noam Chomsky

OK. I admit that I queued Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause for the very most shallow reason ever on the planet: because Chomsky’s video was next to mine on the Authors at Google page.
Eeek. How shallow can you get? Very, it seems.
Now, I knew who Chomsky was, of course. At least I thought I did, having studied English for-fucking-ever. You can’t do that and not know him as A Famous Linguist, right?
But I knew nothing of his other life, the life of the mind that his wife says is another complete career. What does this career entail? Reading:  he reads six newspaper a day. That’s just the newspapers. Not the journals. Not the books. Just the newspapers.
And thinking. And then talking to people. About the power of the media, about the ulterior motives of the US going to war with Iraq and why they had to call it a “war,” rather than what they really wanted to call it. About what we did in Colombia, and what we’ve done around the world. About why people are content to let these things happen and how we’re so very skillfully manipulated into supporting things that are most definitely not in our best interests. Or in our interests at all.
The man is brilliant. Just amazing. In the video, he kept saying these things that I’ve been ranting about forever. I’ve never heard him saying these things. Why? He says, simply, that he’s interviewed much more widely by reporters from other countries, where he’s heard much more often. Here? Not so much. He rankles, is what it is.
Today I ordered four of his books. I’ll report back.

Whew.

I keep thinking I’ll get a chance to sit down and try to entertain you, but it’s just not happening. I don’t know what goes on in this house, but we’re so busy that we’re not sitting down to eat until 10 pm, and by then I’m exhausted.

So what do we do all day? Maybe if I write about it, I can see, you know?

One thing that’s eaten up a HUGE chunk of time this past week is more weeding and sorting. The first Saturday in May is the annual UU Garage Sale, and it’s our annual chance to get rid of anything we don’t want or aren’t using or think someone else might get more use out of than we do. Plus we needed to weed through the financial records prior to 2004. You know that drill. We should do it every year, but we just never do.

So Saturday we spent NINE hours out in The Fucking Edifice, hauling out bins and boxes, going through stuff, sorting records, going through The EGE’s impressive collection of ancient clothes, some of which were so very frightening that I actually squealed. Imagine:  a baby blue knit tie. Yeah, you read that right:  Baby blue. Knit. Tie.

This is a man who does NOT wear ties. Where in the hell did this thing—and its ilk—come from? I hate even to think about it.

Baby pooh-gold-brown cargo shorts. Shirts made in “fibers” unknown to nature. Anyone remember Joe Boxer? Those oh-so-cool-at-the-time boxer shorts? I ADORED those and bought my husband a pair at every opportunity. Good lord. Footballs. Flowers. Teddy bears.

Are you ill yet? Then get this: I found it highly amusing to have bought him a pair with WATERMELONS on them. Yes. Sort of a theme with the photo of him nekkid with the watermelon—you remember that one? But come on:  this is UNDERWEAR, for crying out loud.

I should have just slapped myself instead.

We had to sort through all that shit.

Then Sunday we built a fire in the chiminea and took out the shredder and plugged it in—because of COURSE when I designed The Fucking Edifice and its attendant patio, I planned for just such an eventuality (snort. Like hell I did) and had outlets installed oh-so-handily.

That took another several hours. Burning and shredding. Burning and shredding.

Oh. And then The EGE reminds me not to forget the many hours we’ve spent this past week picking up chinaberries. This seems to have become Our New Hobby. Do you know the chinaberries? Omigod. They are like unto a scourge upon the earth. Positively biblical in proportion. Like unto a Plague of Locusts.

Etc.

I love our chinaberry tree. It redeems itself in the one short month that it produces the sweetest-smelling blossoms this side of wisteria. Chinaberry blossoms + wisteria = my idea of perfume. But then? What’s up with those berries? Because honeys, let me tell you:  those berries smell like shit. No—I’m not just using the word “shit” for emphasis. Or because I think you like to hear me cuss. No! I mean LITERALLY. I will go out there and think, “Whoa. That’s a lot of cat shit stinking up the backyard,” knowing full well that The EGE does NOT allow a build-up of feces in HIS backyard. No way. It took us a while to figure out what was stinkin’, being as how, you know, we generally don’t go around smelling the berries that drop off the tree into the yard. I mean, really:  who does?  Do you go around sniffing your lawn debris? Or crawling around with your nose to the ground, searching out the feces from your animal companions?

I thought not.

Oh, darlin’:  the chinaberries. They are driving us mad. You remember that we severely “pruned” this tree, right? As in “chopped the ever-loving shit out of it.” Or, rather: half of it.  Because my husband took pity on my love of The Blossoms and let half of it wait until next year.

So we’re spending a LOT of hours picking up those damn berries. In the years we’ve lived here, we’ve tried every way of dealing with them:  we’ve tried mowing them (doesn’t work:  the mower doesn’t pick them up). We’ve tried vacuuming them:  yes. That was us, out there vacuuming our lawn.

Do not laugh. You’re laughing only IF you’ve never Known a Chinaberry Tree.

My dad once asked me, “Why do you have a chinaberry tree?” And when I said, “But it smells lovely in April,” he just snorted.

The only way to deal with them, to keep them from

1) hurting like hell when you step on them and

2) turning into MORE chinaberry trees (at least we think they do; they may also/alternately just grow from root shoots)

is to pick the berries up by hand. One. At. A. Time.

It takes for-fucking-ever.

So there was that.

Then there was the thing about The Clothes we found in The FE. Oh, not the knit ties and bad shorts. No. I’m talking about the plethora (which here means:  a whole shitload) of white cotton shirts. Plus some really hot men’s bikini undererwear. Which you English Majors out there will recognize as A Misplaced Modifier, since it’s obvious that I do not think some Hot Man left his underwear in our FE and instead mean that there was some hot underwear out there.

Never mind.

Suffice to say that there was some stuff that needed to be dyed. In the worst way. And so I’ve been doing that for the last couple days.

OK. Let’s speed this monkey up:

--there was an interview, one which should have taken, oh, an hour on Monday but which ended up taking 4 hours over two days, what with all the assorted Drama involved.

--I decided to put light kits on the two ceiling fans in the studio, mostly so I can see colors when I’m 1) dyeing stuff or 2) picking out bead colors. Up until now, I’ve had to take stuff into another room to get an accurate color read.

Only:  the light didn’t work. We tried it on one ceiling fan. Nope. Tried it on the other. Nope. Packed that mother back up and drove it all the way across town, turned it in, got a refund, went back and found a guy who climbed up on The World’s Highest Ladder to get more kits. Came home, hooked them up, only to discover that, when we put in the ceiling fans, we figured we’d never want lights out there, since I LOATHE overhead lighting. And so didn’t connect the little wires to make the lights work.

It’s 95 degrees. We have no ceiling fans (since we’re WORKING ON THEM), it’s miserable holding up things over your head and trying to do the wiring.

Pure hell.

But it’s OK now! Yay!

OK, sweeties. I’m going to cut to the chase. It’s almost midnight. We just finished dinner. I haven’t accomplished anything all week in the way of Real Work (i.e., that stuff that pays the bills). Tomorrow doesn’t look so hot in that department, either. But you know what?

It doesn’t matter. Things take time. Time is relative. Things will get done or not get done. I will try to make time to entertain you when I can. When I can’t? I’ll hope that you’re taking time to sit outdoors with a glass of wine, looking at the sky and thinking of the beings you love the most and heaving The Big Sigh of Happiness. You know, the one where you look around you and go, “It doesn’t suck so much after all.”

XO

 

Duh.

I’m so sorry I didn’t think of this earlier, and I hope it doesn’t ruin anybody’s life, but here’s what I’m going to do about the give-away:  in the spirit of the 1000 Journals Project, I’d like to do a send-around, ending with Roz. She’ll share it with kids at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, and I think that’s a fabulous place for it to end up, don’t you?
So here’s what I’m going to do:  if you want to be included in this, send your name and snail mail address to:
voodoocafe@clearwire.net
with “Journal DVD” as the subject.
I’ll make up a list and enclose it with the DVD. You’ll watch it and send it to the next person on the list. I’ll try to keep the list geographically sensible, so it’s not going back and forth across the continent, which will also help hold postage down. If you agree to participate, that means that you’ll watch the DVD and then send it on in a timely manner, paying for postage to the next person. If you’re a generous soul in the northern US and will pay for postage to Canada, please tell me that, as well. (And if you’re in Canada and want to be included, that means you’ll pay for postage back, probably to Roz, who’s In the North.)
This will end, as I said, with Roz, who’ll be last on the list and will pass it on.
How does that sound? I hope you think it’s a good idea. Sorry to disappoint anyone who wanted to own and keep the DVD, but this just seems like a great way to share. I’m hoping that some of you will watch it and love it and will buy your own copy from Andrea, of course.
Thanks to y’all for sparking the idea~~

Check This Out: More About 1000 Journals

Got a nice note from Andrea Kreuzhage, who made the 1000 Journals video. Here’s a link to the website I didn’t know existed. Cool!

Drama

What I meant by “drama” in the 1000 Journals DVD: a lot of people seemed to take this project really, really seriously. Not in the way of:  oh, this is a fabulously cool project, and I’m going to do everything I can to make it successful. No, some of them were more like:  This is my Life’s Purpose, and everything has to be Perfect! Some of the women were kind of scary in their intensity.
Someguy prepared and distributed 1000 journals. From what I understand, you could go to the website and sign up to receive a journal to work in. Then you would pass it on to the next person signed up, or perhaps drop it off somewhere (I didn’t really get how that worked—whether there were strict rules for passing it on or not).  One woman was devastated when she got a journal and found that some previous participant had drawn little cartoons about the people who were ahead of him to receive it. His portrayal of her (he didn’t know her at all) brought up all kind of stuff about weight and childhood trauma and/or sexual abuse—I’m not sure what, exactly, but just a bunch of stuff that just devastated her. She was really upset about what a stranger had written/drawn in journal she would never see again.
Other people complained that those who followed them altered or obscured their pages.
Stuff like that. This was both confusing and irritating to me. Confusing because I wasn’t clear why the comment/drawing of someone who had never met you and knew nothing about you would make you cry (she obviously had never substituted in the public schools) and because the ones who were upset with the alteration of their work have obviously not participated in very many collaborative projects, which is what this was, in a way. I don’t like collaboration, so I wouldn’t do something like this. But if I did, I would expect that things would be added, obscured, changed, whatever. That’s just what happens.
And that was irritating because I hate drama. I really do. People have pointed out to me that my stories about my life are sometimes dramatic, like the Porto-Potty Man story. But come on:  it’s something that happened. I told a story about it. Then I forgot about it. I didn’t walk around all week going, “Oh, my god! This man tried to pick me up! I can’t believe it! What was he thinking? Is he going to come to my house and attack me? I’m so upset!” Etc.
It seems to me that drama comes from people who take everything in their lives reallyreallyreally seriously. Their job, their friends, their friends’ friends—because you know you’ve had the time when a friend was supposed to meet you at the coffee shop and rushed in 20 minutes late, all out of breath and going on and on about what Shelley said to Jane about what Todd said last week. And about how horrible it was and how terrible it made Jane feel and what your friend was going to say to Todd.
Eh. Have I mentioned how much I hate that?
Last weekend when we were in Austin, The EGE and I walked all the way downtown to Cork & Company,  where we spent a fabulous couple of hours lounging on the banquette amidst the pillows, tasting wine and cheese and, OK, eavesdropping on the two young women across from us, who spent the entire time talking about 1) men and 2) how much they’d had to eat and drink that day. They were both way overweight and had, apparently, just come from a long lunch and were now drinking rather a lot and eating cheese and talkingtalkingtalking about men they’d dated/wanted to date/thought each other should date, along with the attendant drama of who said what to whom. Very intense. It made my eyes roll, but just to myself. You know, invisible eye-rolling.
Drama pretty much is about other people and our speculations about them and reactions to them. It’s hardly ever anywhere near as important as we act like it is.
We all know people who are drama queens. They love the big blow-ups, the pouting, the confrontations, the late-night accusatory phone calls, the e-mails sent in anger. Oy. They’re everywhere, and I tend to avoid them like you’d avoid someone you knew had a contagious disease. Because you know drama is contagious.
I used to have a sister-in-law who was All About Drama, all the time. Yikes. I was young, and I often got sucked in—because, let’s face it: when you’re in your 20’s and 30’s, you can still believe it’s about Real Life. And that, therefore, it really matters. When, in fact, it’s actually about what we think about what other people do and is only our attachment to the false excitement of having things stirred up. We think it’s what keeps life from being boring, when in fact the opposite is true:  drama is what gets in the way of our real lives. Every minute that we spend analyzing and obsessing about the way our mother-in-law acted at Easter or what our friend said to her husband is a minute we don’t have to be living that very minute.
Zen. You know?
Anyway, the journal project was fabulous, and I loved the people who looked at it as an adventure and had a lot of fun with it. It was only the ones who got a big part of their lives wrapped up in the process and the outcome who kind of made me gnash my teeth.
Just like in real life.

This Week’s Give-Away: 1000 Journals DVD

You’ve heard of Someguy, who did the 1000 Journals Project, right? This is a DVD about that guy and the project.
We watched it once—it’s kind of a lot of drama for my taste, but if you’re fascinated by the project, you’ll love this. It’s even got Tracy Moore in it—that was fun to see someone we know.
Post a comment. Check back Friday. You know the drill.

Marc Black is Fabulous

Last night when we were standing around talking to UU’s after listening to Bill Bryson, I mentioned that we were looking forward to hearing Marc Black perform tonight at the church. One of them said, “Well, here—" and nodded to this tall guy in jeans, a t-shirt, and brand new Converse high-tops. He and his wife had come in early to hear Bryson, and we stood around and talked. As is often the case with men who are artists, he was intrigued by The EGE’s dyed cloths. His wife got contact info so I can do up some for him when they decide what he needs. Anything but brown, is what I’m thinking.
I’d checked his website earlier in the week and, even though I’m not at all a fan of folk music, I loved that he’d written a song for Obama. What’s not to love about a white guy from New York singing a campaign song for Obama?
[When you go to his website, check out the little player in the upper left-hand corner and click on “Ooh, I Love My Coffee.” It’s perfect. You can hear his guitar skills, too.]
So we went. And, oh, my darlings:  the songs on his website do not do him justice. Nor do the ones on his CD, Stroke of Genius. They’re good, but he’s like Bryson:  so, so much better In Real Life.
And there’s another reason to like the guy:  the title comes from the songs that were inspired by a friend who had a stroke and lost his words; and the reason Marc was in town was to go to the Aphasia Center of West Texas, founded and directed by Katherine Shelley, one of the UU members.
Whew. Got all that?
So we spent two happy hours tonight listening to him play and sing. He’s a fabulous guitar player, and his singing voice does not suck, either. And—best of all—his style is more blues than folk—better than I’d expected. Thankyoujesus.
And speaking of jesus:  he said he knows nothing about the UU church but that he, personally, is a Jew-Buh, pronounced JooBoo, not, he said, to be confused with either JuJu candy or boo-boo, as in injury. No:  he was “born a Jew” and now practices Buddhism. So although he claims to know nothing about UU, he fit right in.
So he’s playing and singing, just him and his old guitar and a speaker, the old t-shirt and jeans and cool sneakers and old white hat, and pure creativity is rolling off him like water. He’s humming to himself and grinning and making those sounds that old black blues musicians make when they’re picking, and it was just fabulous, like we were somewhere inside his head as he created music from nothing.
He’ll be in Lubbock, Texas, tomorrow night, and then at the Cactus Cafe in Austin with Lissa Hattersly on Wednesday. (On the right-hand side of his website you can see his schedule.) If you get a chance, go hear him. Tell him the orange-haired woman in Midland sent you.
And be prepared to tap your feet.

Bill Bryson: What a Difference a Writer Makes

Remember how I told you about the free community programs at Midland College? Go here. Jason Bishop was the Spring performance, and the Spring lecture was last night. I was a little worried, as, if you will remember, the performance was marred for me in many ways, not the least marring of which was the toddler who kept touching me and her younger sibling who howled throughout the entire second half. Add in the munching of popcorn and the slurping of soft drinks, and I was wondering how I was going to be able to hear this lecture.
Now, some of y’all ever-so-gently suggested that the problem with these free programs lies in the “free”part, and that I would do better, with my aversion to crowds and kids and stuff, to pay The Big Bucks for my entertainment. So as we drove into the parking lot last night for another foray into Free Programming, I was the teensiest bit leery.
In my Top Ten Writers, you’re going to find Ann Lamott, Elizabeth Berg, Martha Beck, among others. And absolutely Bill Bryson. Not only is he funny and brilliant, but he writes well. Talk about a rare combination. So there’s no way I’m not going to hear him speak, never mind that I’m thinking I may just get to watch his mouth move from a long, long way away.
But hark! There are about a third as many cars in the parking lot this time. And, when we go in, about a third as many people. Whoa.
This astonishes me:  I had never heard of Jason Bishop, yet herds of people turned out to see him. I have known of Bryson for years and years and would have assumed that a free lecture by him would have been GIANT.
I would, as is so often the case, have been wrong.
We sat in the front, off to one side (the middle seats, the ones with actual padding, having been reserved for The Donors (motto:  Give a Liver; Get a Good Seat. Oh, wait:  not that kind of donation. Never mind.))
As we were waiting for it to begin, I turned and watched the crowd. Things I noticed, besides the fact that this time there were no concession stands, hence no chomping or slurping:
1. Only one child in the building, and I didn’t even notice her until the end, when she filed out silently with her parents.
2. Lots of teachers and Unitarians. We saw about a dozen of the later, and, considering the tininess of the UU congregation here, that’s a HUGE percentage.
3. Every single person, with the exception of my husband, was white. Unless there were some of those women from that movie last night, and they blended in so well I couldn’t tell. So I’m guessing Bill Bryson is An Acquired White Taste, although what’s funny is that I heard several people saying they’d never read anything by him and didn’t really know who he was, and The EGE has actually listened to several of his books on CD on road trips. Plus listened to me read, ad nauseum, from parts I thought were hilarious.
Anyway, it was fabulous. It totally redeemed my faith in free programming. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, go.

Hey, Trish & Vickie Holdwick!

I tossed in another little journal—just like this one, but white-ish—so I could have two winners. Always a good thing, having more winners. Send me your snail mail addresses, and I’ll get these in the mail.

Congratulations!

Black Men, White Women & The Politics of Race & Sex

I had a little meltdown last night and stomped around the house yelling things that shouldn’t even be repeated in polite company, and this morning I’d like to explore the issue further without resorting to using the phrase “goddamned pussy.”
Netflix is an odd thing, you know? If you’ve got a couple hundred movies in your queue, it takes a while before you watch movies you’ve chosen. You’ll suddenly hit a string of foreign films with subtitles and have no idea why you thought these were a good idea, forcing you as they do to wear your glasses and read while you’re trying to eat your tofu. Or you’ll get a string of documentaries about India and wonder what was going on in your life that made Colonial Britain seem so captivating.
Lately, we’ve been watching movies about black men. These came at a perfect time, as we’d just returned from our Road Trip Through South Texas, where we saw only two black people on the entire trip.
First it was When We Were Kings, about the Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali (booo) and George Foreman (yay). Sadly, George was a buffoon with his silly pants and big dog. Ali was cute and funny and charismatic. So I grumbled a lot.
I managed to make it through, anyway. Let’s just say that George aged much better and leave it at that. Someone in this house has always been an Ali fan. Huh.
Then we watched Unforgivable Blackness, the biography of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world. Now, it seems strange, given my various beliefs and non-violent tendencies, but I adore heavyweight boxing. I have no idea why. I have no interest in lightweight, flyweight, welterweight. But a good heavyweight bout? There really is something poetic and monumental about it. Read Joyce Carol Oates’ On Boxing.
But I digress.
Last night we watched 10,000 Men Named George, which I thought was a documentary about the unionization of Pullman porters in the early part of the 20th century but which turned out to be a movie about the same. Oh, let’s be honest:  I’m sure when I first saw the title I actually thought it was another movie about George, this one focusing on his sons.
[Note: I am allowed to make gentle fun of George, since I love him. No one else in this house is allowed to do that, never mind that A Certain Person thinks he has that right. He does not.]
In the first movie, I don’t remember there being any women. It was about Ali and George and boxing. In the Jack Johnson bio, there were women:  he had lots of women, lots and lots of women (he once told a reporter, who asked about the steady stream of women coming and going from his hotel room, that the key to his prowess was to “eat jellied eels and think distant thoughts.”) Many of these women were white, in a time where that was almost unheard of:  a black man with the effrontery to be with white women in public. Almost all of them were prostitutes. He married two white women in the very early 1900’s—the first a socialite (a “troubled” woman who later shot and killed herself, which is why, of course, they made quite a bit about the marriage; the second a prostitute. They were just two in a long string of women, mostly white, who “consorted” with Johnson.
Last night there were quite a few women in the movie about the formation of the Pullman union, and I started ranting as soon as the movie started and there were two scenes with white women. In the first, the woman was stuffing Pullman towels and linens into her suitcase and, when confronted, blamed it on the porter. In the second, a woman lured a porter into her room and took off her robe and, completely naked, grabbed for his crotch.
I had a fit. These were the only white women in the movie.
And here’s the rest of what completely set me off about this movie:  you’ve got the white women, who are evil and trashy. The dark-skinned black women in the movie had no speaking roles.—they were just kind of the furniture. The good women—the wives, the characters who had a purpose (and a speaking role)—were all incredibly light-skinned black women.
And that's what set me off.
Obama is half black and half white. The first woman in his life was his white mother. But I’m willing to be you ANYTHING that if he’d married a white woman, instead of Michelle, there’s no way in the world he would ever have even been considered for the nomination, much less had a chance in hell of winning.
Because there’s still a huge Thang about white women and black men. Oh, sure, we pretend there’s not. We pretend we’re beyond that. But you look at the way we’re presented in the culture, in movies, in the stories we tell each other, and it’s always, always about sex. Black men + white women = exotic, mysterious, taboo sex.
And let me just ask you this:  as grown-up human beings who have had some little experience with sex, what can you imagine two human beings, with their limited anatomy, could possibly do together that would be so wild and titillating and strange that it would perpetuate such myths? Do people think, perhaps, that interracial sex transcends the limitations of anatomy? That perhaps couples in such a relationship develop some new and unimagined talents for, oh, I don’t know, contortionism? Transmogrification?
What?
I’ll tell you what it’s all about, what it’s always been about. It’s not about black men lusting after white women. It’s about white women being used as pawns in the power struggle between black men and white men. It’s about how women have always been used as pawns in any struggle—it’s why conquering armies rape the women of the villages. They have no desire for those women. It’s like pissing on trees: “I was here. This is mine. I took it from you.”
And the women involved? What do they want? I believe they want what every woman should want:  the freedom to make her own choices.
Look at portrayals of white women who have chosen to be with black men. They are, invariably, one of two kinds of women: either they’re trashy and rebellious—low-class, poorly educated, almost always fat (don’t believe me? look around), often prostitutes or celebrities (remember:  for many people, “celebrity” is still just one step up from “hooker”). Or they’re Good Girls who have had a temporary spot of rebelliousness and somehow come to their senses and so repent the error of their ways and come back into the fold, where they’ll always be slightly tarnished and will work extraextra hard to be A Really Good Girl for the rest of their lives to make up for it.
[You’re going, “But what about So-and-So?” as an example against this argument. And I respond:  if you can name the exceptions, that proves my point.]
You want to find a good and faithful wife? You can’t do much better than to find a woman who had a brief fling with a Negro and then crawled back to the bosom of her family, seeking forgiveness. She’s not likely to risk further damage by doing much of anything besides bearing your children. If, that is, you can wipe from your mind the image of her having had sexual congress with a big, black buck.
Oh, yeah. We’re full of these little bits and pieces of crap that we’ve been fed by movies and tv and stories.
And what’s this with really light-skinned black women? Why are they so desirable? Well, you get the slap-in-the-face-to-white-men of having a woman who looks white without having to deal with the inherent trashiness of any white woman who would actually have you.
Kind of the Racial & Sexual Politics According to Groucho Marx.
Think of the things they say about Obama and his wife. The cover of O magazine. The cover of Vogue. The loving family portraits. Can you imagine any of that with a white woman? I think not. Because we wouldn’t be seeing someone who’d gone to law school and had a successful career and was part of a thriving family. We’d be seeing someone who had made This Choice and so was, automatically, suspect. We’d all be wondering “What’s wrong with her?” Because of course she has to be damaged in some way to have made that choice. We see a white woman with a black man and automatically assume 1) she’s wild and trashy or 2) she couldn’t Get Anyone Else.  She’s screwed up somewhere.
It’s not what that says about race so much as what it says about women. Oh, we think we’re free, we think we have choices, we think we’ve come so far. We have, indeed, come a long, long way. But we’re nowhere near there yet. Need proof? The country elected a biracial man—something that’s got lots and lots of people reeling and questioning The Future of America—rather than electing a woman.
Want more proof? What are the worst things one man can say about another? What do football coaches say to infuriate their players before a big game? They call them “pussies,” they say they play like girls and they must wear panties, they call them “faggots.”
Why is being a male homosexual such a horrible, horrible thing that it’s the ultimate insult? Men imagine being a gay man is about taking the submissive role—the woman’s role—during sex. And what could be worse? Penetrating is the man’s role; being penetrated is the woman’s. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it has to be.
Real Men Don’t Get Screwed.
We think we’re free, all of us. We think we live in the freest country in the world. Maybe we do—I don’t know. But however free it is, relatively speaking, it’s not free. We’re still bound by all the strictures we’ve internalized:  what we do and where we go and what we wear and what we say. How we make a living. Whom we marry. We’re judged on all those things. And women and people of color are judged most stringently.
When your value, historically, was as 1) a vessel for procreation (women) 2) slave labor (African-Americans), you need to really pay attention to the vestiges of old thinking that are still in place. When women allow themselves to be portrayed as things, no matter how cute the outfits and bubbly and charming the roles, they’re agreeing to the continuation of that idea.
The next time you’re watching tv or a movie or a commercial, watch for the subtext. What ideas are being reinforced? What does the movie say about people who make choices that go against the norm? What does it say about women and their place in the world, and about race and class and gender in society?
And what do we do in our own lives to reinforce those norms? Do we really have so much invested in them that we want to help shore them up? Or is it time to look—really look—at the messages, both subtle and blatant, that we’re putting out into the world about who has value and who doesn’t? Is it time, perhaps, to ask what “value” really means?
[And aren’t you happy that I managed not to say “goddamned pussy” a single time? I know I am.]