Tag: politics

Not just a loss to Texas

This amazing woman, from the time I first became aware of her in 1988, gave me a good perspective on Texas women. She was so like the Southern women I grew up knowing and adoring. Strong. Outspoken. Passionate about those things she believed in. Flawed and perfectly willing to admit it. A bit of a devil. A realist who still held on to her ideals. These are all characteristics I hope to emulate.

I remember being shocked after I moved to Texas to discover that not everyone here realized what a treasure they had in Ann Richards. I’m so glad that the outpouring of praise for who she was and what she stood for is not partisan now that people are hearing of her death.

Because I don’t think Ann Richards was just a Democrat. Or just a Texan. Or just a woman. She was an original, and I’m so very sad to see her go. I love this Texas Monthly cover so much that we even included a reference to it in THE DEAL. The irony is that only Ann Richards’s face was used for the shot; the body was a model’s. But that just sums up how I feel about her; what mattered was the spirit of the person, not the body.

But that face! Those intelligent eyes that could listen so intently one minute and twinkle with mischief the next. The genuine smile that brightened everything around her. The lines of her history that etched themselves into her skin and only made her more beautiful. All crowned by that stunning white hair.

Oh, I will miss her and hearing what she has to say about our crazy world of politics in that wonderful accent of hers.

Raise hell, Governor Richards.

Good health wishes

Nobody gets why I care about Gerald Ford. I just do. If I couldn’t have had the father I did, Gerald Ford would have been my second choice. (Bonus: Could have gotten stoned in the White House with my brothers.)

The 93-year-old Ford has been hospitalized for the third time this year, for tests, they say. I wish him good health and a quick return home.

Here, Ford is pictured standing next to someone with whom I wish I’d gone to school. Except he’s lots older than I am, of course. 😉

Shriek

Last year, or maybe it was the year before–when you’ve been 35 as long as I have, time has no meaning–I learned that when it’s crunch time on a manuscript deadline, I.must.not.read.the.news.

Today, like an addled prairie dog, I surfaced for a minute and read an article that left me gaping at my monitor. I won’t rant about it. I’ll just say that some people’s memories need to stretch back about six freaking years before they climb under the covers in a new bedroom.

On this day in history…

On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned from office.

And on August 8, 2006, I suffered the following plagues:

Three pounds of dog crap to pick up in the yard.
A toad that scared the fire out of me when I was bending over to pick up three pounds of dog crap in the yard.
Four cars coming down the street when I was outside IN MY NIGHTGOWN picking up three pounds of dog crap in the yard.
And 7,223 mosquitos to feast on my flesh while I was outside IN MY NIGHTGOWN picking up dog crap in the yard.

I blame Nixon.

Why do they trouble themselves?

If you read Greg’s LJ entry, you can see a suggested way to respond to this action (free books!), but here’s the account of what’s going on at a lovely bookstore in Atlanta that I enjoy visiting when I’m in that city. What makes me sad is that I’ve watched one GLBT bookstore after another close over the past five years as people read less or buy their books online. If any good can come from these protests, maybe it’s that consumers will value Outwrite Books more.

From Southern Voice online:

Anti-gay protesters target Outwrite
Pickets for 3 weekends disrupt business, says gay bookstore owner
By DYANA BAGBY | Jul 7, 4:50 PM

Anti-gay protesters have been gathering for the past three weekends at the corner of 10th Street and Piedmont Avenue in Midtown Atlanta in front of the popular gay bookstore, Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse, holding up signs and shouting messages from a bullhorn, according to store owner Philip Rafshoon.

“They were here the Saturday before Atlanta Pride, on June 17, and then on the Saturday of Pride (June 24) and then were here again last Saturday,” Rafshoon said.

The group typically consists of 15 to 20 street preachers, Rafshoon said. They all hold up signs that say, among other things, “Homosexuality is sick, wicked and an abomination before God” and “Don’t dress your daughters like whores.”

Rafshoon said last week they arrived at about 9:30 a.m. and stay for about two to three hours.

“One guy has a bullhorn, and I’ve heard him say they were going to keep coming back every Saturday,” he said.

It is unknown which anti-gay group the protesters represent.

Atlanta Police Department officials have told Rafshoon the protesters have a right to free speech. Rafshoon said he is also seeking the help of the Atlanta City Council for some kind of recourse.

The APD did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

“Besides impacting my business and other business, it could be a volatile situation here,” Rafshoon added.

Several gay advocates and customers have showed up as part of smaller counter protests, holding up their own signs, Rafshoon added.

Why do YOU think?

On the way out to Shady Pines today with Tom and the in-laws, we saw a bumper sticker that provoked a bit of discussion.

Annoy a liberal. Work hard and be happy.

Because you know, I’M a liberal, and I had no idea that I didn’t respect hard work or that I didn’t want people to be happy. In fact, I thought I respected hard work and valued happiness (yes, even the happiness that comes from hard work!) tremendously, for myself and anyone else.

So… This whole glut of anti-liberal slogans and billboards and bumper stickers I’ve been seeing lately. When people get so hateful and snide and condescending toward a group, does that mean they feel like they’re IN control, or does that mean they’re afraid that they’ve LOST control?

what do numbers mean

The way we look at numbers is a strange thing. A few weeks ago, nearly a mile after I filled my car with gas, I glanced down and realized the photo opportunity I’d missed. I shot the photo anyway, intending to use it for a post on June 6, then promptly forgot about it.

Tim’s recent post on hate crimes statistics made me think a lot about numbers. One time I read an article about trying to help people conceive of the horrors of the Holocaust. The writer posited that we can’t really conceptualize “six million” dead because our mind can’t see six million of anything. We can easily see six. Six apples. Six pennies. Six books. But six million? There’s no picture for that many in our head.

A number too high to visualize loses impact.

Low numbers, on the other hand, while easy to visualize, make us pull out “relatives.” For example, if we say, “Thirty people died in this flu epidemic,” it’s easy to see thirty. But it’s also easy to think, “Thirty’s not so many in a city of X million or a world of X billion.”

I often thought about this strange concept we have of numbers in relation to AIDS. Because in the early days of the epidemic, that very thing happened. “A thousand people have died? Well, X number died from bubonic plague.” Or “X number have died from cancer.” The numbers didn’t seem so startling in comparison to other catastrophes, so it was hard for activists to get people concerned. But only by getting people concerned could they provoke effective strides toward prevention and treatment.

A number too low never achieves impact.

Except… When a bad number includes someone you know and love, it’s always too many.

No matter how we see (or don’t see) the numbers, to an optimist or an activist, thinking about a problem leads to talking about it. Talking about it leads to doing something about it. Doing something about it leads to making those numbers decrease.

One element of the Kevin Aviance story (which prompted much of this recent discussion in public forums about hate crimes) that greatly disturbed me was the idea that people saw it taking place and did nothing. How many people who saw it had cell phones? At a minimum, couldn’t they have called 911?

And at a minimum, even if we don’t always agree about the meaning of numbers, public discussion and debate may help get a truer reporting of those numbers and ultimately, a decrease in them.

**Update: I had no idea when I wrote this post that there is actually a debate going on in Tim’s comments. I just saw that, and now I look like I’m just exploiting it. Sorry.

They didn’t break me

About a hundred of us in a gigantic room watched our little tape about our rights and privileges as jurors, then got sworn in, then waited. And waited. Finally a deputy came in and said, “Y’all want me to turn these TVs on to Fox News?” And of course, since I’m in TEXAS, no one shrieked, “NO FOX NEWS! ANYTHING BUT FOX NEWS!” So he turned it on. For nearly two hours, I had to watch Fox News. Plus it was cold. Then he returned, turned off Fox News, and told us we could all leave because they didn’t need any jurors today.

I think what I told Tim is accurate: I was just part of a scientific experiment in which they wanted to see if they could smoke out the liberals by subjecting them to Fox News.

HA! Better luck next time!

they wanted to go to church

The following people were killed by gunfire on May 21, 2006, at The Ministry of Jesus Christ Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

• Gloria Howard (72)
• Leonard Howard (78)
• Doloris McGrew (67)
• Darlene Mills Selvage (47)
• Erica Bell (24 years old), wife of the perpetrator, who he took with three children from the church to another location before killing her. Two of the children were found safely, and the shooter was captured while holding the third child, an infant who was unharmed.

Erica Bell’s mother, pastor Claudia Brown, was wounded during the shooting at the church.

Coffee Cups and Kings of America



This morning’s coffee mug is brought to you courtesy of my old job as a bookseller. Our manager, Tim W., decided it would be more economically friendly to drink our water out of mugs than styrofoam cups, so he purchased Bookstop (Anyone remember Bookstop? It was Bookstar in New Orleans.) mugs for all the staff and wrote our names on them with indelible pen. Over the years, my name is disappearing little bits at a time, but my memories of being a Bookstop assistant manager really are indelible. The store changed my life in so many great ways, as it brought not only fantastic people to me but was my doorway into AIDS awareness and queer writing and politics. Would I be a writer without Bookstop? Yes. Would I be published? Hard to know. That time of my life provided the place and support I needed to find and develop my voice.

And for future reference, if you read A COVENTRY CHRISTMAS, the bookstore manager in that novel is in NO WAY based on Tim W., who was never anything but good to me and for whom I feel the greatest affection.

Now, about this king thing… I first saw a reference in FARB’s blog, then it was all over my AOL welcome screen, that W thinks brother Jeb should run for president. Let’s just nip this in the bud now, shall we? I have a plan.

I freely admit that I’m an Anglophile. It’s true; I love many things British. So I agree that we should gently put aside our nation’s silly founding notion that we didn’t need a king. I’ve been watching the British royal family for years, and as far as I can tell, they make a lot of money and cut a lot of ribbons, have interesting horses and dogs, and occasionally trot out to publicly tsk tsk something they think is in bad taste, but for the most part, they are harmless figureheads who do some good in the world and often make people feel better about bad things.

If the Bushes want to be our nation’s royal family, I’m all for it. Paying them a salary equivalent to what the British royals make would cost boatloads (and when I say boats, I mean BIG boats, like the size of the Queen Elizabeth or the Queen Mary or whatever all those bigass boats are named) LESS money than the Iraq war has cost, for example.

Some of the Bushes already look kind of funny in that inbred British way, and others are attractive and would look good on PEOPLE magazine just the way Diana and Sarah Ferguson always did when they were photographed at Ascot. The matriarch already has chests full of pearl necklaces, so we won’t have to buy those, just maybe a crown or tiara or two to match, and I know someone at Mikimoto who might be able to negotiate some good prices on that. Hopefully, they also already have their own mansions, because it’s really hard to get the government to furnish new housing quickly, just ask the people on the Gulf Coast. Or I guess we could move the royal Bushes into some of our national landmark homes, if they promise to keep the dogs off the furniture.

And just like the British royals, they wouldn’t have any real power–that would still rest with the government, or at least the corporations that are funding the government. And the Bushes already know how to peel off those reassuring statements along the lines of “Good show!” as W proved with such bracing comments as “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie!”

So please, by all means, make Jeb king and keep this family busy playing whatever is their version of polo, or providing the tabloids something to write about, while everyone else tries to fix some of this country’s messes.