I Wish Paul Simon Had Helped Finish Out "Dance, Dance, Dance"

I really wish Paul Simon hadn't sung over this girl. I really wish he hadn't insisted on performing his song "the" right way.


I wish he had used his talent to skillfully back her up for as much performance time as he was allocated.

If he had the talent to do it, an extra level of wonderfulness would've been to keep the rhythm going but simultaneously encourage other kids to help make the song if they wanted to.

He was on a show for children. How awesome would it have been if he had spent his entire time block using his talent to help those children turn the chords & rhythm of "Me & Julio" into another really cool song?

I Picked Blog-Reading

Owwie! :-(

Blogosphere vs. Book vs. Chores vs. Bed

I really, really want to keep reading the internet, but my eyes hurt, my hands hurt, and I'm supposed to keep from that happening by staying off the internet. And I have to get up early tomorrow.

But the bookstore's closed, and I want new-new-new!

Plus, there are chores I should do if I'm awake.

:-(

G'nite, I guess?

Skidboot & David Hartwig

A nice video about a man & a dog & love. My partner said he wishes he lived in a world full of people like the man in this video.

Allied Commanders Trafficked Berber Women To Be Raped In Italians' Place

:-(

According to Rick Atkinson's The Day Of Battle, to "fix" the problem of Moroccan soldiers raping Italian women, American army offiicals (Wikipedia gives credit to French ones) decided to "transport" Berber women to Italy and stick them with those rapists.

They trafficked women away from home, into the vicinity of rapists, with the intention of having those rapists rape them.

What a horrific attitude: dividing populations of women into "women we don't so much hate seeing men rape" and "women we hate seeing men rape."

What a horrific attitude.

What a horrific action.
(With effects that probably weren't documented as thorougly as the effects of those soldiers raping Italians was. I think the Berbers then weren't highly literate or centralized. I guess by now, 2010, the effects just have to be...presumed via empathy.)

I Tried Not Taking Up So Much Space - Here's How It Felt

I want my behavior to reflect the lessons I think I'm learning from activist writers. Last night, I imperfectly tried behaving in such ways.

I had mixed emotions about the way I behaved.

I didn't get what I wanted, and I don't think that the result of me sharing power with others really resulted in progress towards a more just society like I hoped getting what I wanted would.

(How's that for a sentence?)

But gosh darn it, no matter what the outcome--no matter whom I shared power with (perhaps people more conservative than me)--I did it.

The quiet folks in the back didn't have to see me make a scene of two upper-middle-class healthy young white people in the front who've already talked all night going at it against each other for minutes on end (when there's a time limit to the whole meeting).

Maybe what I'm feeling right now--this dejected feeling that I could've done more if I'd just stood up for doing things my way--is one of the negative emotions BFP and others have said can accompany not taking up space. (Maybe not.)

But a fair life doesn't involve all joy, all the time anyway, right?

Maybe what I did last night is okay to repeat. And worth repeating.

Donating When I Want The Money For Myself

I just made a donation that was a huge chunk of the money it would've cost to make an improvement in our house and our lives.

It's less money than I donated around late December--far less--but it's the first time I could immediately compare it to the price of something I wanted.

I don't know how we're gonna make it when we're old and working for sustenance/pay hurts a lot. Build up family relationships & fight politically for wealth redistribution, I guess. But I feel like I still don't know how, because I still really feel those ideas of "You're on your own w/ what you can grab right now."

Feeling like we don't have the money for this improvement made me feel like we were never gonna be able to "make it" as old/hurt folks.

So it was a really different mood to make a donation in.

Anyway, that said, Chris Floyd has good articles on Haiti and two links for donations that he's recommended twice now.

Afterthought: The proposal I made to my sweetie about talking to our neighbor, asking if I can be in on the appliance-sharing, too, since it's too much work for my honey to do alone, is building up relationships to make it when you don't have enough money to buy your way out of your problems! Woah! Now I feel better about that idea. I guess some resources are already here in my life.

Where's Aniysah?

Okay, I did think of something I want to write about Aniysah's case.

Short story, as I understand it:

• Aniysah's father abused Aniysah's mother.
  
  
• Aniysah's mother got out, and even got a protective order to get Aniysah's father to have to stay away from both of them.
  
  
• Aniysah's father persistently filed for chances to get that protective order overruled and see Aniysah anyway. This was granted.
  
  
• Aniysah started talking about getting abused and showing physical signs of being abused. Professionals reported this to the court system.
  
  
• Another professional 1) said it was Aniysah's mother who'd been reporting those signs and 2) said they were lies. Aniysah's mother wrote a clarifying letter to a judge, saying that 1) it was professionals, not her, who'd been reporting signs of abuse, and 2) this other professional was, well, behaving unprofessionally.
  
  
• That judge decided that this professional wasn't doing anything uncouth.
  
  
• Aniysah's mom moved out of the state to get Aniysah away from the abuse, since the courts weren't helping her get Aniysah away from it.
  
  
• A judge decided this wasn't cool and granted full custody of Aniysah to the very same father she'd initially told to stay away from Aniysah. I don't know why. I guess...I guess he was really convincing over all the time between when this story as I'm summarizing it started and the point I'm up to now.
  
  
• Aniysah's mother and Aniysah came back to New York City to visit other family, and the police came and took Aniysah away and gave her to ... well, it sounds like it's not 100% clear, but that Aniysah's father certainly has a heck of a lot of access to her right now. (Which seems crazy to me. I mean, he abused her mom so much they initially said stay away from Aniysah; later on there were professionals starting to say that when Aniysah was around him & his family, she was getting abused by someone...yikes.)
  
  
• Aniysah's mother is hanging around New York City, trying to get custody of Aniysah back, or at least trying to make sure that New York won't leave Aniysah in any situation that'll lead to her being abused. But apparently, even the latter isn't proving very fruitful--and she could use help from people to make at least the latter happen, if not the former.

Okay, so maybe it's not much shorter than fuller story explained on Document The Silence and other blogs. Whoops.

Anyway, I hope people will blog her story, write letters to the editor about it maybe? (not sure if that'd be considered welcome by Aniysah's mother or not), show up at the court date (definitely welcome), etc.

Where's Aniysah?

For 27 hours now, I've been wanting to write something about Aniysah & her mother's quest to make sure she stays free of harm and grows up w/ truly good care and love. But I just can't figure it out yet. So there it is--a link to her story.

And I'll throw in that if you're in New York City and you'd like to support Aniysah's mother's struggle, please go to her court hearing on December 22. Directions, etc. at this link.

Thanks.

Quotes About The University Avenue Light Rail

"Nate" on a blog by Mitch Berg called Shot In The Dark wrote about LRT on University Ave:

I lived in Midway for 5 years and still own a house there. I rode the 16 to work downtown weekdays. My daughter rode it to the U. I went to the LRT planning meetings at the Hmong Community Center and saw the fraud that is “citizen participation” when the outcome was locked in.

I have seen the grocery carts clustered around the bus stop at Simpson. Why are they there? Because that’s where Rainbow is. Single mothers with toddlers in tow shop at the big box BECAUSE ITS CHEAPER and ride the local bus home. Honestly, sincerely, believe me – that woman will not spend one thin dime at the new Caribou. She can’t afford it. Nobody living between Rice and Fairview can afford it, which is why it’s not there now.

As Mitch pointed out, there’s a tremendous difference between Hiawatha and University, both in the character of the neighborhoods and in the purpose of the public transportation. Hiawatha is intended to get commuters from Out There to Down Town. The 16 bus gets locals to the grocery store and home. They’re completely different needs. LRT works to ship people from end point to end point but that’s not how people ride public transit on University. If you want to get from downtown St. Paul to downtown Minneapolis you take the 94 Express bus on the freeway.

Used to be, Progressives asked people what they wanted then tried to deliver it. Seems that now, they tell people what they’re getting whether they want it or not.

(link mine)

Mitch Berg wrote on the same blog:

the “mission” of the Central Corridor is very, very unclear. Nate summed up Hiawatha’s pretty ably – move people, more or less quickly, from a burb to downtown. It does that mission more or less well, albeit at a 66% loss.

So what’s the “mission” of the Central Corridor? There are really two options: Provide commuter access to whisk people between the downtowns (replacing the 94 and maybe the 50 buses and cutting down on traffic on 94) or providing local transit along Uni (replacing the 16 and cutting down on local traffic along University)?

...

The Met decided to go for the worst of both worlds; to take the expense and disruption of building down a busy working street, but to build the ‘Sexier’, faster, heavier option that serves the purpose of a busy, working street vastly less well.

And they made that decision without meaningful public input, in a way that ensures the maxiumum deleterious impact on the neighborhoods and the budget, for reasons that make no sense as urban planning, as civil engineering, as economic planning, as traffic management, as anything.

One more good quote from Mitch Berg:

("Charlieq" wrote:) [Kim Huoy Chor]...has free wifi and it delivers in little red cars that look like street racers. This is an example of someone building a business to weather the construction...

(Mitch Berg wrote:) And I couldn’t be happier for them. But lots of those businesses with the signs on their windows worked plenty hard, too, and built businesses to weather life on University Avenue – no mean feat.

Dealing with life on Uni and Big, Upper-Middle-Class MPR-listening latte-drinking White Brother?

There’s such a thing as piling on.

I am an upper-middle-class, MPR-listening, fancy-food-consuming white person. But for crying out loud, we're not supposed to decide what every last corner of the earth is supposed to be like!!

Humanitarian Intervention and Present-Day (2009) Darfur

I wanted to take a printout of this to a speech in the city. The speech was calling the current situation in Darfur a "genocide" and hoping to "raise awareness" of it. After reading works like this by Richard Seymour, I agree w/ him 1) that it's not and 2) that it's likely to make things worse for people in Sudan to call it one.

But I knew I should come home and spend time w/ my family, not go to that speech.

But...I also felt like...that's probably at least 100 people who're going to hear the speaker's point of view, and if I don't go and get my 30-second point in during Q&A, only the 1 or 2 of those 100 attendees I e-mail over the next couple of days will hear this point of view.



But then I remembered that in my dawdling, trying to stay geographically closer, I'd forgotten all about a promise I'd made to help my neighbors w/ stuff "this afternoon." And it was dark!

So I had an answer--1 or 2 people it is on the Darfur thing.



I'm writing about this here also to hold myself accountable and force myself to have the guts to do the "conversation w/ 1 or 2 people" thing at all, now that my opportunity to set out anonymous printouts on random tables is gone and I could just run away from real, heart-to-heart conversations.

Feel free to comment in a week and ask, "So, didya do it?"

Warning: Rail Public Transit Is A Major Lever For The Rich To Get Upper Middle Class People To Help Them Gentrify Cities

Ho-lee crap.

It's the same. Thing.

"Transportation general manager Bob Boutilier said...
"The corridors are not up for debate"
-Karen Kleiss, Edmontonjournal.com

Not up for debate.

Just like ours in the early 2000's.

They were up for debate for a while (the early 1990's).

BUT

Once the "developers" of the world pushed and pushed and pushed to always be trusted as "correct" about land use nation-wide, and once St. Paul government officials placed all decision-making value on statements like this:

"...developer David Kent of Strathearn Heights said the LRT expansion will promote ... redevelopment .... '(this proposal) would spur my industry.'"
(emphasis mine)
-Karen Kleiss, Edmontonjournal.com

Then (2000's) the routing was no longer "up for debate."

Light rail was going to be routed down an already-developed street, no matter what the working-class people who had envisioned its "development" and done the developing thought.





This Edmonton case makes clear that rail transit is a MAJOR vehicle for "push the poor folks out of the city, because now rich folks consider the city fun and to have amenities and we want to turn every corner of it into a place that can maybe make money off somewhat-rich folks for other rich folks for a little while before it goes bust trying."

Just wanna let folks in other cities know that they might wanna consider "rail" a hot word for their neighborhoods before it's too late for them, like it's probably too late for folks in St. Paul.

If "folks" = you, please remember: You've got a LOT of upper-middle-class people aligned against you right now.

You've got a population that is as susceptible to phrases that make them think "green," true or not, as much of America has been susceptible to phrases that make them think "terrorism," true or not.

ALL it takes for the wealthy to align these people on their side is the general statements that "trains cause less pollution per person than buses" and "trains' high speed from one end to the other (due to not stopping every block) attract people to mass transit who otherwise would have driven."

Attracting those people to the side of considering the well-being of poorer people currently taking public transit and currently living & working along big streets is a big-ass uphill battle that will take all the time you can get.

(To justice-minded Minnesotans: I hope I'll see you at North Minneapolis ("Bottineau") light rail alignment/routing meetings! Sorry I can't find a link--I read about them in a newsletter on public transit but can't seem to find archives online.)

Don't Let University Avenue's Current Businesses Get Ruined By Upper-Class Developers!

"Business owners are concerned that construction, increased property taxes, and a significant loss of street parking along University Avenue, will wipe out a thriving Southeast Asian-American business community."
-David Seitz, Twin Cities Daily Planet

We Really Need To Up Our Efforts Changing Our Culture

This would be a good reason to work on KEEPING BOYS FROM THINKING THEY'RE ENTITLED TO SEXUAL RELATIONS WHENEVER THEY WANT THEM.

Because here are obviously huge-ass problems with jumping in violently, like that you might kill the boy.

THAT is why "just beat up sexual assaulters" is NOT a good default response from society to the existence of sexual assault.

IT RESULTS IN DEATH.



"Stop people from wanting to do things that are sexual assault" is a BETTER default reponse from society to the existence of sexual assault.

Here are good examples of things that're wrong right now that we could non-violently reduce sexual assault incidents by fixing:

Harriet Jacobs wrote at Figitivus:

What I mean to say is:

The way men and women interact on a daily basis is the way they interact when rape occurs. The social dynamics we see at play between men and women are the same social dynamics that cause men to feel rape is okay, and women to feel they have no right to object. And if you accept those social interactions as normal and appropriate in your day to day life, there is absolutely no reason you should be shocked that rape occurs without screaming, without fighting, without bruising, without provocation, and without prosecution. Behavior exists on a continuum. Rape doesn’t inhabit its own little corner of the world, where everything is suddenly all different now. The behavior you accept today is the behavior that becomes rape tomorrow. And you very well might accept it then, too.

Aaminah Hernandez wrote on FlipFloppingJoy comments:

consent is a good starting point, in so far as “man, did you ASK her and did she give you a clear yes” but we know there’s still lots of room in that. much better to get to the radical “man, why do you even feel compelled to get off by doing that to a woman?”. let’s address why men WANT to do certain things that are hurtful to women, regardless of whether or not women will “let” you do it. that’s not the point. the point is where does the inclination to dominate a woman come from and why is that what makes you “feel like a man”?
...
and yes, i know that opens up a can of worms on the BDSM issue and policing what people get off on, and questionning women’s right to consent to things just because we find them abhorrant. but i think that’s NOT what we are talking about here. ... i think we’re talking about a whole different matter which is men being able to be men, confident in their masculinity, sexually expressive, without it resting on degradation and pain to women (or other men for that matter).

Especially us people w/ time on our hands--let's CHANGE that "daily basis" and that "day to day life" and that basis for boy's and men's masculinity and sexual expressiveness for the boys whose lives we influence. NOW. WIDESPREAD. INTENSE.



Because this boy didn't deserve to die for what he did to the female friend he was traveling with.

"Deserve" isn't even the right word for how I would feel about one punch in response to what he was doing to his friend.

I think he DID deserve a culture / cultures that would, throughout it / them, SUPPORT non-violent lifestyles.



I'll get more active in anti-violence work.

The rest of our boys and girls who are still alive deserve it, and to make what people "deserve" happen, someone's gotta do it.
(Lots of someones. But I'll start w/ me.)

Loyalty And Tribalism

P.S. to "A Productive Conversation With Mom":

How the heck did Mom raise me w/ little to no sense of tribe loyalty?

I dunno, maybe she lost some, but not all, of hers when she strove to break out of lower-middle-class living and shot for upper-middle/upper-class living. Maybe she lost the economic part that got in the way but not the non-economic part that didn't.

But she really didn't pass that non-economic part on to me. Family, nationalism, nothin'. At the moment, I just don't really feel it as a good in the pit of my heart.

I wonder.

(Though maybe I'll get the "family" part down with work. Emotions can be instilled by repeated behavior, even as an adult.)

A Productive Conversation With Mom

I think I'm getting better at talking to Mom.

(Socio)Politics came up. And I slipped and spoke my mind a little too much.

But I must've done it better than before, because the infuriating things she said about Arabs were ridiculous. I seriously had trouble controlling my laughter.



I think it's partly that I was polite-ish enough that she had to stretch to an absolutely ridiculous context if she was going to manage to squeeze an "I despise most Arabs (and the fact that you don't makes you a less good person than me)" kind of comment into our (socio)political discussion.

And I think it's partly that I was focused enough on being polite-ish that I was in a frame of mind to fully see how ridiculous her stretches chances to say those kinds of things were.



This may not be the best mother-daughter relationship on the planet, but I think it's a good step from where we were a few months ago to where I want to be in 5+ years.

Overall (aside from talking about money or sociopolitics), it was a good conversation. Crud's been happening to her, and I think I gave her a loving ear to talk to and a loving voice to hear.

Temptations To Profit

Sometimes I just want to take the economic analysis I've been blessed enough to see blogging and try to use it to get a bigger piece of the pie than the median piece.

I've been telling my mom not to bother w/ stocks/mutual funds as soon as she can cash out again like she could've before the late 2008 crash.

When I've told her that I'm thinking I might not rely on them as a 50-year plan for having emergency/retirement funds, to the extent that I've felt comfortable doing so, I've even told her that I feel that way because I see signs that the "top 0.1%" aren't relying on it anymore, so it's probably not that good an idea.

I'm not comfortable sharing this all the time, because of course it leads to, "So what are the 'top 0.1%' buying to make money off over the next 50 years?"

I have suspicions about that from the reading I do. But I don't want to share it w/ her. Because I think that most of the things they're buying for that purpose are morally wrong to buy (especially for that purpose). And I don't to contribute towards one more human being doing such morally wrong things.



But sometimes I wish I could just say, "Here's what they're doing--and here's the liberal upper-middle-class greenwashed / nostalgiawashed equivalent we could pool our money on and that might keep us at our current lifelong levels of consumption / get us further ahead of the median over the next 50 years--especially if the 'top 0.1%' succeed at buying and profiting on all this."



I guess it's good that I suppress those feelings, meditate on desiring to make the Knower Of True Good proud of me rather than those who love me closest here on earth proud of me (for being the "brainiac" who helps us via the above idea), and work towards sharing my better and more godly findings w/ Mom. (And...working towards sharing includes calling her up just to see how she is and building a relationship, so I'd better wrap this up.) And learning self-discipline so I can thrive in close relationships & home relationships in a world where the "top 0.1%" succeed in buying and profiting on these oh-so-wrong things and hurting my consumption ability. (I should go finish those dishes I talked so big about.)

Over and out!

If Homelessness In Front Of Your Business Is Disturbing, Then...

Cool idea:

If the evidence of homelessness in front of your business or in your neighborhood is disturbing, then tell your senators and congressional representatives to readjust federal priorities for housing assistance.

-From "Stop punishing people with the sit-lie ordinance" at the Western Regional Advocacy Project

"The Unwillingness To Consider That Anyone Will Help Her"

I think about a friend, raised professional middle class with the solid safety net of well-off parents, and about the fear that creeps into her voice when she talks about saving for retirement - the unwillingness to consider that anyone will help her, the certainty that she is a failure if anyone does, the feeling that no matter how much money she saves from her large professional salary, it can never be enough.
...
Rothenberg describes her aging father, no longer able to care for himself, isolated from community but able to afford constant professional care, watched over at the end of his life by a rotating crew of nurses rather than by people who love him.

-From "Reflections, in progress." by tyrone at Enough.

It's really hard for me to take action based on tyrone's post. My mom, when I talk to her on the phone, helps keep me feeling this way--because I hear her feel that way and then I worry about my own retirement and how my saving is going, etc.

And I think, "Man, I've gotta share this stuff w/ my mom so we can move into a mindset of mutual care instead of separate saving."


Only then I get even MORE afraid of having to BE with my mom a lot.

She's hurtful enough to drive me up the f***ing wall and I don't think that will EVER change. Really. She gets more hurtful every year, despite the fact that I'm growing up and learning how to talk more politely about what she's doing.

And I WANT her to just...have money so I DON'T have to be burdened w/ being near her. I DON'T want to take care of her.


But that means writing myself out of knowing I would be cared for by her.
And I'm probably not going to nurture anyone else (like kids) younger than me, either. And with respect to my friends? I'm just...I am so not a loyal-type person. I'm not sure I'd make another bond w/ anyone as loyal as my mom is (loyal, in her own definitely-loyal-but-not-good-enough-for-me way) to me.
Keeping this way of thinking from Mom means keeping my own panic that I'll never have enough "for retirement."

So it's like...where the heck else to start besides this most loyal member of my whole family?

But who's a loyal person I don't actually WANT to engage with because her loyalty still doesn't provide me the emotional things I want?


It's very frustrating that I can't share the content of tyrone's post with my mom, and I just wanted to get that out.

Talking About Sex

I thought of this guy because it was through hanging out with him that I stumbled upon a place to get a lot of exposure to very helpful sexual discussion.

But maybe if my campus newspaper had done what Towson University's campus newspaper did (by the way, I agree w/ SAFER, nice response, Towerlight), I wouldn't have missed out on such discussion even if I'd never met him!