Checking in

Good grief, where has November gone?  Does time pass more quickly when you're trying frantically to maintain a daily word count - it hardly seems possible that Thanksgiving is right around the corner.   

I'm happy to say that my novel is slowly but surely closing in on 40,000 words (at least, that's my goal for today, but we'll see how that goes depending on how sleepy I feel), and though my plot has gone god only knows where, I'm still pleased with this story.  It feels far more possible that I could ship this off as a manuscript one day (with heavy, HEAVY revisions and substantial plot changes), even if at 38,000+ words, nothing significant has happened in my plot so far. What can I say, I'm a master at filler content. 

I'm catching up on back episodes of The Daily Show right now, and it struck me that though I may be able to name 191/195 countries in the world (thank you, Sporcle.com!), I might actually struggle for a moment before remembering that Joe Biden is the current VP of my own country.   Seriously, the guy has been like, hidden, or muzzled, or something, these past few months, because I literally had a moment while watching Jon's interview with Joe where I thought "whoa, right, you are the VP!"

Am I strange, or does anyone else feel this way? 

Ready, set, write!

Dear PNN, 

I apologize for neglecting this lovely community over the past weeks - I've been settling into work and finding my way around my new life.  And I'm here to tell you I will be shamelessly sporadic in posting again until December 1st. 

"But whyyyyyyyyyyy?!?!" you may be moaning in despair (don't worry, I can hear you loud and clear ;)). 

The reason is because my free time is now taken up with that glorious, crazy-making, exhilarating exercise in unabashed creativity, NaNoWriMo.  

For the uninitiated, this stands for National Novel Writing Month, a worldwide event that challenges each and every one of its participants to write a 50,000 word novel during the course of this month.  The objective is sheer, raw, quantity, not quality, because the aim is to teach you that a) you can totally write a novel while having a normal life (i.e. it's not necessary to take off to a secluded island to write your masterpiece over the course of six months), and b) to prove to yourself that you can do it, that you have a story inside you.  We all do. 

I participated last year for the first time and won, and let me tell you, it was the best boost in confidence for my writing skills ever.  You see, I have dreams of being a published author one day (don't we all!), but I'd continually stumble and fall down at around, oh, word number 1,560.  Which is not going to get very far in the publishing industry.  So I sat down and I wrote.  I pumped out 8000 words in a weekend.  It was absurd, it was insane, it was GLORIOUS.  

And now I have a 53,000 word story that is going to have to be substantially revised with major plot changes, but you know what? That's totally ok.  Writing out what I've written so far showed me what I want to change, how I want to change it, and makes me hopeful that one day, I will really be sending that manuscript off to an agent.  So I'm giving it another shot this year.  

Last year was fiction of the serious, emotional variety, this year is going to be a Regency Romance with some elves, fairies, witches, and evil magicians throw in for good measure.   

If you're also participating in this madness, add me as a buddy! I'm Mayathebee over on the NaNo forums too.  If not, you can still join - just take the first idea that pops into your head and run with it!

See you on December 1st!

And the Nobel Peace Prize goes to....President Obama?

I wish I could say I was thrilled to bits learning that President Obama had won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize this morning.  It's a huge and prestigious honor, and while he has done a number of things that have not pleased me since taking office, I still admire the guy and think he's doing a credible job.  

But the Nobel Peace Prize? Really? I know peace has a broad variety of definitions, and certainly, Obama has made some good moves towards repairing the international diplomatic destruction wreaked by eight years of the Bush Doctrine, but he hasn't really done anything yet.  I understand the rationale behind the prize committee's decision, I just don't agree with it. 

I would have loved to see President Obama get this award in two, or three years time.  Right now, in addition to feeling like the prize was solely used to make a statement rather than make a statement while recognizing exemplary behavior/actions, I worry that this may backfire terribly on him.  Not only in the sense that people are now asking "wait, seriously? What's he ever done to deserve this?" but in the sense that it may have placed too many expectations on him (once again).   It also leaves me wondering if the Nobel Committee isn't tacitly saying "hey, you're the antithesis of Bush.  We want to recognize and reward that."  Because if they are, that's a huge shame in my book, because this prize should stand for something, it does stand for something.  

Is Obama capable of being placed in the same category as Muhammed Yunnus, Mother Teresa, Shirin Ebadi, and Desmond Tutu?  Quite probably, yes, but I don't think the hour for that ascension was this hour.   So it is with decidedly mixed feelings that I congratulate President Obama on his Nobel Prize, though I will say sir, that was one heck of a speech. 

Horrifying yet Telling

I've got a whole lot of thoughts about women, employment, wages, food and obesity and how they all tie together, but in the mean time, let me give you two reasonably horrifying images that kind of sum up the problems, as I see it, of modern American life as exemplified by Wal-Mart and McDonalds. 

One is a map showing the insidious spread of Wal-Mart - someone on my message board likened it to watching a fungus take over America, and given the way I feel about Wal-Mart, I'd say that's a fairly apt description.  Click and behold in horror as the green dots take over the nation. 

The other is this picture (taken from Strangemaps@Wordpress), which shows the geographical distribution of every McDonalds in the contiguous 48 lower states - and brings to us the startling fact that the furthest anyone is from a McDonalds is somewhere in the middle of South Dakota, where the nearest Mickey D's is 145 miles away. 

Think about that. 

When is Rape not Rape?

Apparently when a famous film director drugs a 13 year old girl in a state where the age of consent is 18, and then proceeds to touch her, perform oral sex on her, have vaginal intercourse with her, and sodomize her against her will, it is not rape. 

At least, that's the horrifying conclusion that I've been forced to draw from the mind-boggling support Roman Polanski has been garnering in the past few days since he was arrested in Switzerland.   Reading the comments on the web, from celebrities, from politicians in the French government is enough to make anyone ill.  She "asked for it." He wasn't her first time, so that makes it ok.  It was "just" a "sex act." Her mom pushed her towards Polanski and was ambitious for her daughter to succeed and knew what her daughter was getting into, so it's ok. He's been punished enough, having to live in exile for so many years.  His fear of being jailed and fleeing America for France is understandable given the mess that was made of the rape trial, because his wife was murdered by the Manson Family and he was initially blamed for it, and because his mother died in the Holocaust in a Nazi concentration camp. 

I wish I were joking about the different excuses I've given above, but it enrages me to know that I'm not.  Every single one of those has been bandied about as a reason why Polanski's arrest was injust. 

Excuse me while I let a loose a little profanity: 

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? 

She was a 13 year old girl. 13. In the seventh grade. She was drugged. Her past sexual history, her mother's implicit consent, none of that matters.  She was a 13 year old girl, he was a middle aged man, and he violated her in numerous ways against her will, despite her repeated requests to stop.  Even if the age of consent in California at the time was 14 and she was "only a few weeks away from being 14" (it was not, it was 17 or 18), a few weeks away from being 14 is still not being 14.  It's rape any way you slice the cake, and it sickens me that this poor woman is being forced to have her name dragged through the mud again because her rapist is a famous film director.

And as for him being punished enough already? Um, no.

I don't care if Polanski makes beautiful films, he has not suffered.  Getting to live a comfortable life in France, getting to have a family, and having to schedule your travel plans around knowing which countries won't turn you over to the American authorities isn't a huge hardship.  Maybe he should have considered all of that BEFORE he raped this little girl and fled the country. 

What does this say about us as a society? That we are willing to overlook pedophilc rape and sodomy cases just because of the girl's background? Because Polanski is famous and therefore "misunderstood" and that makes it all ok? In any other circumstance, he would have been locked up, and in today's world, forced to register as a sex offender.  What sickens me is that it's impossible to even know if other girls fell prey to his sick behavior - after watching what happened to Ms. Geimer, I'd be hesitant to come forward too, which is tragic considering how many rapes go underreported to begin with. 

So to all the politicians (Bernard Kouchner, founder of Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders, and French Foreign Minister, Frederic Mitterand, French Culture Minister), celebrities (Whoopi Goldberg, Harvey Weinstein, Monica Belluci, Wong Kar-Wai), and general members of the public, all I have to say to you is this: I hope to God you never find yourself having to deal with a famous middle aged man who rapes your underage daughter, or sister, or cousin, or niece.  I honestly do, because nobody, not for a single moment, deserves to go through what Samantha Geimer has been experiencing for the past 33 years. 

Tired and Worried

This whole being an adult thing? It's exhausting.  I'm moving to the city of Bangalore in four days to start a new life at a new job, in a strange city where I know nobody.   I have a bajillion and one questions, am trying not to be anxious, but it's a bit daunting to think that I have to negotiate life in India (I could do this in the US, I just feel like I need more handholding here, for some reason) on my own.   

My primary worry right now is whether or not I'm going to find an apartment in the two days before I start work.  My mom is coming down with me to help me look, but she has to get back to Delhi because she's accompanying my dad to the US on a trip, so she leaves the same day I start work. 

I suppose it's a bit like college all over again, only college, and my Fulbright program, left me feeling significantly less anxious.  We had someone to help us out, certain features of life were built in (like housing), and other assistance was offered.  Yeah, I picked up and moved to a strange country for a year, but my apartment was provided.  I had a regular stipend coming in plus starting money to cover us until our first stipend was deposited.  Someone took us to open bank accounts, to establish our internet, to get our cable hooked up, and we were even taken to Ikea and Carrefour to buy everything we might need before we moved in.  

India seems so much more confusing and daunting, maybe because I have preconceived notions of what life is like here from experience.  I wonder how I'm going to set up getting money from my parents until I get my first paycheck.  I wonder how my transportation is going to work out.  I wonder when I will find an apartment, and whether or not I'll have to handle renting furniture on my own.  I wonder about how I'll get my cable and internet set up, who to call when the gas tank for the kitchen runs out, what to do if I spring a leak or blow a fuse, or one of the other countless problems that are standard to apartment life.  I wonder what it will be like to genuinely live on my own for the first time - no host family, no roommates.  

Suffice to say, I'm extremely nervous, but trying to trust that everything will be ok in the end.  What was your first experience living on your own?  How did you manage? At least, can you reassure me everything will be fine? 

I'm Back!

Hi PNN, did you miss me? 

I'm sorry for the long silence with no explanation, but I went off to Paris for five days with my parents before work starts (whenever work starts, but that's another post for another day).  

I had a glorious time, simply being in Paris - it's my favorite place on Earth and I've had the inordinate good fortune to have been making trips there nearly my entire life.  After a five month study abroad program (which is where I made the acquaintance of our very own Philosophy, and let me tell you folks, she really is that cool in real life), I've now done all the touristy things, and so am free to wander about Paris. 

And how I do love it.  There's something magical about that city that seeps into you and takes a hold of your imagination as you roam streets that Roman soldiers once walked, as you take in the sights and sounds of just being in Paris.  I could meander for hours on Paris streets, confident in the knowledge that my Paris Pratique map book will get me unlost should I feel the need to be, and it's marvelous.  

I walked, I ate, I shopped for work clothes at H&M (sadly lacking in my neck of the woods), I walked some more, and just generally had a wonderfully relaxing break.  It was over all too soon, but I know I'll find my way back sooner or later.   For now though, I'm refreshed, relaxed, and full of new post ideas, so keep watching and reading!

On Turning 24

And so another year begins - today's my birthday! I am officially reaching that murky stage of life known as the "mid-twenties" where all sorts of things start to happen (grad school, marriage, maybe even babies), and so I thought I'd take this moment to reflect on the 23rd year of my life. 

Last year found me in Taiwan, celebrating with newly made friends after participating in the wedding of two perfect strangers as a member of the church choir I briefly joined in Kaohsiung. 

I'd just begun teaching, something that I grew to love and excel in over the course of the year, to the point where I am seriously considering a career in education.  Taiwan changed me, and spending my 23rd year there was a huge blessing and an honor. 

Was it always easy? No, it most certainly was not. There were moments of intense frustration, of anger, of feeling totally overwhelmed and out of my element and uncertain as to what was going to happen.  There were some intensely difficult and emotional interactions with a co-worker who happened to also have pretty severe mental health issues that were not being treated.  

And yet, in retrospect, all that I really carry with me is how those experiences changed me and the awesomeness of my students, whom I miss on a regular basis.  They taught me to be a teacher, they showed me what potential I have in myself to make a genuine difference, and they let me know I had made a difference.  The power of that feeling is indescribable.  

With a new job on the horizon and the opportunity to use my words to craft a message and have a pretty important mouthpiece delivering those messages (they're his messages, but he and I seem to share a lot of opinions and beliefs) makes me hope that I'll be able to find a similar degree of satisfaction in the corporate world.  

So here's hoping that 24 brings me new adventures, new challenges, and new ways to grow and change.  23, it's been a blast.  So long, and thanks for all the memories. 

Learning about Religion

Call it a good luck combination of my natural curiosity to learn things, a stellar education, and a search for the faith I believe in, but I'd like to consider myself fairly well informed as to the basic points of the world's major religions.  For a non-Christian, I consider myself well-versed in the essentials of Christianity, and I can hold a conversation on Wicca, Islam, Mormonism, Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Baha'i Faith as well.   I'm not trying to brag here, because I'm increasingly realizing how important it is to have this knowledge. 

Over the last few days on a very conservative, rather Christian blog forum I read regularly (despite it sometimes not being good for my blood pressure ;)) there have been a number of posts that have shown downright ignorance.  A woman mistaking images on another woman's blog (who is an Orthodox Christian) for being representative of Judaism.  Another stating that Muslims pray to Mohammed. Yet another asking if yoga is not ok for the devout Christian given its religious groundings in Hinduism (the answer's not as black and white as that). 

I find this ignorance really scary.  Not only does ignorance breed intolerance, it also destroys our opportunities to talk to each other in an educated manner about what we believe in and to understand the world around us.  This ignorance can have stunning implications when it comes to not understanding why the Sunnis and Shias of Iran can't just get along with each other, when it comes to understanding what the true meaning of jihad is, when it comes to believing that all Jews are evil and out to kill your babies.  

Knowledge creates understanding, it creates respect.  It's not for nothing, I believe, that Wesleyan's Jewish and Muslim students had a stellar, collaborative relationship so rarely seen on other campuses.  How did they achieve it? By sitting down with their rabbi and their imam and talking to each other, teaching each other about their faith, about their perspectives, about things as simple as the way they pray.  A group of Jewish and Muslim students from Wesleyan journeyed to Turkey and Israel a few years ago, and though the trip was often fraught with tension and emotion, the insistence that they talk to and learn from each other helped overcome these barriers and create lasting relationships based on mutual understanding.  

If I had my way, in addition to learning about the world at large and learning a foreign language, America's schoolchildren would also have to learn the basic tenets of the world's major religions.  I can only imagine the uproar such a policy would create though, so it's unlikely to happen any time soon. 

So, PNN readers, what do you think? Do you think America's youth are learning enough about different faiths to exist in an internationalized, globalized world? What have you always wondered about a particular faith but never learned the answer to (I'll do my best to answer or find someone who can)? 

Well I'll be a Monkey's Uncle

*Note: Extreme sarcasm this way lies

In a jaw-dropping, astonishing move, the released remarks of President Obama's planned address to the school children of America scheduled for Tuesday, September 8th, revealed...

a perfectly harmless speech about staying in school and working hard and doing well in school for the future of America. 

Yes, that's exactly the kind of socialist-Marxist-Nazi propaganda that lead the way for Hitler and the Bolsheviks to seize power and maintain it for all those years.  People of America, BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID! 

Your Dear Leader wants to brainwash your children into believing that homework is important, that finding an academic skill they're talented in is a good thing, that the future of America rests in their hands, as the future leaders of America.  Such words are cause for huge alarm, for though the words may SEEM harmless, in reality, this speech (not discussions of history, current events, politics in general, or elections, but this speech itself) will open up a path for flaming liberal teachers to spew their godless agenda and indoctrinate the helpless minds of our innocent children. 

You have been warned, America.  The Socialist-Communist-Nazi revolution of America is imminent, and your children will be the vanguard in their new role as the Obama Socialist Youth Corps of America. 

Much Ado about Nothing

For the life of me, I cannot fathom where people are making the leap from "Obama is going to give a speech to school kids across America" to "he's indoctrinating our youth into his socialist ideals and wants to create his own Hitler Youth."

I get that people are wary that the speech may contain political overtones.  That parents don't agree with Obama's policies, that they don't want their kids to be watching something like this without being present to monitor and discuss the speech (since when did a Presidential speech become such a feared and menacing event?).  I am sympathetic to these ideas.  I just don't see how they merit the mass hysteria that seems to be sweeping numerous school districts.  

It frustrates the life out of me that people are stupid enough to believe that Obama can indoctrinate their kids in 20 minutes during a speech that I'm almost certain many of them will tune out, ignore, or otherwise forget.  Do we really have that little faith in children? Are people that scared of their children's minds being corrupted away from their political ideology of choice?  

Were Obama to start announcing weekly speeches to the nation, to its children, and mandating that schools work it into their curriculums, then I would start to get worried.  Indoctrination is a process, it takes time, a system, repetition.  It cannot happen in twenty minutes. 

I will concede that the wording of the original lesson plan suggested activities was a bit stupid, and that the White House staffers/Department of Education workers who came up with those questions should have exercised a bit more common sense.  But really, how about leaving paranoia out of the equation for once and not immediately jumping to the worst ideas?  What about trusting teachers to keep any discussion of the speech politically neutral (oh wait, I forgot, teaching is a hotbed of liberalism, silly me).

Even if Obama DOES politicize his speech (which would make me significantly less happy about the whole idea), I highly doubt it's going to make a significant impact on the kids watching.  It's not like a first grader is going to go home and say "Mommy, you know what I think? I think that President Obama was right when he said XYZ."  How about waiting until Monday, when the speech will be available to watch before we find another reason to believe that Obama is leading us to the Nazi-Socialist-Marxist apocalyptic death of America? 

The Uniform Project

A little while ago, a friend of mine posted a link to a blog called "The Uniform Project" . The concept seemed intriguing enough - the blog author is going to wear the same plain, black dress every day for a year (well, rotating through seven copies of the same dress) striving to decorate and jazz up her outfit by being creative with her accessories.  

Fine, so why I am I blogging about it? 

Because I want to send you all over there and encourage you to donate.  You see, this young woman is undertaking this endeavor to raise money for charity, specifically a charity called Akanksha.  Two summers ago, I volunteered with Akanksha, and I can honestly say that the experience changed my life. 

India has millions of children who grow up in poverty, who have little access to a quality education, even if they go to school.  Akanksha aims to change that, by teaching the kids in two hours after school each day what they should be learning during the other eight hours they are in school.  Slum children from across the city of Bombay (Mumbai) are picked up each afternoon and taken to Akanksha's centers all over the city, where volunteer teachers instruct them in math, art, geography, spelling, grammar, and writing.  

It gives these kids a fighting chance to get somewhere in life, it shows them that someone out there cares about them, and in the case of the older students, the fact that they are able to speak English has landed them well-paying jobs in local coffee shops and the like.  

Let me give you some a personal examples from my time at Akanksha. We had one little boy in my classroom, named Chandu. Chandu was out of control, disrespectful, and showed little interest in learning on the days he showed up to class.  No more than 12 years old, his mother was wholly uninterested in parenting him, his father was a drunk, and he'd been subjected to a vicious cycle of neglect.  He'd had run-ins with the police for petty theft, he'd been bitten by a dog and needed medical attention, and his parents did not care.  Akanksha did.  The teachers who worked with him intervened with the police, they took him to the doctor to be treated.  I don't know what's become of Chandu, but I know that he was granted at least a few more opportunities because of Akanksha. 

Then there were my trio of boys, Prakash, Dinesh, and Sunil. Prakash struggled mightily despite his best attempts, and I noticed that he had what seemed to be a case of dyslexia.  The teacher I was working with, Shilpa, was well aware of his issues, but encouraged me to work one on one with him until she could arrange for an appointment to have him taken to be formally tested for learning disabilities.  The same was true of Sunil.  And then there was Dinesh.  A lackluster student when I arrived, after a little concentrated attention, he lit up like a lightbulb.  

These kids touched me so much I decided to apply for my Fulbright, which I then got and had the good fortune to meet even more kids who inspired me to want to be a teacher. 

Akanksha teachers are invested in their students, they pay visits to their homes, monitor academic progress, and encourage their students to do their best.  So please, go check out the blog, but more than that, please consider giving.  

Every little bit counts - it takes only $360 to educate one child at Akanksha.   $360 to give them a chance at a better life, to give them a future that is filled with learning and education rather than barely scraping by.  The $12,000 dollars already raised will help educate 33 kids.  That's one class of students at Akanksha.  So please, please, I beg of you, if there was ever a cause I felt passionately about exhorting others to donate to, it's this one.  

My thoughts on health care

I was going to write a long and impassioned piece about my thoughts on health care and how upset I am right now that things seem to be headed for utter failure in Washington.  And then, I came across a beautifully simple Facebook status update that summed up my feelings perfectly.  So I will spare you all my rant (alas, I know!) and simply post this message: 

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.

I should also add that if you agree, please feel free to spread this message on any social networking or blogging site you frequent. 

Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high

I learned through Twitter this evening that one of the iconic foundational tv shows of my childhood, Reading Rainbow, is ending after 26 years on the air.  Between Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, and Mister Roger's Neighborhood, I learned and grew curious about the world around me.  Now only one of these three shows remains. 

I feel incredibly sad and emotional about this, because this show helped nurture my love of reading.  How I would have loved to be one of the reviewers on the show, chirping away happily about the books I'd recently read!  I'll also never forget the "WHOA" moment I had when I realized that "Reading Rainbow" dude was on Star Trek. 

LeVar Burton, you are a wonderful man for bringing such a quality show to the air for the last 26 years.  I only hope that the show manages to live on in the virtual world and through re-runs, but its demise is a sad, sad day for children's television. 

Thank you, Senator Kennedy

Note: I decided to create a new post for this because it didn't really mesh with my previous post.  

On my message board last night as people discussed the death of Senator Kennedy, inevitably reference was made to the tragic events at Chappaquidick Island.  Those who did not like Kennedy have latched on once again to the death of Mary Jo, and while I do feel that he did get off lightly under the circumstances, why should that horrific accident overshadow everything else he did? 

Love him or hate him, when you take a step back to consider all the legislation that the late Senator Kennedy helped to achieve, it becomes startlingly clear just what an impact he has had on American life since 1962, when he joined the Senate.  I would wager that there is not a single reader out there who has not benefitted directly from legislation Kennedy helped pass, or at least been touched by it in some way (and I should note, this list is not comprehensive).

My own story would have been vastly different had Kennedy not succeeded in reforming immigration in 1965 to allow Asians to come to America.  This piece of immigration reform reshaped American society and is changing the face of America as we speak.  If you are Asian or have Asian family members who emigrated to America after 1965, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

He helped pass Title IX, which originally covered education, but is now more known for its influence on sports for women.   If you are a woman who has benefitted from federal programs for higher education including loans, if you have equal access to health care and dorm facilities at college, if your daughter is able to be on a sports team that is as good as or better than the boy’s team, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

If you are one of 20 million Americans who have access to a low-cost community health care facility, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

If you own or rent a home or need money to do so, you cannot be discriminated against on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disabilities, or having children.  For this, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

If you or your child has access to a bilingual education program in public schools, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

If you voted in an election the year you turned 18 instead of having to wait until you turned 21, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

If you or someone you love has suffered from cancer and have received the very latest treatments discovered through the “War on Cancer,” you have Ted Kennedy to thank. 

If you have a child with a learning disability or learning delays who has required early intervention, an IEP, or a teacher’s aide to work with them in the classroom, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

If you are legally protected from being discriminated against because of a physical or mental disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

If you have had to take time off work for a serious illness, to care for a sick family member, or to care for a new child and your job is protected under the Family and Medical Leave Act, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

If you have a pre-existing condition but are covered by group insurance and limits are put on how much your group plan can restrict your benefits under HIPAA, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

The knowledge that your genes cannot be cause for discrimination in employment or health insurance under the GINA act is a huge step forward towards addressing health care discrimination in the 21^st century, and for this, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

If you have been able to avail of health insurance under the COBRA program after leaving your job, you have Ted Kennedy to thank.

His imprint on American life is astounding, and should be celebrated.  We have lost one of America’s greatest legislators, a true lion of the Senate if ever there was one.  Thank you, sir, for changing my life for the better.  May you rest in peace.

Rest in Peace, Teddy

The sad but not unexpected news that Senator Ted Kennedy has passed away due to his long battle with brain cancer is making its way around the world now.  His legacy of pushing for social change and his service to America will not be easily forgotten, and I'm only sad that he didn't live to see his dream of health care reform achieved.    He may not have been a perfect individual (nobody is), but his service to America is without question. 

On a more personal note, I have him to thank for my chance to meet now President Obama just before he was made the Democratic nominee in the summer of 2008.   Senator Kennedy was due to speak at our commencement ceremony at Wesleyan because his step-daughter was graduating with me.   Unfortunately, he had recently been diagnosed with cancer, and was unable to attend, and so called in the favor of a lifetime for 730 giddy Wesleyan graduates and got President Obama to substitute for him.   I'm sorry it came at such a personal cost to him and his family, but I will never forget how thrilled his gesture made me and many of my friends. 

Rest in peace, sir. 

The Problem with Protesting

You know what the problem is with protestors who picket abortion clinics and yell things at the women who go in?  It's that they are making the gross assumption that every woman going through those doors is doing so because she doesn't want her baby.  I bet it never even occurs to them that some of the women who have to walk past their signs and their slogans are in an unfathomable amount of pain and grief because they have to terminate for medical reasons.

This happened, just a few days ago, to the relative of someone I know through an internet board, and it breaks my heart thinking what this woman must have gone through.  It's not bad enough that her baby will not even survive the pregnancy and that she must abort, but she has to endure further trauma by being shouted at for being a baby killer. 

My heart breaks for her and every other woman who's ever had to go through this experience, regardless of their reasons for termination, but especially when it's an unavoidable outcome.  It's fine to be pro-life and work to try and change legislation if that's what you feel is the right thing to do (even if I think you are dead wrong).  But what does intimidating women outside an abortion clinic accomplish other than to wound them further and tar all women with the same motivations for termination?  It's just plain wrong and cruel, and I sincerely hope that for their own sakes, these people never find themselves on the receiving end of this kind of treatment but find another way to realize how much harm they are inflicting.  Somehow, I don't think causing this is what Jesus had in mind when he commanded his followers to love one another and abide by the golden rule. 

A History Lesson

I cannot take it anymore.  

Each time I hear the words fascist, Nazi, communist, and socialist tossed around (which they seem to be at a rather alarming frequency these days), I twitch.  The history student in me, the one who has read extensively about Hitler, Stalin and has read Lenin and Marx in the original, LOATHES the abuse of these terms.  People think they know what they're saying, but really all they're doing is invoking fear and scary imagery without any basis in reality.  

First of all, dear rightwing nut-jobs (and I don't mean those who disagree with Obama, I mean those who are flipping insane), you cannot have it both ways.  We cannot both be headed down the path to Soviet-style socialism and be emulating Nazism at the same time.  The Nazis came to power opposing the communists.  Yeah, Hitler cozied up to them for awhile during WWII, but trust me, the Nazis and the Communists, they did not like each other.  So pick one.  Either we're headed to a socialist state of doom, or we're out to be a genocidal, fascist regime.  

Secondly, this death panel nonsense is absolutely false scare-mongering and those who are engaging in it should be downright ashamed of themselves (PolitiFact gives dear Sarah Palin a blazing “pants on fire” rating for this particular gem).  Not only does Obama's healthcare NOT set up anything even close to resembling Aktion T4, Hitler's program had nothing to do with cost and health care, and everything to do with eliminating those not deemed fit to live in the Aryan nation.

There were also not death "panels." Instead, physicians known to be sympathetic to the cause were recruited to sign off the death papers, which they did independently. Sarah Palin's son would not have stood a chance in Nazi Germany, but there's nothing to suggest that he wouldn't receive adequate care in today's America.   It's disgusting that the right has decided to use the eugenics of Nazism to propagate their agenda.  

There is nothing wrong and everything laudable about encouraging senior citizens to voluntarily get advice about end-of-life planning and issues like living wills.  As our population gets older and greyer, how does it harm anyone to know what mom’s wishes are should she end up in a coma?  Does nobody remember Terry Schiavo?  If she’d had a living will, or left some written indication of her wishes about how to treat her should she fall into a persistent vegetative state, there would never have been such a long, drawn out, and ugly court case.

Then there's the whole socialist/communism thing.  Here's the deal, folks.  America is a capitalist society. It always has been, and it would take a lot more than some health care reform, some tax reform, and some government control of the banking and auto industries to change that.   When the Soviet government of V.I. Lenin seized control of the banking industry after the Bolshevik Revolution, they did not do it to make sure the economy didn’t tank.  They did it so that they could abolish private wealth and capitalist enterprise.  Needless to say, this has not happened in America.   The whole reason the government DID get involved with TARP and bailouts is because it is trying to MAINTAIN our capitalist economy and avert another Great Depression.

Furthermore, government-subsidized healthcare reform does not a socialist system make.  This country is in dire need of affordable, accessible insurance and the for-profit insurance industry needs to be reformed ASAP.  All those European states and Canadians who have national healthcare? Not socialist countries, even if they have socialist parties. Yes, even France.

The incorrect use of these terms is infuriating and it is wrong.  Scaremongering is getting in the way of achieving reforms that are desperately needed.  If you have objections to the health plan, that’s fine, state them.  If your views have merit, you shouldn’t need to rely on shit-stirring to rile people up and make them agree with you. 

One last thing: Barney Frank is made of win.

From the Outside Looking In

I've been out of the United States since June 2008, and I don't know when my next trip back will be, though I will now be living in the US for at least another two years now.   I was out of the country for the nasty, slug-it-out part of the primary season when Hillary kept going state-to-state with Obama, I was out of the country on an historical election day, and I have not been back since our apparent descent into socialist-communist-fascist tyranny has commenced (a rant on that coming later; stay tuned).  

I keep up with what's happening in America because I appreciate that the debates being held right now will almost certainly impact my life one way or another in the coming years, and because I believe in being well informed.  Between the New York Times, The Daily Show (seriously), and my message board, I think I'm pretty up to speed on things. 

Which is why, after 13 months away, it is a disconcerting feeling to feel as though America seems to me to be more alien than ever, at least if the debates I'm reading are to be believed.  I don't know whether it's the rabid, fanatical screaming that seems to pass for public discourse, the hysteria that we're becoming a socialist nation (read: France), or what, but America seems vastly different than the place I left upon graduation. From the outside looking in, America is disintegrating into a loud, shrieky, chaotic mess.

I hope this will pass, or that the media is exaggerating, but aside from making me concerned, it also makes me kind of sad.  I know many people didn't vote for Obama.  I did, and I'm proud to say I did.  I had hoped that his election would bring about some kind of fundamental change, because heaven knows, there are some major problems that need fixing.  I didn't believe he was the Messiah or even that he'd be able to solve it all, but I certainly didn't expect the reactions opponents to his plan seem to have.  If all the promises of change can deliver is some watered down health reform and harbingers of doom for America's future, that's sad indeed.  

The Inability to Disagree

As a general rule, I avoid reading comments on the internet.  They tend to depress me, both for the massacre of the English language and the rules of grammar that tend to occur, and because anonymous commenting seems to bring out the truly nasty side in a lot of people. 

What I'm noticing at the moment however, on a particular blog that is causing a good deal of controversy right now if you run in certain blog "circles" is the idea that disagreeing with each other has somehow come to mean a personal attack on either the person writing the blog or their loyal readers. 

This particular blog owner has begun to censor any comment that carries with it the faintest whiff of disagreement with her views, no matter how politely or non-confrontational the comment may be.  

She also has an online community to allow her fans to discuss other topics with each other, and there too, the censorship is rife, not only from the community moderators, but from her followers.   Threads and comments are either deleted, buried by a flurry of other threads designed to squash out the dissenting one, or those who criticize are labeled everything from “haters” and “minions of Satan” (no, seriously).

The overwhelming sentiment seems to be that they must protect the blog writer from criticism and negativity since her community is meant to be one of love and support (because apparently you can’t disagree without being unsupportive), but more interestingly, I’ve seen a number of women remark that they don’t care to be attacked for admiring this blogger.

What you’re left with is a whole bunch of people who think a lot alike, share the same religious beliefs, and who all universally seem to applaud every move this blogger makes, no matter how inappropriate some of them may be. 

All of this makes me think of a fantastic article I read in The Economist shortly before this year's presidential election.  It discussed how we, as Americans, are becoming more and more insular.  We choose to live in communities where our views are in the majority, we tend to gravitate towards friends and acquaintances who share our viewpoints, and we get our news from sources that conform to and reinforce our worldview.  

The author’s argument was that this sort of insularity is making for a more ideologically-driven and intolerant America, and honestly, I do see it, especially on the internet. 

We seem to be losing our ability to respectfully disagree with each other, to separate out a disagreement over actions with an attack on a person’s character, to remain rational when someone criticizes someone we admire.   Instead of engaging in civil debate, all too often comments on blogs and news sites seem to degenerate into all-out bashing, with the most vile, repugnant things being said from behind the shield of anonymity.  

Hell, the mentality that you can’t disagree with someone without attacking them even seems to extend to most baby-naming sites, where anything but a “OMG I LUV McMadisonLeigh Nevaeh as the name for your baby” will result in a banning even if all you are doing is pointing out that McMadisonLeigh is not a real name for a baby.”

It makes me worried that the spaces in which I can find civil, intelligent discussion on the internet are few and far between.  I find it present here, on PNN, on a baby names board renowned for its snarky disdain of names like Madison and Nevaeh for girls, and amongst my friends. 

Why does it worry me? Because the idea that you can simply shout down or bury someone else’s opinion by spewing ill-informed nonsense is spilling over into the political sphere. 

Read the NYT article on how groups opposed to Obama’s healthcare plan are simply telling their supporters to go to town hall meetings and shout down the speaker and drive them off topic.  

We need, we desperately need to be having intelligent conversations about these reforms, how to achieve them, and what changes they will bring, but that’s going to be impossible if we cannot move beyond this idea that disagreement must mean bashing the ideas and shouting until we’re blue in the face.   

Another Small Step Forward

I am thrilled to see the breaking news that Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed to be the newest justice of the Supreme Court of America by a vote of 68-31.  I am certain that she will be a competent addition to the court, and I hope that I will not be disappointed by her addition. 

To shift focus away from what kind of jurist she will be for a moment, I also want to express just how proud I am once again of America.  She is our first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and the third woman.   I know that one person does not change the status quo, and that, like Obama's election, her mere presence does not erase the racism and inequality that continues to dog minorities in America on a daily basis.  

But, at the same time, I revel in the symbolism of this moment.  Here is a woman like me, a woman of color, a woman who, even thirty years ago, could never have dreamed of being in this position, just as people insisted it would be years, nay, decades before we'd have either a credible female or African-American candidate for President (when in fact, we have now had both).  The face of America is changing, whether people like it or not.  

As I told my classroom of disbelieving 6th grade Taiwanese students, one day not so long from now, Americans will look like you (them) and me.   African-American, Latino, and Asian, and multiracial faces are the new faces of America, and each symbolic appointment of one of those faces to a position of power represents that inexorable change.  

Well done, America.  I love feeling this kind of pride. 

Being Owed a Job

The recent news story about the alumna of Monroe College in the Bronx who is suing her alma mater caught my eye and has bugged me enough that I felt the need to get my feelings out by doing a blog post.  

Trina Thompson is suing because she feels that the career services office at Monore failed to help her find a full-time job, and alleges bias towards the students who had higher GPAs.   The result is that she is suing for the cost of her diploma and for the stress that her lack of a job has caused her.  

To say that this suit is patently ridiculous is a gross understatement.  The thing that irks me the most is her sense that somehow she is owed a job simply because she went to school and visited the career services department.  Three months out of college is not a very long time to be unemployed in the current economic climate, and given that, by her own admission, her GPA was a 2.7 (which shouldn't always matter, but let's face it, it does) and her general attitude to life, I find myself wholly unsurprised that she is having problems securing employment. 

She also seems to have vastly misunderstood the purpose of a career services department.  Their job is to help you get your resumé in order, to help prep you for interviews, and to provide contact information for job openings, to host job fairs, and the like.  That's not how Miss Thompson sees it, however, for she's quoted in the CNN article as saying, "They're [the career services staff] supposed to say, 'I've got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is alright - can you interview this person? They're not doing that..."

Her mentality smacks of feeling like she's owed something by the career services department, that somehow, they should be doing the work for her. Unfortunately for her, that's not how the world works.  Career services is merely the first step in a very long process - sending out resumés, waiting for callbacks, attending interviews - and more often than not, you have to be extraordinarily persistent.  

Ms. Thompson has a lot of growing up to do, and I can only hope that whatever judge encounters this case in their docket has the good sense to toss it out as soon as possible.  To encourage this kind of foolishness is a bad, bad plan.

The Right to be Trusted

The other day, my good friend Philosophy posted over on her PNN site about an absolutely ludicrous piece of legislation that has surfaced several times in the Ohio State Legislature which would demand that a woman seek the consent of the father of her baby before getting an abortion.  Should she fail to file a police report or demand a paternity test (even in cases of abuse/incest), she loses her right to an abortion unless she wants to risk prosecution and fines. 

Sophy's done a pretty good job at articulating the rage and disgust that such a measure brings up for me, and while I am sympathetic to paternal rights, in this instance, it is about a woman's body and her right to do what she pleases with it.  Until a man is able to carry a baby and embryos can be transferred from one parent to the other (unlikely, but who knows, maybe one day), then he does not have the right to control whether or not a woman can obtain an abortion.  To insist otherwise is to reduce women back to the status of being mere chattels.  

It’s also enraging that since states know they cannot constitutionally outlaw abortion altogether, that they will seek to erect as many barriers as possible to obtaining an abortion as they can.  This is doubly problematic for me because not only does it make it harder for women to obtain a needed medical procedure (because I really don’t think the vast majority of women out there are using it as a form of birth control) but because some of the provisions seek to undermine confidence in a woman’s ability to decide what is best for her body.

Take for example the 24-hour waiting clauses that many states (Arizona being the latest) have enacted, which state that a woman must wait 24 hours after making an appointment to actually have the abortion because women “aren’t being informed enough about abortions.”   This sounds wonderful; after all, more information is always a good thing, right? 

Wrong. “More information” seems to me to be a pretty way of disguising the fact that doctors can try to scare a woman out of having an abortion by emphasizing the risks.  Are there risks? Of course, but I don’t think a woman needs 24 hours to mull them over.  What is more, in some states, like Minnesota, this “information” turns into downright scare tactics.   Some of the “information” women are given includes the “fact” that abortions can increase the risk of breast cancer (there is no proven link), by telling the woman the probable gestational age of the fetus, and how much pain the fetus might feel.  Likewise, informing women about alternatives is not at all objectionable, but the time to present these alternatives is not when a woman wants to get an abortion, because then it becomes a case of getting her to second-guess her decision. 

 The 24-hour waiting period is in itself problematic, regardless of what purpose it is being used for. It cannot be easy to make it to the clinic in the first place; to mandate that a woman must make two trips in the space of as many days creates a huge psychological barrier. We won’t even go into the fact that for some women, it simply may not be possible to take time off work or make arrangements two days in a row to get to the clinic.

Yet, even if you successfully make it into the clinic, your judgment is going to be assaulted by making a disgusting play to your emotions.  Take for example the new laws in Arizona, signed into effect two weeks ago by Governor Jan Brewer.  The doctor is now required to inform you of the fetus’ “probable characteristics.” This is a low, underhanded way of trying to emotionally manipulate a woman already potentially in a very fragile place and it disgusts me.  She can’t be trusted to make a decision and stick to it, so she must be manipulated any way possible to try and change her mind.   

When did we lose the right to be trusted to make decisions about our own bodies and our own reproductive health? If a woman has reached the decision that an abortion is the best course of action for her to take during her pregnancy, that decision should be respected.  The state has no business trying to undermine that decision, and the fact that they do so is reprehensible.   It is my body and I am carrying the fetus in question, which means the decision is mine to make, as a legal, competent adult.  To insist or behave otherwise is an insult and just as big a step back for women’s rights as outlawing abortion would be, or taking away our right to vote.  Enough is enough. 

The Last Veteran

It may not seem like a big news story, that 111-year old Harry Patch of Britain has died, but it is.  He was the last British World War I veteran to have seen action in the trenches of Northern Europe, at the Battle of Passchendaele.  There are but a handful of World War I veterans alive around the world, some of whom saw combat and some of whom didn't, but Patch's passing is significant because he was Britain's last link to the horror that was World War I. 

We as a collective society have largely forgotten about World War I and the men who fought in it - the events of World War II and the greatest generation who because the parents of today's boomers are well known in the American consciousness at least, but World War I is not.  And that is a huge tragedy in and of itself, because World War I changed everything. World War II may have changed the world, but World War I set in motion the events that created not only World War II, but many of our present geopolitical crises. 

World War I changed modern warfare; it brought with it the unimaginable horrors of trench warfare, and it brought about the demise of two mighty European empires: the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians.  The Kosovo War, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Iraq - they all have their roots in World War I. 

And of course, there is the human sacrifice, the sheer bloodshed and senseless loss of life that still, to this day, beggars belief.  In a matter of hours, thousands of young men were mown down, at the battles of Verdun, of the Somme, the Marne, Ypres, and Passchendaele.  It was bloody, brutal, and horrific.  

Last summer, I had the opportunity to travel to northeastern France, to see the battlefields and the graveyards of Verdun.  There are no words to describe the sight of row upon row upon row of identical stone crosses, stretching out as far as the eye can see.  Young men, 18, 19, 20, dead.  It is the most moving and heart-wrenching thing I've seen, and nothing could have made the events of that war so very real to me.  

Yet, we have managed to forget, to not talk about these heroes who faced down unimaginable trauma for not very much gain at all.  So today, in honor of the memory of the last UK veteran who saw action, Mr. Harry Patch, I write this column so that at least some people will know and will remember.  

(photo taken by me at one of the French graveyards in Verdun)

The Power of Information (part 1)

When I arrived in India a few weeks ago, I was astonished to see a number of taxi cabs in Mumbai plastered in pink and white.  It wasn't so much the color that struck me, it was the fact that they were advertising I-Pill, india's first "abortion pill" with a phone number listed for more information.   Since I have been back, I've noticed the commercials playing on TV regularly, both in English and in Hindi, ensuring a wide audience receives this information. 

(You can check out the commercial here).

I never expected such openness about a contraceptive option, especially given that just a few years ago, the only ads for condoms on TV referenced them only in the vaguest of terms or used metaphors like "suiting up before playing a game of cricket" to get the point across.  

But I'm delighted that such information is freely available, because I've seen firsthand what the ravages of too many unwanted children can do, not only to a woman's body, but to their lives, to the lives of their other children, and to the life of countless children, wanted or not, whose parents simply cannot afford to house, clothe, or feed them.  The evidence confronts me each time I emerge from my house and see children, dressed in the rattiest of rags, begging for just a few rupees, when I see babies so thin their ribs stick out as their mothers clutch them to their breasts.  

Do I think abortion is the best thing ever? No, not at all.  On a purely personal level, I do not think I could ever do it unless strictly necessary for my own health and safety, and even then, I don't imagine it would be an easy choice to make. It would be lovely if we never had the need to terminate pregnancies, if every child brought into this world were guaranteed a safe, loving, stable family environment, if their existence didn't immediately condemn them to a short, brutal life of poverty and despair.  

Sadly, that's not reality, and who am I to refuse a woman the right to the information that she does have options, who am I to say that she should not have access to a safe, discreet abortion that (in India, at least) can be done without jeopardizing her safety, without everyone knowing what she has done? I cheered when President Obama reversed the gag rule on providing information on abortion to women in developing countries because it is not our place, not ever, and especially not as a nation that delivers aid and money to desperate people around the world, to act as a moralizer.  Who are we to tell a woman who can barely take care of the five children she already has that she has no right to not bring a sixth into this world? It's very easy to remain on our high horses from a distance, but when reality hits you in the face on a daily basis, it becomes unconscionable to me that we allow such policies to exist, that we deign to control the lives of women in poverty around the world by denying them access to the power of information. 

A Normal First Family

Yesterday, when perusing Jezebel, I saw the following image: 

(photo from Getty Images)

Why is this newsworthy? It isn't, really, but it struck me because of how normal it looks.  It's refreshingly wonderful in its normality - two parents walking with their kids, parental clutter/reading material in hand, Michelle's tote slung over her shoulder like any other mom.  I love both the closeness that seems to be present between these two parents and their kids, the fact that Obama seems to be sharing a moment with Malia, and that these could be your neighbors.  

With many previous presidents, there's always been a sense of aloofness, an aura of privilege.  Part of it is background, part of it comes with the job.  The fact that the Obamas can seemingly balance meeting the Queen of England with being normal parents bodes well for the future emotional health of their girls.  

And let's face it, it just makes me happy knowing THIS is the face of America to the world.  Well done, Obamas, well done.