burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

I couldn't even tell you what I did at work most of this past week, but I really was working most of the day every day.  Friday like 2 or 3pm I had finished everything that really needed to be done and I wanted a nap.  Hopefully there were will be fewer late night comfort sessions this week.  I am really looking forward to that week off between Christmas and New Year's.

Somerville UCC is doing a 15-20min prayer service every weekday morning during Advent at 7am.  I am debating whether this would be good for me or not.

Oh, and I want to go to the Back Bay Chorale's "An 18th-Century Christmas" (Saturday Dec. 20 @ 8pm -- there's also Sun. Dec. 21 @ 3pm); I have friends in it, plus it sounds appealing -- "Enjoy selections from Handel's Messiah, Bach's glorious Mass in B Minor, the gem-like Christmas Concerto of Corelli, and Vivaldi's Gloria.  Then lend your own voice to our traditional carol sing!"  I could just buy my ticket now, but on the off chance that anyone wants to come with...

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( gym: Wed-Fri )

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Saturday I read [Newsweek] My Turn: Confessions of a Fat Runner.  That night I dreamt I was jogging the Boston Marathon, barefoot (but painless), and I kept getting interrupted -- including by hedy who was telling me about a job she got involving purses.

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The music video for Kanye West's "Love Lockdown" makes me uncomfortable.

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Wednesday SquawkBox: Rick Santelli talked about how markets get conditioned, like Pac-Man where you eat something and that opens up zones and Becky Quick was nodding her head, talking about the ghosts flashing.

They were gonna have bond guy Bill Gross (PIMCO) on later, and asked Rick what he wanted them to ask him.  He said, "The markets give me all the answers I need, so ask him about global warming."

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I saw a blogpost titled Harvard's endowment loses the GDP of a small country in 5 months.  I wasn't sure whether to giggle or feel depressed at that framing -- both, I suppose.

Clicking on Matthew Yglesias' "Harvard" tag,

Out of Town News

Speaking of smoking, the confidence in the economy of America's elite is sure to be shattered by the news that Out of Town News, the newstand smack in the middle of Harvard Square, is shutting down. The internet had basically made its core business model obsolete some time ago. The general idea, as witnessed by the name, was that you could buy all kinds of "out of town" publications there, thus serving the news needs of the university's geographically diverse community. But people still buy other stuff — I used to buy cigarettes there, and sometimes Diet Coke (but soda's cheaper at the university vending machine), but I think cigarette retailing is a declining industry as well.

Note that the closing of Out of Town News is part of the dystopian vision of The Handmaid's Tale.

That last line is of course a bit of a cheat since a big reason places like Out of Town News are shutting down is because there are other, cheaper, more easily accessible, ways for ordinary folks to get lots and lots of information from a variety of sources.

delux_vivens wrote:

So I think everyone should read saskaia's posts on the damage caused by pretendians and her shout out to cinnamon bearclaws.

My ibarw post for the day is one I wrote recently about women of color being told to 'stand together' with white feminists (yet again).

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veejane wrote:

I started a research project last summer, which I'm still working on, about the American West. Among other things I was trying to do was track down black men and women who went west -- when, how, where they ended up, what they did. It seemed to me, suddenly on reading a detail, that I'd never wondered, and never particularly learned, about the immigrants to the West who weren't white, especially in the early periods, before most western movies take place. So I went looking.

I've seen scrollgirl's posts on fandom's treatment of the canonical racism of one character in Magnificent Seven, but I've never seen that show and only had a vague sense of when/where it was set, so it didn't contribute to a real consciousness on my part that yes, there were in fact people of African descent in the American frontier West.

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mycolorfulheart writes:

.:. If you ever want to get a good feel for where you fit in today's society, pay attention to the commercials you see. On television, on the street, on the radio, everywhere. You will see many ads that feature POC in a service position helping whites. Occasionally this dynamic is reversed, but usually only in a situation where the service job is a skilled job. For instance, a white doctor or lawyer helping a POC customer.

.::. Take a second look at your favorite book or movie. Who is the protagonist? Who is the enemy? Who is a 3 dimensional, relatable character and who is a 2 dimensional facade? Who is seen as scary? Who is innocent and pure? Who dies in a horrific manner? Who is dehumanized in some way? If there is a criminal, does (s)he follow the pattern of
'nonskilled crime' - mugging, other types of theft, having a band of colleagues which are kind of bumbling, POC
and,
'skilled crime' - committing thought out heists, a serial killer that is just so interesting, a child molester that had a horrible childhood himself, an individual (either by themselves or standing out from their colleagues), white
?

brown_betty, in commenting on a post by Charles Stross about the Bechdel Test, asks, "What is the last work you remember that had more than one character of colour talking to each other about something other than the (white) protagonist?"

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fickle_goddess points out, "Quick, friendly tip to anyone out there thinking of writing a Character of Color: Don't constantly bring up their skin color for no reason except to prove it's a CoC."

From IBARW: Race and Racism in Fantasy Fiction  (a PublishersWeekly.com blogpost by rosefox):

While reading Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet (or rather, the first three volumes of it, since the fourth isn't out yet), I was struck by the presence of a character type I rarely see: the merchant who has made his home in a distant country and is respected reasonably well as a businessman even if he isn't fully fluent in the language and looks like a foreigner. In real life, I encounter hundreds of people like this. Why are they so unusual in epic/heroic/high fantasy? More often, you see unquestioned isolationism that leads very quickly to unquestioned suspicion, hatred, and violence between cultures. In order for that degree of strict cultural distance to be maintained, pretty much every fantasy country would have to be run like North Korea, and even then you would still get diplomatic missions and intermarriage and international students and smuggling and so forth. Instead you get theoretically relaxed, open societies where it just happens that none of those funny-looking people from the next kingdom over have ever even thought about coming across the border to, say, start a restaurant or an import/export business, or even to do a bit of shopping. There might still be suspicion, hatred, and violence, but at least it would have some degree of nuance, instead of being predicated on the wholly unlikely notion of happenstance separatism.

From Pirates of the Caribbean: The Tia Dalma conflict by shadowfae:

I remember writer Erica Jong said, after doing research for her erotic pirate fiction Fanny Hackabout Jones, that she was surprised to learn just how integrated pirate "society" actually was. Many pirates participated in the enslavement of Africans, trafficking human beings along with spices, rum and other sugar-based exports from the British triangle trade. But others raided slave ships and, instead of just stealing the sugar-based exports for resale, also freed the enslaved Africans on board, welcoming them on their pirate ships as high ranking crewmen. Pirates were thieves ... but most history (and even fiction) never tells you that one of the reasons pirates were hated so much was because of their threat to slave cargo. The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy ignores this important point, too. Enslavement and the life of piracy were intricately connected.

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Other links:

IBARW: Let's Not Talk About It - Being Black in Canada (by troubleinchina)

Better than nothing: on the lowered expectations of a lifetime lived on media crumbs [IBARW3] (by smillaraaq) about growing up American Indian in Hawai'i c.1972

american history is not always two-sided (by nextian) some powerful stories

Nationwide is sort of on the side of African-Americans now, too [on TheHathorLegacy.com]


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Please tell me this isn't true:

Five year old Adriel Arocha is being blocked from attending school in a Houston-area school district.

The reason?

As an Apache, he has long hair that he has been growing in his Native cultural tradition that “violates” this school’s dress code rules.

-http://www.racialicious.com/2008/07/28/denied-kindergarten-for-being-native/

[eumelia wrote, "It is common in certain types of papers to establish the various identities of the author so that one reading may know through what prism they are going to receiving this information."  A number of IBARW bloggers have included an identity listing preface in their posts.  Lessee, I'm a white able-bodied bisexual college-educated middle-class cisgendered Protestant female from the suburbs of Boston who looks fairly "normal."]

In downtimes between work today, I read links off the IBARW del.icio.us.

One was sparkymonster's [IBARW] Fatness and Uplift: Not a Post about Push Up Bras.  Excerpt from the beginning:

My father's way of thinking about life was deeply influenced by W.E.B. Du Bois and ideas of racial uplift and the talented tenth. [...] My father's parents emphasized education as the path to freedom. Their views were part of a general belief in racial uplift. By working hard, educating oneself, and generally setting a good example to other black people, we would help all of us get ahead.

Racial uplift wasn't just about educated black elites giving other black people a helping hand, but also about showing white people that blacks were not a collection of negative stereotypes. The people at the forefront (the talented tenth) had to be smart, neat, clean, articulate, and above all they couldn't get angry about racism. Instead, dressed in your best suit, you presented carefully constructed arguments against racism, knowing that any misstep would be taken as proof that blacks really were inferior.

[...] If negative stereotypes about black people were about them being savage, flighty, ruled by emotion and lacking reasoning, then the way to counter that was to look modern, tailored, and never have a hair out of place.

These ideas weren't unfamiliar to me, but I'd never had them articulated quite so clearly.  (And wow it's sad that "articulate" has become such a loaded word that I feel the need to clarify that I'm not intending to say, "Oh look, what an articulate black person," but rather, "Oh look, I found this a really useful articulation of something I have vaguely known/understood for some time, so I would like to preserve it for my own reference and also share it with other people.")

(And yeah, I should really read W.E.B. Du Bois, among others.)

She linked to a long piece on the term "Sapphire," which is a term I'm not familiar with, though I'm certainly familiar with the stereotype of the Angry Black Woman.

Later in that essay, the author talks about Michele Obama and how she's been criticized -- for example, Mychal Massie said, "she portrays herself as just another angry black harridan who spits in the face of the nation that made her rich, famous and prestigious."  The author writes: "Central to these 'critiques' of Michelle Obama is the couched argument that a person who is a successful attorney and administrator living in a nice home has forfeited the right to talk about injustice and inequality."  The idea that "only poor people have the right to express concerns about poverty," etc. reminded me of the endemic issue of trying to get people to really care (in an active way) about issues that don't (appear to) directly affect them.

The essayist also talks about who is "allowed" to be angry -- pointing out that when members of a dominant group are angry about something, their right to be angry isn't questioned, whereas when members of a non-dominant group get angry, they're often caricatured and dismissed.  Obviously I was reminded of the debates about Tone in the various fandom eruptions about race issues.  And the excerpt above stereotypes about being out of control gave me valuable perspective on those debates.

Sidebar: sparkymonster points out that " 'Baby Got Back' is not actually about fat women. It's about women with 'an itty bitty waist/and a round thing in your face,' " which is something I have thought for some time, so I was pleased to see someone else pointing that out.

I think jennyo has posted about how being fat is seen as a sign of poor self-control (which then gives non-fat people the "right" to look down on fat people, marginalize them, penalize them, etc.).  And fat-pol is something I've been meaning to get back into (rereading the books I read as a teen and reading new ones and blogging about it).  When I do, I hope I remember to pay attention to the racial dynamics as well as the gender and class dynamics.

I actually don't have much to say in terms of actual life update.
* Wednesday, Allie and I went to see a Japanese film at the MFA and had dinner at Qdoba afterward.
* Thursday, Cate came and had lunch with me at work (and took back the UK cell phone she'd loaned me last summer, in preparation for her own return trip to Scotland).
* Talking to CAUMC!Ian (not to be confused with "my" Ian -- i.e., my coworker Ian) on Thursday night, I realized that a major source of my work stress recently has been that there's been stuff (Prof.B's trip to the MidEast primarily) that I haven't been fully looped in on, have been only partially coordinating, and that makes me feel out of control and anxious.
* I've been unimpressed with the food at work recently, which is sad.  I feel like I've been living on pasta and burritos.
* Friday was the last day of teaching, so there was much drinking and celebrating.
* I feel sort of like a bad friend that I'm not going to Smith College Commencement this year, but everyone I know who's graduating is so busy that I wouldn't really see them much.

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( gymmage )

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( Hillary Clinton, West Virginia, etc. )

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( Jeremiah Wright, racism, etc. )

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Thursday I watched some of "Breakfast with the Sox" on NESN HD on the tv in the weight room.  I got to watch Manny Ramirez high-fiving the fan, and giving a one-handed neckrub to the guy he was sitting next to (Jacoby Ellsbury?) in the dugout.

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( Boston Pride interfaith services )

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Thursday: California Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban (NYT link via oyceter) ( Read more... )

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Friday links from soundingsea:
* Stuff That White People Like
* XKCD

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( I can barely bring myself to read the_red_shoes' twlight_spork posts in their entirety, but omg, I was dying laughing  ) ( and a moment of more serious critique )

The link I had to the Dolhouse Upfront video has been taking down due to copyright concerns, but I took notes when I watched it on Friday.  ( commentary )

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saeva argues against the colloquial fannish use of the verb "pimp."  [Edit: Alternatives to "Pimp" Poll -- link via metafandom]

A recent Sophian article opened:

"I am not here as a firefighter trying to put out the flames of this racial incident or to give a Kumbaya-My-Lord-We-Are-All-a-Big-Happy-Family speech to make most people at Smith feel good about themselves," he said. "I am here today to speak truth to power about race matters in contemporary America and, in the process, connect the dots about this 'incident,' an incident and an aftermath which I believe are emblematic about how race works in post-civil rights America."

Those were some of the opening words of Professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's speech titled "It's Real! Racism, Discrimination, Color Blindness and Isolated (Racial) Incidents." The Duke University sociology professor spoke on Jan. 29 to a nearly packed house at John M. Greene Hall. The meeting was an all-campus meeting called last semester by President Christ in response to a blackface incident at a Smith party last November.

I only sort of followed the blackface party incident, but I love the opening "I am not here as a firefighter trying to put out the flames of this racial incident or to give a Kumbaya-My-Lord-We-Are-All-a-Big-Happy-Family speech to make most people at Smith feel good about themselves."

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Unrelatedly, polymexina recently posted:

Reduced to the Small Screen
Incident, Reaction, Forget, Repeat: Formulaic Entertainment Replaces Serious Discussion on Race

By DeNeen L. Brown and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 11, 2007; M01

( Excerpts )

On the theme of politics as entertainment: My dad sent me this link.

He also sent me this one -- which is not about politics as entertainment, but rather about politics and hypocrisy.  Interestingly, my immediate reaction was to defend the Left's position -- but yeah, it is one of those instances of "When my side does it, it's okay," which was the kind of thing I called people on a lot at Smith.  (I'm actually not entirely averse to people making the "When my side does it, it's okay," argument, I just want them to acknowledge that that's the argument they're making.)

[Poll #1030956]

It weirds me out when Eric gets all PC and thoughtful and like serious.

A few episodes ago (5.11 "The Benign Prerogative") I said something about "bonus, token woman of color" about Rena. Eric said he wasn't sure she was "of color." I tend to think I fail at coding people, but it seemed pretty clear to me that she was Hispanic. I looked up the actress and saw that her most recent role is playing a character named "Maricruz Delgado," which sounds pretty Hispanic to me. He said that didn't necessarily mean anything about the actress, pointing out that Rosario Dawson played a Hispanic woman in RENT and she's not Hispanic. So I looked *her* up, and IMDb says: "Is of Puerto Rican, Cuban, African American, Irish and Native American descent." Eric said Hispanic means specifically Spanish and that it seems like people use "Hispanic" for everything that isn't White or Black, or Asian, and that there's a whole lot of Mediterranean culture -- Portuguese, Italian, etc. (It occurs to me now, is Mimi ever specifically coded? I only saw the show once and haven't seen the movie.) These are all very valid points and mean I start going in circles in my head about how everything blurs and how useful *are* categories and all that (with the obvious flip sides of the importance of being known and understood, and how it's a diminishment to just code everyone as Other and so on and so forth).

[Edit: It also occurs to me to note the irony that this followed a conversation about how Jewish Toby looks.]

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There is SGA race wank, and I read liviapenn's post and she talks about Ronon and Teyla being supporting characters and I couldn't help thinking, "Dude, Ronon has knives! in his hair! and from what I understand, Teyla is way hot. Isn't fandom supposed to be all about the superficial?"

It was interesting, though, skimming the initial comment-thread and then reading liviapenn's post, and of course I was reminded of Smith (Grassroots was my first year and arguably more influential than 9/11, insofaras it affected *my* experience [of college]), and I feel like I "get it" more than I did when I was at Smith, and I'm not sure exactly what to credit with that. Probably just maturing and being away from the antagonistic environment -- I dunno.

neverneverfic quoted liviapenn, which to me just seems to say it all as to how we should interact with people, period:

But I also believe that a lot of people just aren't thinking at all about the messages they're sending with the stories they write. And I wish more people would *start* to think about it, just a little-- and to *listen* when people say "I'm hurt, and I'm angry, and I'm offended," instead of blowing them off and saying they're just "imagining" things.

[Edit: rydra_wong posted a roundup of links to thinky posts on the matter, complete with excerpts. And used possibly *the* best icon for white girls posting about race.]

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In other news (and to bring us back to the very beginning of this post), today was the Muppet episode (I thought of you, Amy), so afterward I e-mailed my colleagues the YouTube links I'd seen a while ago from TLGN of Stockard Channing on Sesame Street back around 1970.

It is a fairly long update post, though. Is there an acronym for that? FLU [fucking long update] or something?

Anyway, Saturday was a lazy day. I had been up until 3 chatting with Sharon, whom i hadn’t talked in too many weeks, so then i slept for ever and hung around the house reading Christopher Durang’s complete full-length plays while my dad filed the CSS. I have to say that i love Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild. I will also be getting his one-acts through interlibrary loan this week. So then of course i couldn’t fall asleep that night since i had stayed in bed so long that morning, so i read The Virgin Suicides. I will be getting the movie through interlibrary loan this week, as well. I had meant to go to church this Sunday (still haven’t been since i got home) but i woke up 5 minutes after the service had started. And here i thought once i was home i would sleep on a normal schedule. Sigh. I really will go next Sunday, though, for Children’s Sunday. And hopefully next Saturday i really will get down to the Food Pantry. (I volunteered there on Saturday mornings for 5 or 6 years, and the people who work there really like me and like to hear how i’m doing. “We expect great things from you,” Barbara said when i saw her at the library recently. Yeah, no pressure or anything. I kinda like the fact that so many people expect great things from me. It reminds me that i should expect great things from myself.)

Graduation was at 2:00 on Sunday. It was a beautiful day out, and i know a fair amount of this year’s seniors, so i went. As my dad and i headed up the hill, rain began to sprinkle. My dad was annoyed because he had laundry out on the line, and of course it would suck for the graduation ceremony. It stopped and then started again, getting really hard for a while as we stood in the parking lot and watched the graduates file onto the field. Then it stopped again. It rained a bit once more early in the ceremony. About half the families there put up umbrellas. How did they know it was going to rain? All the weather i’d been hearing since like Wednesday said a front was gonna come through on Friday and it was going to be a beautiful weekend. (Sidenote: When i graduated last June, rain was threatened, so they had graduation indoors. I turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day.) Anyway, it was a nice ceremony. I couldn’t find too many people afterward, but that’s okay. I remember that from graduation last year. One person i did see was Dan Saltzberg. (Class of 1999. His sister Stephanie graduated this year.) Still the cutest boy ever. He remembered me and hugged me, numerous times. That was nice. He is proof that i really can get over hardcore crushes.

I finally visited the high school yesterday. I spent four and a half hours there and really only spent time with four, six if you stretch it, teachers. I have to go back and visit again next week. Especially because one of the teachers i really wanted to see is in Nebraska grading AP exams this week.

Got mail from the Smith Office of the Registrar yesterday. Included good stuff like a calendar of dates for next year and information about fall check-in. Also included my grades. Hey, i passed Milton.
( Click here for full grade report, a couple quizzes, and ramblings about <i>Blade</i>. )