Composition Teacher, Write Thyself.

We are reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life in my Composition class. Today I borrowed one of her assignments and asked my students to write for a while about what they remembered of school lunches. I wrote, too. Here's a little piece of what I ended up with:

When I was in first or second grade, there was a girl in my class who would give me her potato chips at lunch every day. Unlike many of my peers, we never had potato chips at my house and so I never had them in my lunch. Her chips were in a plastic sandwich baggie that was slick with grease from the chips. They were delicious.

She often smelled awful, mostly of stale urine. We told her this. And on the days when the smell was strong, I wouldn't play with her. I have to wonder, now, if this gift of the chips was an effort to secure a friendship. Her smell lurked around her like a living thing, and I was afraid that if she touched me, it would slither onto me and I would smell, too. The smell made her seem dirty, though in actuality, she was not.

Her smell seemed even to contaminate the chips, so that if I thought about it too much I'd have to imagine them to be covered in some kind of invisible filth. I ate them anyway.

The memory of her smell is so strong that whenever I hear her first name, I think of the rotten tang of subways and airport bathrooms.

South Dakotans, standing UP.

I'm the kind of person who worries excessively about about provoking wacko crazies. Therefore, my car has no bumper stickers on it. And I get very nervous when I have to do things like knock on doors and urge people to vote against the abortion ban.

This may surprise some of you.

The truth is, I worry a lot about what people think of me, and it causes me great anxiety and indigestion if I learn that someone is angry with me or doesn't like me. I also worry that rabid anti-choice activists might shoot me, or worse, not want to be my friend.

So I'm always a bit apprehensive when I go out into the wilds of South Dakota sporting my pro-choice t-shirts.

Last week, I got a new Planned Parenthood shirt that says "Stand UP for South Dakota!" on the front. I wore it to the bowling alley (birthday partyfor one of my son's friends), and one of the other moms asked me what it meant. I responded, "It's a Planned Parenthood shirt," and braced myself for what I was sure would be a cool response.

"Thank God SOMEONE around here still has some common sense," she replied.

Tonight, I wore the same shirt out to dinner at Granite City. When I walked in the door of the restaurant, one of the hostesses came rushing up to ask me where I'd gotten it so that she, too, could get one.

I think I might branch out into bumper stickers next since the t-shirt is working so well for me...

I'm all about abortion. That's just how I roll.

I heard someone say today, "I'm not about abortion." Meaning, I guess, that abortion is way uncool. (I'm probably dating myself here, but that's how we say it in my family. "Son," I say to my four-year-old, "you may come out of your room if you're ready to be chill. Because hitting Mommy is way uncool." (I really do say this.))

So anyway, that's the meaning of the title of this post.

I don't know what I was doing in July that caused me to miss the news that Rep. Henry Waxman, AKA my pretend boyfriend (on account of he's so cool), released a new report: "False and Misleading Health Information Provided by Federally Funded Pregnancy Resource Centers."

I mean, it's not like we didn't know this already, but still - it's nice to have proof. And since I had a little trouble finding it, here's a link so you can print it out and read it yourself (it's only 18 pages).

And if you like that, you should also check out the 2004 Waxman Report on "The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs", which, again, doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, but sure makes for good reading. Especially if you have low blood pressure. For example:

The report finds that over 80% of the abstinence-only curricula, used by over two-thirds of SPRANS grantees in 2003, contain false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health. Specifically, the report finds:

· Abstinence-Only Curricula Contain False Information about the Effectiveness of Contraceptives. Many of the curricula misrepresent the effectiveness of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. One curriculum says that “the popular claim that ‘condoms help prevent the spread of STDs,’ is not supported by the data”; another states that “[i]n heterosexual sex, condoms fail to prevent HIV approximately 31% of the time”; and another teaches that a pregnancy occurs one out of every seven times that couples use condoms. These erroneous statements are presented as proven scientific facts.

· Abstinence-Only Curricula Contain False Information about the Risks of Abortion. One curriculum states that 5% to 10% of women who have legal abortions will become sterile; that “[p]remature birth, a major cause of mental retardation, is increased following the abortion of a first pregnancy”; and that “[t]ubal and cervical pregnancies are increased following abortions.” In fact, these risks do not rise after the procedure used in most abortions in the United States.

· Abstinence-Only Curricula Blur Religion and Science. Many of the curricula present as scientific fact the religious view that life begins at conception. For example, one lesson states: “Conception, also known as fertilization, occurs when one sperm unites with one egg in the upper third of the fallopian tube. This is when life begins.” Another curriculum calls a 43-day-old fetus a “thinking person.”

· Abstinence-Only Curricula Treat Stereotypes about Girls and Boys as Scientific Fact. One curriculum teaches that women need “financial support,” while men need “admiration.” Another instructs: “Women gauge their happiness and judge their success on their relationships. Men’s happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments.”

· Abstinence-Only Curricula Contain Scientific Errors. In numerous instances, the abstinence-only curricula teach erroneous scientific information. One curriculum incorrectly lists exposure to sweat and tears as risk factors for HIV transmission. Another curriculum states that “twenty-four chromosomes from the mother and twenty-four chromosomes from the father join to create this new individual”; the correct number is 23.

The report finds numerous examples of these errors. Serious and pervasive problems with the accuracy of abstinence-only curricula may help explain why these programs have not been shown to protect adolescents from sexually transmitted diseases and why youth who pledge abstinence are significantly less likely to make informed choices about precautions when they do have sex.

See what I mean? Rep. Waxman: You the man.

Reflections, Five Years After

It's seemed to me, lately, that life is just very...tenuous. Steve Irwin, of all people, brought that home last week by dying in such a freakish way, even for a man who spent his life taking risks. My good friend from graduate school, Darcy Wakefield, shocked and saddened us all when she died last winter, a few years after having been diagnosed with ALS.

These were young people. Darcy was in her thirties. Steve Irwin was 44.

In another example of just how fragile life is, a very close friend of mine is reeling from the shock and anguish of her mother's recent diagnosis (ALS, again).

And just yesterday, we got word that the wife of a friend had been killed in a car accident and their young son - just a couple of weeks older than my own son - had sustained a brain injury and is in critical condition.

I think those of us who are lucky enough to have long periods of time in our lives that go by without significant misfortune forget that, all around us, there is loss and suffering. And then, it seems to hit all at once, and we realize that life is not the pleasant and beautiful thing we thought it was; it is hard and cruel and brutal and painful and unforgiving and fleeting.

When the planes hit the towers, I was one of those who obsessively watched the news coverage, sleepless and shaking. I could not imagine the suffering, and I could not comprehend that so many others were in constant pain while I went about my daily life, shopping, doing my laundry, writing my dissertation. I would forget for a moment and laugh at something silly, and then immediately catch myself and feel guilty.

When I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and witnessed those injured and killed in the war - especially the children - it was the same. I was haunted by these images from the screen and by others I imagined. I felt as if those were my children, and I wept in the theater.

It is like that when people close to you are grieving. My heart breaks along with theirs. Yet, I can escape. I can forget for a moment. I can hug my family and feel safe.

We have all heard about the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). What's missing there is panic. When I think about what my friend who lost his wife must be going through, my throat closes up, my stomach clenches, and I want to tear out my hair. The overwhelming loss is incomprehensible and our bodies cannot absorb the shock all at once.

What I am learning from being on the edges of these sorrows is that it is the escaping, periodically, that allows me to function. I can reach out and allow myself to feel pain with those who are suffering only ecause I can also step back to regroup. And when I am the one suffering, it is those around me who are able to move back and forth from my pain to their moments of rest that allow them to comfort me.

There is no reason in tragedy. I don't believe in a God who takes a mother away from a four-year-old child or who traps someone's daughter/father/brother/lover in a burning building - and I wouldn't *want* to believe in such a God, anyway. But I do believe that the kind of love that we sometimes show each other in the face of such tragedies is holy.

And that's it. Five years later, this is what resonates with me - not why "they" hate "us," or what it means to feel safe, or who is to blame, but that we have to comfort each other by sharing our suffering, by loving each other enough to feel each other's pain.

That is where I see God in all of this. And while that's not enough right now, it's not a small thing.

Daycare Demons At It Again

Some of you who know me in real life know that last year we were rather unceremoniously - and quite unprofessionally - asked to leave the daycare where my son had been - and had done well, and was well-liked by all - for three years. In the interest of time, let's just say that my letter in response to the sequence of events up to and including the manner in which my son was told he could not come back, which I addressed to the director's boss, was about 8 typed pages, single-spaced.

I haven't written publicly about this at all and hadn't intended to, but I just found out that the daycare is up to its old tricks again. I'm so upset and bothered and aching on behalf of the parent who is going through what we went through that I can't write much about it right now. I will say, however, that it seems that the daycare's stock response to any kind of behavior it doesn't like is to suggest that the mother is not spending enough time at home with her child.

Any parent reading this knows that what such a statement really means is this:

"If you weren't such a rotten mother, and if you cared about your child at all, you'd quit your job and be less selfish and stay home and raise your child properly, so that we wouldn't have to deal with your ill-behaved child, who, by the way, we don't like very much."

Overreaction? Well, maybe. But keep in mind that suggesting mothers spend more time at home is indeed their stock response. That's gotta mean something about what they think is the root cause of children's behavior. And they are supposed to be trained in child development.

Funny that none of the books about children's development that I have sitting here on my shelf have that same stock response.

So what's really going on? I think it's a way for the daycare to avoid blame. It's far easier to say, "your child is acting this way and therefore s/he should leave" than it is to say, "we share the responsibility for teaching your child to behave properly, and so we want to work with you to come up with a solution."

This will most definitely be continued.

Tipping, Cleaning, and Being a Good Hotel Guest

This is such a huge pet peeve of mine that I can't believe I haven't already written about it. I just did a quick search of the blog to be sure - nope, not there. So I'll begin.

I typically travel to about 4 conferences a year, and I generally share my room with one to three roommates in order to keep my costs down. I have no institutional funding for conference travel, which means that the money for this comes directly out of my pocket.

When staying at a hotel for more than one night, I was taught (by my mom: if anyone has different information, please share it!), the rules are a little different. For one night, I assume that I will have a clean room and that my bed will be made. I also know that the room will have to be made up again for the next guest, and so I do not tip housekeeping for this as there is no extra service being provided. (I am beginning to rethink this as more and more service jobs seem to be dependent on tips for keeping wages out of the toilet. Also, housekeeping is hard physical labor and certainly deserving of extra consideration.)

When I stay more than one night, I tip $5 per night to housekeeping, which generally adds up to about $20 over the course of the conference. At Jack of All Trades, Matthew Ryan points out that one could have a different housekeeper every day, so it is important to tip daily. (He also notes that, depending on the work the housekeepers do, he may tip up to $10 per day. To this I would add that if you are a slovenly and/or disgusting hotel guest - and you know who you are, so I don't need to go into graphic detail - you should tip at least twice that.)

In the past, however, I've had the privilege of staying with roommates who have not only never before heard of tipping housekeeping, but who, when faced with this new idea, are entirely resistant to it. And so, while this has only happened once or twice and not, thankfully, in recent years, there are times when I've been left to cough up everything save $2. Usually, though, there is no protest about the tipping, though these experiences have made me awkward and uncomfortable and anxious to ensure that a decent tip is left and that I am not screwed in the process.

But this is not the only source of roommate anxiety for me at conferences. The other is that my roommates are generally slobs. By "slobs," I mean that they leave their towels, wet or dry, on the floor, on the bed, or - and this is my personal favorite - wadded up and thrust far, far under the sink counter, so that the housekeeping staff will have to bend down and reach all the way down to pick it up. I suspect that this last is in an effort to keep the dirty towels in an out-of-the-way place. However, if you were cleaning 120 rooms in a day, how many times would you want to crawl underneath the counter to pick up the towels off the floor? And after how many times would your back begin to ache? Yeah, that's what I thought.

So, after my roommates leave for breakfast or a session or whatever, I run around the room, cursing them under my breath and picking up their sodden towels from wherever they have been thoughtlessly strewn. I usually leave them on the edge of the tub, where no one will have to stoop too far to reach them. And then I pick up all my crap off the bed - books, clothes, etc. - so that when housekeeping comes to make my bed, they won't have to deal with it.

(It is of considerable interest to me that these things happen so routinely, even though my roommates are different from conference to conference, in feminist academic circles in which we talk all the time about class issues, entitlement, and elitism.)

When Moms Leave

Recently, someone I know told me that a couple she knows is splitting up. It seems the female half of the couple doesn't want to do the marriage and kids thing any longer, and she is contemplating leaving.

When I heard this, my first reaction was, "oh, I know how she feels." Because really, I think everyone goes through that at some point. (A year ago, my partner and I were both secretly - or not so secretly, on temper tantrum days - wishing we could move out. If you've ever had a three year old, you'll know what I mean.)

"Yes," I hear you saying, "we all do feel that way from time to time, but it's one thing to think it and quite another to do it. I can't understand how a mother could leave."

This seems to be the crux of it. We all probably know enough divorced or otherwise split-up couples to understand how it works when romantic relationships end. But divorcing your child?

I do know women who left their families and who, today, have good relationships with their grown children. That said, I would hate for my mom to have done that. I have no doubt that it is traumatic and devastating. But then again, I have to ask myself, what are the other options? Reader, just imagine, if you will: what would the circumstances have to be to force you to a place where you would feel that the best decision would be to leave your child? When I think about this, I suspect that in most cases, it's not a decision most people make because they want more time to golf. It's not a decision that comes without guilt and pain.

I also can't help but to notice that it's the moms who leave that especially horrify us as a society. We tend not to get so upset at the dads, who we sort of half expect to leave, anyway. And we get more angry at the moms who are maybe middle-class, white, educated, who want careers or to climb mountains or to write books. Society doesn't care so much about keeping the poor, under-educated moms, especially those of color, with their kids. In fact, not that long ago, Newt Gingrich proposed taking kids away from welfare moms (who were painted as women of color even though statistics show that white women make up a greater percentage of welfare recipients).

So here's my (condensed) conclusion about all of this. It's not that we as a society have a fundamental problem with parents leaving their children. Now, don't get me wrong - my heart goes out to the children whose parents leave, as, I'm sure, does yours. But when we look at the larger picture, at which stories get particular national attention and which do not, and at which images tug harder than others at the heartstrings, we can't help but notice something else going on: as a society, we don't want moms of a certain social status to decide they can leave of their own free will.

This doesn't mean it's "ok" for moms (or dads) to leave. But it does mean that we're having a much more complicated discussion.

Nerd Alert: Office Supplies

Seriously, I have some reservations about even posting this. If ever there was a doubt about my status as a nerd - not even a geek, which would be cool (think: geek chic) but a nerd! - this will certainly give me place in the Nerd Hall of Fame.

I wrote here about my office supply fetish, the intensity of which can be summed up by the fact that I went to Office Max today in search of a planner and spent an hour there. (Came back with some nifty cd holders, too.)

I love the idea of being organized, alphabetized, color-coordinated - all of it. My office, I mean. (My closet is filled with black clothes. I like to think I'm cool, but I suspect that most people see me and wonder why I'm wearing the same clothes all the time. (I'm really not - I have a few of the same pieces of clothing, always black, and I wear them a lot.))

Anyway, so I'm all about different kinds of file folders, expandable folders and file pockets being my favorites. But expandable folders, which open out to a couple of inches, don't hold up too well: they tend to fray and tear around the edges by the end of the semester, dumping my precious papers all over the place. And file pockets don't hold as much crap as I need them to hold. So today, when I was looking for some of both so that I could start organizing all of my stuff for class and not walk in on the first day shuffling piles of everything, I was excited to find these:





I'm not sure how well you can tell from the picture, but what this is is basically a folder with a pocket in one side. What it looked like on the package was a file pocket that expanded more than the average file pocket but not so much as an expandable folder. Perfect, right? Except that these turned out to be totally dorky and poorly made. Why would I need a folder with a separate pocket, especially when that pocket is so tight that even two pieces of paper won't slide down in all the way?! This totally messes up my filing system because the sticky-out pieces of paper obscure my labels.

I am VERY disappointed in Office Max. I can see I'm going to have to get my fix somewhere else from now on.

(By the way, I have 24 of these things in different colors. Let me know if you want them.)

Can You Get Worker's Comp for This?

On Sunday, we went to the mall for back-to-school shopping for the whole family.

On Sunday night, I noticed a vague but annoying pain in my right wrist. When I woke up Monday morning, the pain was much more severe: both arms ached from the elbows all the way to the fingertips. Last night, I lay on the couch and rubbed my arms and fingers, trying to massage the pain away. I wondered about arthritis and chronic fatique syndrome and carpal tunnel, and whether, in any of those cases, the pain just came on all of a sudden, in full force, as it had with me. I woke up this morning, still in pain.

I spent the last two days trying to think what I could have done to myself that would account for such pain. I hadn't been typing or knitting, but it felt like some kind of repetitive stress injury.

Perhaps more telling was a red mark on my right forefinger, on the left side, between the first and second knuckle. At first, I thought I had somehow cut myself, but then I realized that the "blood" wouldn't wash off.

Finally, this morning, I got it. While shopping at Penney's this weekend, I had carried around, at any one time, about fourteen articles of clothing on hangers, frequently bending my wrists and arms into weird positions and clenching my fingers in an effort to keep hold of everything. Then, after purchasing a heavy bag of clothes, I carried it all over the mall.

And the red mark on my finger was where the weight of the hangers had broken blood vessels.

How pathetic is that? I hurt myself shopping.

Eating in Class

I promise I will eventually get to a blog about my semi-reunion, for those who are interested. But what I want to talk about now is this issue of students and eating in class, which came up during the reunion as several of us are teachers.

One of my friends was shocked - shocked, I say - at the audacity of students who would dare eat in her classroom. And she is not alone - many, if not most, of my colleagues tell me that they find it rude and disrespectful when their students eat in class.

What I can't for the life of me figure out is why.

bell hooks has written eloquently about the disconnect between education as a practice of the mind and education as an endeavor that involves the body (see, in particular, her brilliant discussion of pedagogy, Teaching to Transgress).* As she points out, both our bodies and our minds are present in the classroom, and we need to recognize both.

In my view, if a body in the classroom is hungry, uncomfortable, or needs to pee, the mind attached to it won't be paying attention to whatever else is going on in the classroom.

"But what about crunchy, bag-rustly potato chips?!" someone reading this now is thinking. "How can you say noisy food isn't distracting?! And how can students who are eating possibly be paying attention?!"

Well - first, I hate to say it, but if you're distracted by potato chips, it can't be a very interesting class. Not that I haven't had classes like that myself, but seriously, if the chip bag is distracting, then it's welcome distraction. You should be grateful. It means that your students may still be awake.

And second, not only does eating during class mean that students are not distracted by their hunger, it also means that students are giving their bodies the necessary fuel to stay awake.

Trust me. I used to be one of those students who would routinely have to struggle mightily not to fall asleep in class, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the topic. Unless it was a lively discussion class in which I had to contribute, I would face the risk of falling asleep. It got so bad that I would have to get up once or twice during class and leave the room just to walk around. I brought Altoids to suck on in the hopes that they'd keep me awake. I drank coffee and diet Coke. I brought chocolate. Only eating and drinking helped. (To this day, I have great difficulty sitting still and listening. You do not want me in your lecture class.)

But finally, when it comes right down to it, I don't want my classroom to be a sterile, formal environment. I want it to be a little bit messy, so that smells and tastes and traces of the real world drift into our conversations. I would rather have a student bring her lunch and eat it in class than have to skip lunch because she's got two classes back-to-back. Sometimes that lunch become the focus of our discussion. My comp class this fall will be reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.* There's a whole chapter in there about school lunches. At some point, I'll probably ask them to write a page about school lunches. If on that day someone has brought lunch to eat in class, I can predict that the lunch will aid classroom discussion of the disgusting mayonnaise on the sandwiches that one girl in fifth grade used to bring. Or maybe a student's lunch becomes part of the discussion because she is talking about how she is working so hard just to pay for college that between her two jobs and classes, she never has time to eat.

A professor of mine once likened the classroom to an intellectual feast and urged the class to nourish our bodies as well as our minds by not only bringing in food if we were hungry, but by bringing in extra food to offer to others. That is the kind of environment to which I aspire for my own classroom. But for now, I'm satisfied with students eating crunchy potato chips - and rustling the bags - in class.


* You might notice that I didn't provide links to Amazon dot com for these books. I've been thinking that I'd prefer to send you all to the *real* Amazon bookstore (independent and woman-owned), but I'm having trouble getting direct links on the site. However, you can search the site very easily, and both of these books are available through Amazon Bookstore.

O. M. G.

I just got back from a birthday party for a seven-year old. It involved six little boys between the ages of 4 and 7 and three adults. I don't know about the others, but I am WIPED. Maybe it's because I only have one kid, but being around SIX running-around-screaming kids exhausted me in less than ten minutes. I don't know how parents of more than one do it.

Another Fashion Post

I went shopping yesterday in search of clothes that would be appropriate for teaching, yet not matronly, stodgy, or dull. Flattering clothes. Style-conscious clothes. Clothes that would not reveal my butt crack nor my cleavage. Clothes that would not make me look like I was being slowly squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste (yes, I'm talking to you, tapered pants). Clothes that did not look as if they had been torn apart and then sewn back together. Clothes that hit the edge of goth without having a cute l'il skull and crossbones sewn on the front where everyone would see it and think, "cool, she bought that at Torrid." ('Cause *real* goths aren't mainstream.) Clothes that did not make me look older or younger than I am.

Here is what I found: one black faux-velvet vest at Old Navy and one ginormous pair of pants at Torrid. (By "ginormous," I mean that each leg is wide enough for my son to hide in, should I ever be wearing them and need for some reason to hide him.) Neither of which are appropriate for teaching.

Also available to me in our mall are cute little smock dresses and overalls with cartoon characters on them, or Madonna-type bustiers and lace-up pants.

I have a mental image of myself come next Thursday, standing in front of the class wearing a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. I am heading out to TJ Maxx and Chico's now and I'm loaded for bear.

Here Are My Sunflowers

A friend plantsat while we were away, and the flowering ones seem to have gotten some kind of insect infestation. You can't really see the eggs on the leaves in this picture, but they're there.













For some reason, we couldn't get any to grow in these clay pots. I must've planted at least six seeds over the course of several weeks, but nothing happened. Finally, the last two came up. Right before we left on our trip, I transplanted one into a second pot. They are thriving, but not flowering yet.














We picked them up this afternoon from the plantsitting friend and put them back in their old places, but then this started brewing:














Just as it started getting really ugly, I realized that I was out of decongestant for my early morning plane trip tomorrow (I have a cold coming on). So, braving the tornado watch, I ran out to the drugstore and got back to find the infested plants sitting on the dining room table courtesy of helpful partner, who was listening to reports of tornados and heavy winds heading right for us. After I got done yelling at him for bringing the buggy plants into the house and for putting the buggy plants next to the non-buggy plants (I'm assuming the bugs travel more easily when the plants are smooshed up next to each other), and then apologizing for yelling when he was only trying to be helpful, I found that the storms are, so far, now heading in the other direction.

That's really all I have to say about the plants. See you next week, with a report on my 20th high school reunion, Part I.

(Can you tell I got a camera for my birthday?)

They're Gonna Turn You On

So, I'm finally back from a very long "vacation," if visiting family members counts as a vacation. Kidding aside, it was mostly good - visiting the East Coast always makes me feel at home, as indeed it *is* my home. And it's sort of sad to come back.

But I had with me a gift for turning 38 - which, I should just mention in passing, is much, MUCH better than turning 37. I highly recommend skipping 37, which was a devastatingly depressing year, and moving right to 38. Anyway, the gift was Volume 1 of The Best of The Electric Company. You remember The Electric Company, right? That psychedelic kids' show from the '70s that was on after Sesame Street and before Zoom? With Morgan Freeman (Easy Reader), Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, Spiderman, and a host of others who still show up sometimes on Law and Order?

I think it says a lot for the quality of the show that I can watch it now and be just as enthralled as I was at 7 when I was watching it for the first time. But what really gets me is being able to watch and enjoy it along with my kid. This show is all about reading, so very often, a word will appear on the screen, and while the voiceover is repeating the word, the word itself is dancing about, doing whatever the word suggests. (For example, the word "row" actually appears to row across the screen.) After a few such scenes, my son began asking, "why is that word doing that?" And this child, who regularly tells me, "stop that, Mommy!" when I try to teach him reading skills, began to understand that words do things.

He began to get it - that words mean things, that the letters have something to say. That we can read them and know something that we didn't know before, as when the character on the screen learns which door says "out" and which one says "in," and is then able to leave the supermarket.

After just one evening of The Electric Company.

As we got ready for bed, he asked, "Mommy, where's my Leap Pad? I want to play with it tomorrow." (This is the same Leap Pad that he barely touched for the last three weeks.)

And as I tucked him into bed, he held up the book he was looking at and said, "I want to know what the words on the page say, but I can't read."

We’re gonna turn it on. We’re gonna turn it on. We’re gonna turn it on.
We’re gonna open the book,
And read every word that we see.
We’re gonna get us the power to learn about anything,
And the power’s gonna get us free.
Power’s gonna get us free.

We’re gonna turn it on.
We’re gonna bring you the power.
It’s coming down the line, strong as it can be, through the courtesy
Of the Electric Company. The Electric Company. The Electric Company.

Behind the Wesleyan Legend: Boon Tan, Part Two

This post is directed toward the other social misfits, rebels, and high achievers who went to Wesleyan (the Connecticut one).

And now, the real story behind the legend of Boon Tan - with annotations by yours truly. Oppyman writes:

I googled the name Boon Tan tonight and found your posting from April. I need to correct some information for you. I am the person who first drew the Boon Tan face; I invented the legend. I did an interview with an Argus [Wesleyan student newspaper - plainsfeminist] reporter in the 80s on this. He intrepidly tracked down Boon's erstwhile roommate and this person referred the reporter to me. So somewhere in the Argus archives, a correct version of the Boon legend exists. I will now give you the story.

In the fall of 1976, Boon Tan was supposed to come to Wesleyan and live in Foss Hill, unit 4 [Hey! That was my frosh dorm!]. I was the head of West College at the time and took it as my responsibility to go around to every unit and meet everyone. So the guys in unit 4 knew me. (At the time, the only co-ed freshman unit in West College was on the top of unit two. Units one and four had males on the first floor and females upstairs. Unit 3 and the first floor of unit two were for upperclasspeople and were co-ed. We fought very hard for this and succeeded in getting this grudgingly from the housing office in the fall of 1975. But I digress.) [Ten years later, these halls were co-ed by room - one room would be two women, the next would be two men, etc. The bathrooms were also co-ed.]

Boon didn't show up during orientation. Word was that he would be coming during the first week of classes. He didn't. By the second week of classes, he wasn't there, but the guys in unit 4 and some of their friends in unit 1 (where I lived) started to play jokes on Boon's erstwhile roommate, Mitch Harwood. They would leave suitcases outside the room with notes saying Boon was at dinner. Or they would
call up and say they were Boon. One night Mitch went to take a call on the hall phone and his door blew closed, locking him out. Before security arrived a number of partiers arrived in the hall and Mitch wound up too intoxicated to do his work. (I believe he was in the college of social studies program and is now a very successful lawyer, but I'm not positive about either of these facts.) Back in
those days, security officers would not really mind if people were drinking and smoking in the halls as long as no fire detectors were set off; many officers took a toke tax. [This was true during my time, as well.] amidst the frivolity, someone asserted that Boon had planned this all along, to undermine Mitch. So the seed of Boon as an evil spirit was planted.

A few weeks later, a creepy incident on campus came to our attention. I was up on the second floor of unit 2, the all important experimental co-ed freshman hall (in its second year) when people started talking about it. apparently, a freshman woman on Foss Hill (I remember the name but won't say it) had left the university. She
had been stalked, essentially. (The term did not exist yet.) After receiving a number of notes from an unknown admirer, she found one on her pillow. She had not been in her room that evening and her door had been locked and she did not feel safe. (I cannot vouch for the veracity of any of this, beyond the fact that the woman went home. I believe she came back the next year.) A freshman woman who was
rapidly becoming one of my best drinking buddies told me the story and later that night after she went to bed, I took a small piece of paper about six inches by four inches and wrote on it "I rote the note" and made the Boon face, two slanted lines for eyes and the jagged inverted Vs mouth (if Boon is happy, usually over something
evil, the end Vs are Vs; if he is mad, the end Vs are inverted) and put it inside the little plastic nameplate on her door. She saw it the next day and knew it was me and laughed about it. And she showed it around to people.

What happened next was astonishing. People told me they loved the Boon face, which was really a racist perversion of the happy face. (I told the Argus reporter that I thought the whole Boon thing was a chance for everybody in the peace and love West College environment to let their dark sides out. Of course by the end of that school year cocaine began to make its loathsome appearance on campus and at least two people had acid related breakdowns, so Boon wasn't needed. And hindsight tells me that there were at least two women in West College with serious eating disorders and that two other women there had probably been molested by male relatives. Four or five people who were in heterosexual relationships during those years came out
later; how did they suffer at the time? I know that the woman that I wrote the Boon note to did. None of this was on my radar at the time, of course. But I digress.)

People started asking me what else Boon did. so I made up a few more Boon cartoons and posted them on the bathroom door of unit 1. On had Boon going for a walk in the
park with his pet piranha Fang. Boon had a Pol Pot for President T shirt on. I can't remember what went on in the cartoon, except that Boon said nasty things and did an upside down version of Spock's live long and prosper sign (which actually comes from a Jewish benediction) and said "Die soon and rot." I believe Boon addressed all the "round eyed devils" and told the decadent liberal West College people that they were bourgois pigs and would soon get theirs. I can't draw, by the way, so Boon was just a head on a stick figure and Fang was a fish shape lying on the ground; Fang had lots of teeth and his leash was a curved line.

Next, Boon had to fall in love of course. So in Boon meets Boonie, you had two stick figures with that face, one of which had two curved lines coming out of the side of her head. Each one was saying I love you to the other and each had a thought bubble coming out of their head which said (again, I love the innocence of the age) I will give him/her the clap. People liked that one a lot.

But by the next day, there were about ten or fifteen more cartoons on the door. Some were beautifully drawn. some in color. Mitch did a great Boon at Altamont where he led the Mormon Tabernacle Boys Choir in (to the tune of jingle bells - Mitch and I are Jewish so I suppose we felt this was OK) "Riding through the Reich in a new Mercedes Benz, killing lots of kikes, making lots of friends, Rat tat tat tat tat, mow the bastards down, Oh what fun it is to have the Nazis back in town" followed by a huge furious/inspired giant Boon face screaming, SING EUNOCHS SING. There were other not quite so tasteful Boon cartoons too, and they came from the buddies of the guys in units one and four who lived in other Foss Hill Dorms and some from Butterfield. [Butterfield, FYI, was less cool than West Co, and not just because I lived in West Co. I'm just saying.]

A woman who lived on the second floor of unit one was a Techie and she showed the cartoons to some of her buddies. and within a week, there were drawings in the staircases of the Sciences Library, all puns on Boons name with little drawings. Ahab throwing a harboon. Boon appetit and some food. Moon tan. Etc. etc. etc. The thing just took off and was all over campus. and from what I heard from the Argus reporter in the 80s, it was still going stong. [Yes - definitely still going strong by '86, when I got there.] The creative folk process at work.

We eventually got word that Boon enrolled in a program in his own country, Malaysia.

The West College crowd made sure Boon was known through a prank that in its way sums up the ingenuity and sheer silliness of our circle. One night during spring weekend, we (all I really did was sign off the invoices for the supplies and put the main pranksters in touch with the people they needed to talk to and with each other) drew a giant day glow yellow Boon on the roof of the building that housed the power plant on the main green. (It was in between North College and Fayerweather Gym, which I hear was just torn down, the northeast corner, I think of the buildings on the green.) this building happened to be where the security office was. But I knew some guys that worked security and they told me when patrols went out. And I knew guys who had no fear of climbing the roof, and others who could easily rig up the ropes to draw an absolutely perfect circle and others who could work out the exact ratios of the quintessential Boon face and others who would sketch it and paint it in, so one night between two and three some people (four, five in number? I was
sleeping) climbed the building using a ladder that was removed and then later brought back and drew and painted the giant Boon face on the roof right over security's head. the operation went off without a hitch and at the crack of noon the next day I was awoken with knocks from some of the proud pranksters who walked me out to the field with my eyes covered so I could see the giant Boon in all his
dayglo glory (fifteen feet in diameter? 20? 25?) !

Most of the people who drew Boontoons did not know about his genesis or that he was based on a real person. I don't think most people were being consciously racist when they drew Boon, although everyone involved in this story was caucasian and crude cartoon stereotypes are, of course, inherently racist. those of us who first developed the Boon legend were being intentionally offensive, of course. (That
same year a friend and I employed the new student printing press to put up two sets of placards all over campus, both of which were immediately torn down and ripped up all over campus. One said, Free Arthur Bremer, Everyone Deserves A Second Chance and the other said, Democrats '76 - Kennedy/Eagleton, You Drink, I'll Drive. You can do a little historical research to find exactly how tasteful those posters were.)

so there is the truth about the Boon Tan phenomenon. I think the Argus reporter told me that Boon was a doctor in Malaysia.

I've posted Oppyman's email in its entirety for the benefit of other Wes alums who, like me, have always sort of wondered about the legend.

And if any of you are reading this, and you have a WesCrew shirt you'd like to sell me, or you know how I can get one, PLEASE send me an email.

Vacation.

In case anyone is wondering - I'm on vacation. For a couple of weeks. And I have limited internet access. But just as soon as I finish my long-distance grading, for which I need precious internet minutes, I will post a Boon Tan update.

Stay tuned.

Random Thoughts in the Movie Theater, Part 2: Monster House

WARNING: Spoilers to follow.

It's troublesome being a feminist at the movies. I'm used to seeing sexist plotlines and underdeveloped female characters, but I keep thinking, "hey, it can only get better. I'll try again."

And Monster House is a cute movie. The basic plot is that the house across the street comes to evil life, and the three children - DJ, Chowder, and Jenny - who are the main characters know this, but of course, none of the adults believe them. Two windows in the front of the house become it's eyes; the doorway is the mouth, with a long runner snaking out to grab unsuspecting victims. (Everyone who gets eaten manages to survive at the end of the movie, which makes it palatable for older kids.)

But there are two major problems with this film. First, although it is two boys and a girl who fight the house, DJ and Chowder do the work while Jenny mostly just comes along for the ride. While Chowder is driving a steamshovel, simultaneously battling the now-mobile house and leading it to a strategic point under a crane, DJ and Jenny are scaling the crane, DJ with explosives in hand that he will drop into the house's chimney, blowing it apart. Jenny has a minor role in this - I can't remember the exact sequence of events, but it's something like, DJ stumbles and drops the dynamite, she grabs it, throws it to DJ, and he drops it in. It was all so predictable - and so unnecessary. Why couldn't Jenny have dropped it in? Why are girls almost always accessories and rarely the heroes? Allowing Jenny to be the one to finally drop the dynamite would have made it a group effort, rather than a boys' effort with a girl tagging along. (Sound familiar? It's the same tired pattern we see in most adult movies.)

Second, and perhaps more disturbing, is the house itself. It has an insatiable appetite. It swallows balls, kites, people: anything and anyone who trespasses on its lawn or front walk. DJ and pals assume that the house becomes haunted with the ghost of it's recently departed and extremely cranky inhabitant, Mr. Nebbercracker, who has for years confiscated toys and frightened children that wander onto his lawn. But as they learn later, it is in fact haunted by the spirit of his wife, Constance, who was accidentally killed and buried when the cement floor of the basement was poured. Not coincidentally, Constance was a circus fat lady who had been terrorized by the public and who, embodied in the house, attacked anyone who came near.

As the house, Constance is therefore enormous, insatiable, crazed - just as she was in life. Mr. Nebbercracker, in contrast, is small and skinny, the one who placates her great rage. This portrayal of a fat woman as out of control with huge appetites (whether for food or for sex) - as, literally, a maneater - is unfortunately all too common. In fact, the very difference in size between a large wife and a smaller husband, whether in literature, film, or real life, communicates the message that she is the dominant partner. These stereotypes of fat women are particular to fat women - the reverse wouldn't work. There are no cultural figures of fat men whose appetites must be controlled by their skinny wives.

Further, the house is only silenced when it is destroyed, at which point we see Constance's ghost dancing with Nebbercracker before swirling off into the sky. Nebbercracker then breaks down in relief that he and Constance have finally been set free. Thus, it is only through Constance's destruction that her appetite is forever controlled.

What's wrong with this picture? Monster House doesn't merely reinforce negative stereotypes - it depends upon them. There would be no plot if not for the purposefully grotesque figure of Constance. Further, as the film makes clear, DJ and Chowder are just entering puberty, and so their interaction with Jenny is one in which they must be heroes in order to impress her, while her role is simply to be impressed. Given the target audience for this film, that means that the film models for children "appropriate" gender roles: good boys are heroes. Good girls are observers. Bad woman are fat, hungry, and out of control. Bad men are skinny and small. Balance can only be attained through the destruction of bad women.

Only a movie? Perhaps. But these notions about men's and women's appropriate sizes and behaviors are real, not imagined, and ingrained in our culture.

If you doubt me, try this: ask the heterosexual women you know - especially the tall ones, the fat ones, and/or the athletic ones - if they date men who are shorter than they are. Then ask them how it makes them feel when they are taller or bigger than their dates.

Random Thoughts in the Movie Theater, Part I

1) Queen should stop performing "We Are The Champions."

(I got to hear a sampling of "hot" hits while waiting in the near-empty theater for Monster House to begin. More on that in a future post.)

The guy can't sing like Freddie Mercury, which means that during the chorus, you can't really hear him, and he can't hit those nice high notes, as in "we'll...keep on FIGHTing...'til the end..." - he doesn't even try. That's bad enough. What's worse is that the he adds a lot of cheesy "whoah-oah-oah yeah"s, which I think is his attempt to really own the song, but which makes it crappy instead of, if not good, then at least not a horrible rendition.

2) Transamerica is a great movie if you think "transwoman" means "prissy drag queen." Or if you really want to see Felicity Huffman with a penis. It's basically a trans version of To Wong Foo, but without the small town and with one born woman playing the lead instead of three straight men.

I mean, really. Was the studio all out of good scripts? This is, no question, a movie for straights, not as in strictly heterosexual people, but as in "don't scare the straights." This has all the important components: self-loathing, awkward attempts to "act" like a woman, the hating family that miraculously becomes supportive almost on a whim. Couldn't we have a transwoman character who isn't uptight and doesn't have a penchant for bad makeup? Cripes. I felt like I was watching Tootsie.

And, for that matter - what? Are there no transwomen who can act? Whatever happened to Jaye Davidson? Surely there was a role for her somewhere in there - perhaps during the transwoman house party?

3) Firewall. Yawn. Even the title is boring. Poor Harrison Ford is running out of opportunities, and even I am getting tired of seeing him play the same guy over and over, seeing the same tired expressions cross his tired face. I swear, one of his opening lines is lifted right out of one of his many other films (something about asking the maid to take his blue suit to the cleaners). Also, his name is Jack in this one, which is weird, considering. I kept wondering what had happened to Anne Archer, if she didn't want to do another sequel or what, until I realized that he wasn't playing THAT Jack.

Why This Democrat (Probably) Won't Be Voting for Stephanie Herseth

It's always frustrating when we have to vote against some of our deeply-held convictions in order not to violate others of our deeply-held convictions. And so, since Rep. Stephanie Herseth has decided to ally herself with the unconstitutional and homophobic effort to push the Federal Marriage Amendment, she has lost my vote. Probably.

Herseth is also a strong advocate of women's reproductive freedom. But I am sick and tired of being manipulated in a battle to ensure that the least offensive candidate get into office. I don't want to vote for the least offensive candidate. I want to vote for the best candidate. That may mean that I do not vote for any candidate for the House in the next election.

This is not the first time that Herseth has disappointed me with her stance on gay rights. After her last anti-gay vote, I saw her at the fair and told her how upset I was. The usually cool and poised politician surprised me with her anger. She had clearly had enough of being challenged by queer activists and allies, and she lost no time in telling me that Democrats could not allow the Republicans to set the agenda.

And I do realize that all of this furor over same-sex marriage is a smokescreen to move our focus away from the devastation the Bush Administration has caused to the U.S. and to the world. It's a very effective one! And I'm torn between not wanting to help Herseth sell out her constituents and not wanting to allow the smokescreen to work.

But at the same time, I am troubled by Herseth's statement* that "marriage is a religious based institution and should be reserved for one man and one woman." In fact, and despite her belief, marriage is a legal contract. Making same-sex marriage legal would not mandate that church clergy perform such ceremonies. In fact, and despite her belief, the United States Government should not be in the business of dictating religious belief - that, in fact, is unconstitutional. In fact, and despite her belief, church clergy regularly officiate at same-sex unions. In fact, and despite her belief, it is the legal rights and benefits that come with the legal - and not religious - contract of marriage that same-sex couples so desperately seek.

Herseth goes on to say that "an amendment should not prevent individual states from recognizing civil unions." Gee, thanks. It's good to know that in Herseth's fantasy-land, some states, like Maine and Massachusetts (for the time being), will recognize same-sex marriages. Of course, in the real world that the rest of us live in, such an amendment makes it possible for individual states to refuse to recognize such unions, and that, of course, is exactly what's happening now, as state after state passes legislation to this end. (It's coming up for a vote in SD this fall.)

"It is my hope that both sides will use the debate on this issue to engage in a respectful dialogue that will result in a better understanding of the deeply held convictions on both sides." Because that's really the problem, isn't it - all of us queers just don't understand how much the good Christians of SD hate us.

"I believe that all Americans should be treated with respect, which is why I supported efforts to increase penalties for crimes motivated by hate." See? There's some good that she does. And so I can't say for sure that I won't vote for her. After all, the other options are even worse. But - and I say this with all due respect - both her couching of same-sex marriage as an issue of mutual respect for and understanding of people who OPPOSE same-sex marriage, and my waffling about whether or not to hold my nose and vote for her, are copouts. And I expect better. From Herseth, and from myself.

*In a letter to a local gay activist, who shared her comments with me.

Kathy Griffin: D for Personality

I used to be a huge fan of Kathy Griffin, back when she'd only had one Bravo special and in the early days of her reality show, "Kathy Griffin: Life on the D-List." What made her so much fun was her willingness to laugh at herself - that and her dishing of celebrity gossip. Kathy was just like the rest of us. She was a hard-working woman struggling to make it in an industry that doesn't much care for women, especially women who don't have money, who aren't thin, who aren't white, etc. And Kathy would get out on stage and just pop all of those little fantasy celebrity bubbles. She would tell us which stars thought they were something special (Sharon Stone) and which ones were cool (Celine Dion). And we would sit back and laugh with Kathy, because she was cool, too. As she told us, we were her "peeps."

Except lately, I'm not feeling so much like I'm one of her peeps. Before, I always had the sense that if I were to run into her in an elevator or a waiting room somewhere, we'd make eye contact and immediately "get it" - we'd chuckle about the obviously closeted gay guy standing next to us and the equally clueless matron trying to fix him up with her granddaughter. We'd laugh at the fashion fiasco that is the '80s revisited (boots with capri leggings? I don't think so.). And I'd feel that she was real and genuine and down to earth and friendly, just as she acts like she is in her stand-up routines.

Except that she isn't. She's still real and genuine and down to earth and friendly with the poor schmucks who have the audacity to book her for dog shows and fundraisers, which are never high profile enough to suit her and at which she is never given the diva treatment she obviously feels she deserves, never hesitating to point this out to us, the viewers. (It's funny, though, that she never turns down these gigs that are so beneath her.) But as soon as the poor schmucks turn their backs, there's Kathy, making nasty comments about how low rent their special events are, how pathetic her life is, how terrible it is that she has to put up with small crowds, with people not recognizing her, with no large private dressing rooms, and how Jennifer Aniston has no idea what it's like.

This is, of course, the whole gimmick of her reality show. As the title tells us, the show lets us know what life is like for a D-list star, and it is funny to see her get the key to a city when there is no one there to see her receive it. But it's hard to reconcile this image of poor, hard-working, friendly Kathy with the Diva Kathy who hires an insane L.A. dog trainer instead of actually working to train her dog (what do these people think? If you have an animal, you need to train it. It doesn't just magically happen.). Just for example, insane dog trainer tells Kathy to dress up as a huge squirrel as part of the dog training, and Kathy is so far gone that she has the balls to tell her assistant, Jessica, to do it (Jessica flat out tells the camera that she will not, and eventually, Kathy backs down). The Diva lives in a huge and very expensive house; she stays at fine hotels; she even brings her DOGS to fine hotels. It's hard to feel like she's one of us when she is constantly telling us that she's better than us, that she deserves more than we do, and that we (meaning America) had better start appreciating her.

And, sort of off-topic but not really, her fag hag routine is kind of humorous, given her husband's and parents' obvious homophobia, but it's also kind of offensive. I can't help but notice that when she talks about "the gays" as if they're her private fan club, she always means men. Queer women never make an appearance in Kathy-world, and I suspect, though I can't say for sure, that if Kathy were to make a statement on lesbianism it would be something akin to Carrie Fisher's and Madonna's insulting conversation from several years ago, in which they decided that lesbianism was ultimately too ridiculous and too lacking to get them off. Oh, and demeaning - lesbians packing dildos were demeaning, too, if I remember correctly. So anyway, I can see Kathy saying something like that, with the added jab that lesbians have a poor sense of style. So I guess I'm glad that I haven't heard her speak on the topic.

Frankly, she was a lot funnier when I didn't know what she was really like.