Fran's Ramblings

And so. . .

I've talked in the past about taking a hiatus, and then I always think of a ton of things to say.  Perhaps this won't be any different, but folks, I'm tapped out.  Nothing in the head, no new ideas, nada.

However some of the stories that I've put on hold have been tugging at me, and I think perhaps it's time for me to pay attention to them instead.  There's a sticky point on the vampire one, and I'm thinking if I take one section out, it'll free up the blockage and let the story get back on track. 

Anyway, this isn't good-bye forever, just until I really have something I need or want to say.  You'll know when I do because I'll post it on FaceBook. 

Now, back to that sticky spot. . .

Guest blog -- Cassie's asking for your help

Re-post (with alterations for clarity) from my vaping blog, Vapor Muse. I apologize for the extended absence. I have been considering my role here. But today I have something important to say.

(ed. note: if you follow the link to Cassie's blog, you can see a video of her talking about helping out)

It is easy, when tragedy strikes far away, to simply say, "poor them" and go about your day.

It is easy to not feel for others, when they are not standing right in front of you.

So please allow me to put this in front of you.

Please look at these images from Japan, and tell me you feel nothing.

This is the state of Japan. Look. (No gore or anything - just absolute destruction.)

Tell me these pictures don't reek of death and suffering.

There is precious little any of us can do. The earth will do what it wants, and whatever man-made structures we have that try to get in its way, like nuclear power plants, are laughable in the face of what a tectonic plate is capable of.

Staring at these images, it is easy for me to feel utterly powerless, and overwhelmed by the magnitude of all the suffering that is happening on this small but ingenious island nation, which I have never even been to.

It is easy to forget I am one of many. And while I may be powerless on my own, one very small dot on this rattling blue globe, there are billions of others.

I am small, and I am not a millionaire, and I am sitting here on a Wednesday morning ready to pull my hair out at the futility of it all.

The only thing I do have, is a little bit of spare change, and a megaphone.

My megaphone is not very big - I am still very much anonymous in the grand scheme of things - but I do have one. In the alternate reality of the internet, I have my little tiny megaphone clutched to my chest like a mouse with a grain of cheese, and today I have a reason to use my megaphone.

If you have spare change, if you have a megaphone, if you have an apple pie or a door nail or anything at all you can lend to help these people who have been struck by a cascading onslaught of disaster, please, please, please, find it in your heart to give it.

This is all I can do. I feel very small, and very useless. But if you will do something small and useless with me, together we can make it mean something. Even if we just save one person stranded on their roof. Feed one child. Save one old man who misses his wife from dying of a treatable wound before he gets to see her again.

So let's get together, and do something useless.

Please post the link with pictures above, and the links below, anywhere you can. I know some of you have a bigger megaphone than me; use it.

Donate through the Red Cross; $10 minimum.

Choose your fund through Global Giving.

Or, there is one more way to help out. I normally try not to talk about my work here, but I will make an acception. Thank you David, for letting me run with my bleeding heart idea.

For those of you who don't know, I work for a company that sells electronic cigarette liquid and supplies. It's called "vaping." Yeah, really. So if you're one of the few people on my friend's list who vapes, or if you smoke and want to try an alternative to smoking, this is for you.

FreedomSmokeUSA will be running a 20% of sale on all pre-mixed juices. And a further 10% of that money will go to the Red Cross relief efforts in Japan. We will post the total raised.

The code for 20% off juice is "helpjapan" which will go until Saturday at noon. Whatever you help us raise, we will match it, penny for penny. Our goal is to raise $500, and send $1,000.

Please help us make a difference. We are all very small on our own, but we can be greater than the sum of our parts.

Ok, I'll get down off my soap box now. Have a good day, and try to help each other.

Love, Cassie .

Every picture tells a story

I know, I know, again with the pictures, but this time there's only five, and they've each got some sort of story going on.  Part of me wishes I knew the real story, and part of me is deeply pleased by the various stories I've made up even though not all the stories are happy.  But I love using my imagination.

So first we have this one:

And the story in this one isn't immediately obvious because of the quality of the print.  Your eyes focus on the horse, naturally, since the rope draws your eyes up that way.  But look at the man anchoring the rope.  Yeah.  Cool, right?  A black man working side by side with a white man in a day when they were in no way considered equals.  Except, obviously, they were. Definitely a story there.

Picture 2:

 
Two men and their kids.  A nice family shot, perhaps, and we can speculate that one of the wives is behind the camera. 

So where's the other wife? 

Or maybe, just maybe, they weren't just friends?  Hey, a girl's gotta dream.

Then in picture 3:

 

Okay, you look at the picture and it's a couple in front of their house, and I'm sure that's true.  But the story is in the subtleties.  The ground is dusty and barren, but the house is nice, as is the car (anyone have any idea what kind of car that is?), and the couple is nicely dressed.

So why don't they look happy?  And notice, he's holding her.  She's not holding him.  There's tension there. 

On to picture 4:

 

The joy of this picture is the actual joy.  These girls are having fun.  Five girls crouched down in a meadow of flowers, laughing.  Why are they there?  Who's taking the picture?  It looks like a picnic of some sort, and this seems to be one of those moments when you say "I wish I could hold onto this fragile point in time forever", and someone tried.  There's true delight here!

Incidentally, I think the second girl on the left, the one with the flyaway hair, is my step-grandmother, but I could be wrong.

And then picture 5, which to me is the most evocative:

 
Oh, I want to know the story here!  I'm seeing all kinds of darkness and danger, sadness and hurt, anger and treachery.  I could be wrong, but man, there's something powerful here.

You've got an older man, a younger man and a young woman.  Father, son, daughter?  And is Mom taking the picture?  Maybe.  But maybe not.  The possibilities are enormous.

Look at the girl.  She's wearing pants in a time when women wore dresses all the time, even to work.  But she doesn't have an air of rebellion, does she?  Of flouting convention.  No.  She's looking at the ground, not meeting the camera's "eye".  She's holding herself tightly in.  Why?  Is she sad?  Scared?  I wish I knew.

And look at the younger man.  There's someone with confidence.  He's good looking, he knows it, he gets his way.  He's wearing what appear to be riding jodhpurs and boots, pretty fancy for a working guy.  They might not be formal riding clothes, of course.  In any case, there's pride and a certain arrogance there, which makes the contrast between him and the girl even more stark.

The older man is the one working, and he looks slightly annoyed at having his picture taken.  I wonder why that is? 

There's a story here, oh my yes.

As I say, I've been having a blast with these.  I really have enjoyed looking through them simply because I don't know who they are, but I knew someone who knew all these people, which is kind of intriguing.

In any case, in my opinion these pictures stand on their own, and I love the way they've captured my imagination.  Oh, the stories I'm imagining!

Wild, wild West

I was sorting through some boxes and found a bunch of photographs.  These are from my step-grandmother's family, and I have no idea who these people are.  Not a one. 

But. . .they're fascinating anyway.  These are, quite literally, snapshots of a point in time, one that we've heard about but rarely see.  They're faded and scratchy, but. . .look at these people.  Just amazing to me.

 
 

A successful hunt, but you know that a lot of this hunting was sustenance, not sport.
 

Don't you love the kids' clothes?
 

I believe my step-grandmother's maiden name was "Dunlap", which means these are her family.  Maybe a sod house from the MidWest?
 
 

Doesn't this look like something out of Hollywood?  But no, this was real life.
 

Heh, another type of hunting!
 
 

I love the hats!
 

I have more that I'll be posting over the next couple of days.  Oh, the stories behind these pictures!

A quandary

Not too long ago, the Supreme Court ruled that it was okay for Westboro Baptist Church to picket military funerals with their lunatic and insulting protests and signs.  And much has I have disagreed with the SCOTUS on their rulings lately, this one I get.

The people of Westboro are probably certifiable; even the wackiest of the Tea Partiers and right wing extremists think Westboro people are nuts.  That's how out there they are.  And their protests are insulting to our men and women who have served this country.

But the SCOTUS said they had the First Amendment right to be out there, being offensive and rude and insulting and provocative.  And they do. 

Whatever else you want to say about Westoboro Baptist Church and their insanity, they're open and up-front about what they believe.  They're in your face about it and they don't hide behind shill tactics and sneaky rhetoric.  With these guys, you know where you stand.

Which is basically with most of the rest of the world in thinking they're cuckoo.

I'm convinced the people who thought the SCOTUS ruled in error on this one are the same folks who scream that their First Amendment rights are being violated when other point out their fallacies, inconsistancies and outright lies.  They're the folks who believe deep in their hearts that the First Amendment protects THEIR speech, not anybody else's.  These folks are neighbors to the folks at Westboro, and they're a bit more frightening because they're substantially more numerous.

Okay, this is going to seem like a non sequitur, but hang with me.

I've developed a somewhat questionable and unsavory habit, one I'm very much aware of but haven't tried to really stop.  At least not yet.

I'll read a news story online and get the basic drift of it, maybe read the whole article, maybe not, but then I'll read the comments afterward.  I'm growing addicted to what people have to say about, well, anything.  From the latest updates on Japan (Bright Blessings on them, have you noticed that there's no panicking, no looting?  They're behaving like adults in this situation.  The US would not fare nearly as well, I'm afraid) to something as mundane as "Dear Abby", I read the comments.

Not all of them, certainly.  Frequently there are thousands.  I just skip through and see what the general tenor is, get a feel for what people are thinking.

And here's the dilemma.  Not my addiction, sad as it may be, but the fact that comments are so frequently anonymous.  This is where Free Speech meets responsibility.

It's been said, and I believe it, that on sites where your name is required, where you have to say up front who you are so that at least the moderator is able to make you own your words, that the conversations are much less commented on, and the discussions are much more intelligent. 

But the flip side of that is that people have to curb their true feelings because it can come back and bite them in the butt.  People have learned that what goes out on the Web stays out there forever.  So if someone says something unpleasant or controversial, it's possible for an employer, a spouse, a church memeber, someone in authority, to find it and use it against you. 

So if you're looking for work and you've got a job interview, and on some website you support white supremacists and it turns out your boss is African American, it is entirely possible that you can not be hired and you may never know why.  Or you can be fired, if your statements are too overtly awful and it reflects on your employer. 

That's why a lot of people insist that commenting anonymously protects their First Amendment rights to free speech without threatening their livelihoods.  And I do understand that. 

However. 

I really, seriously, honestly believe that the proliferation of anonymous commenting is a huge part of the reason that we are no longer a civil society.  People don't have to be civil online because there is no punishment for being threatening or provocative.  And I believe that's what's spilling over into the way we have begun to behave in person. 

It's not like you're looking at someone when you say they should be beaten up.  You're responding to pixels on a screen.  How dangerous is that?  So people don't see the actual results of what they're promoting.

Then too, if you wanted to write a hate letter, a threatening letter to someone in the past, you had to sit down, write it out, find an envelope, address it, scrounge up postage, and trudge to the mail box.  Now you can sit in your jammies eating Cheetos and say all manner of horrible things to people you've never met, taking offense at not much because it gives you something to do.

Or picking fights that you don't mean simply because you're bored.

So that's my quandary.  At what point does freedom of speech need to be tempered with responsibility?  At what point does the First Amendment get curtailed in the name of civility and justice?  It's such a delicate thing, a case-by-case situation, and yet it seems to me that somehow we have to take control of our dialogues again. 

I moderate the comments here, mostly for spam, but there are times when I want to head off a misunderstanding before it blows up out of proportion, as it might if things were left unmoderated.  Honestly, I think that's only happened twice in all the time I've been doing this -- six years now, can you believe it? -- and that's partly because I don't get the traffic of the big sites, but also because people know that their comments are named.  I'm willing to bet many of you have considered saying something in response to something I've said, but have backed off, perhaps out of respect for me but also out of the knowledge that others will form opinions about you because of it.  Am I right?

And that goes to civility and responsibility.  But it also curbs your right to say exactly what you want.  And I'm torn between thinking that's a good thing and a bad thing.  Hence the quandary.

Headache? Or honest concern?

I've been fighting what I'm hoping is just a sinus headache -- a lovely pressure squishing my eyes into the front of my head, my glasses are too tight and my forehead throbs.  It comes and goes, and while it hasn't brought on the sparklies of migraine, I'm well aware that it's possible. 

Hence my absence last night.

But part of it too is, I suspect, a certain amount of stress at things that are going on across the country.  I'm not going to talk about Wisconsin, although I will say I hope the recall of certain Republican senators moves apace, and I strongly hope there's something that can be done about their governor in less than a year.  Because he's dangerous.

No, my mind is spinning about Michigan.  Have you heard?

Michigan has an Emergency Financial Bill that passed on Wednesday, although I don't know when or if it'll actually go into effect.

But what this Bill does is not only does it, at the governor's whim, remove all collective bargaining rights for, well, anyone in Michigan, if a town is in financial trouble (and many are), then the governor can order the city government disbanded and can appoint someone to take over the town.  That "someone" is not required to be a person.  A company can do it.

 

My mom grew up in the Depression, and I heard about company towns.  There's a reason unions were formed.  In a company town, you have no legal recourse to anything.  You can be fired for no reason, you don't get a regulated work week, and you won't be paid a living wage.

It's the beginning of feudalism again.

And the thing is, even if a town -- and it would have to be a small one -- could refuse to be a company town and walled itself off and refused to be taken over, if a small town decided to live as a community (GASP, like COMMUNISIM!!), all of us are too interdependent on the national infrastructure.

Who's going to provide power?  Water?  Food?  Most townships can't provide for themselves, and certainly larger towns and cities can't.  Not anymore.  We have to rely on others, and that makes us vulnerable in this situation.

Tea Partiers talk about a revolution, and they may be prophets of a doom I hope we're not forced to live through, but it's not the revolution they anticipate.  It's more along the lines of the French Revolution.  I don't want it to come to that, but it terrifies me that it might.

Or maybe it's just my headache talking.

Absolutes

I have a friend who is politically the absolute opposite of everything I am.  I'm not entirely sure why we're still friends, but we are, and I like keeping the lines of communication open.

But I find it increasingly difficult to talk to him.  He sees everything as black and white, absolutes in all ways.  All unions are bad, all teachers are lazy, all health care reform is wrong, it's an extreme right wing list and it goes on and on and on. 

When anyone else points out that these things are not absolute, he simply hunkers down and digs in.  I can't decide if it's sad or terrifying.  A little of both, actually.

How do you talk to people who are completely convinced that they are right and that everyone who opposes or contradicts them is not only wrong but potentially the enemy? 

I'm discovering a deeply polarized set of beliefs, not just religious or political, but everyday beliefs.  So many people are convinced that their way is the only way, and anyone who doesn't toe whatever line they have established is not just different but downright evil. 

I was walking through Pike Place Market on Saturday, and there were two guys standing by a cardboard table with fliers that called on people to challenge President Obama and they implied that violent resistance with firearms was an acceptable solution.  Now I'll grant you, this is Seattle and so they were being ignored, pretty much like the panhandlers, but to see that level of potential disturbance so recently after the Gifford shooting was unsettling.

I've heard people get into shouting matches about whether or not Starbucks is better than Seattle's Best Coffee.  And they're owned by the same company.

Of course this is Seattle, and coffee matters.  But still. 

There are still people who believe that gays A) recruit, B) are all promiscuous, and C) all have drug addictions of one flavor or another.

There are people who are absolutely convinced that anyone who's in a biker group is in a gang that is lawless, violent and destructive.

There are people who are absolutely convinced, all evidence to the contrary, that all the Founding Fathers were dedicated Christian and intended for the US to be a Christian nation. 

There are people who are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that President Obama is Kenyan.  And Muslim. 

For that matter, there are people who believe that children should be allowed to behave however they choose, never instilling social manners.   And maybe that's what's ultimately at the heart of this whole mess.

How do you converse with people when facts aren't enough?  When actual, physical documentation won't change people's minds from misapprehensions?  When you're talking to adults who are employing the time-honored five year old child's response of, "LALALALALALA, I can't hear you!"? 

It's exhausting, depressing and downright scary. 

Top 10

I have a confession to make, one of those guilty pleasures.

I love lists.  Not making them.  I'm the complete polar opposite of a list maker.  I can't generally even find paper and a pen at the same time when I want to make notes about something.   (Oh, by the way, baby, we need dryer sheet too; I forgot to put that on the grocery list.  Sorry!)  I'm hopeless that way.

No, I love other people's lists.

I love Top 10 lists.  Best Of lists.  If I find an edition of "Eat This, Not That" online, I'm there.  Mind you, I'm not interested in buying the book, but I love the lists anyway.

And yeah, I know they're subjective and opinions and are frequently sponsored and are therefore simply ads for something.  I know.

I don't care.  I love them anyway.

And the thing is, I suck at making Top 10 lists.  I have to do it every year for the shop, and I cheat. First I break my lists into categories.  I usually have Best Debut, Best Of The Usual Suspects, Best Paperback, Best Local, and sometimes I go even further than that. I don't even try to keep it to ten, don't even pretend that I'm going to. 

But then, I read a lot.  And this next year I may add a "Not a Mystery but I Loved It Anyway" category. 

Everyone else manages to keep their lists to the single-list-with-around-10-names/titles, but I am constitutionally incapable.

Maybe that's why I love other people's lists so much.  They did it, pared things down, made the necessary cuts.  They're inspirational simply by being. 

But they're also nice little nuggets, snacks for the brain, if you will.  They're easily managed, they're snippits of information that don't take much to process, and they engage my brain to an extend.  Do I agree with this list?  Did they leave off something I would have included?  Have the put something on I've never heard of before? 

I don't know.  I just like them.

For example, I was just watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I got to thinking, what are my five favorite Harrison Ford movies?  Not in any particular order, but. . .which five? 

Raiders of the Lost Ark (because I'm watching it)

Star Wars

Blade Runner

Witness

Presumed Innocent

Sabrina

American Graffiti

And that doesn't even count what some would say is his best work -- Force 10 From Navaronne and Heroes and The Fugitive.  And yeah, I loved his version of Sabrina.  I love the Bogart one as well, make no mistake, but I thought he was great as Linus Larrabee. 

But look, for a list of FIVE and I have seven right off the bat.  I'm hopeless.

So there you have it, I love lists.  They make me smile.  And as far as guilty pleasures go, I think I could do worse!

Because we CAN!

Okay, our secret's out. I guess we can't hide it any more. 

We're here to wreck your marriages.

See?  There.  I said it.  Lillian and I are bound and determined to destroy all the marriages of happy heterosexual people.  Well, okay, I guess it's not just us, at least if I understand everything I'm reading, but hey, we're here and we're standing up.

I bet we can even take responsibility for all the marriages that ended before we got together.  Um, but no, because us just being a gay couple isn't the problem, it's the fact that we got legally married.  So. . .I guess we're really only responsible for all the divorces and whatnot from September of 2009 on.  Perhaps all the other divorces are the faults of those who got married before us.

Okay, so then we're all responsible for all the divorces of everybody in the United States since May 17th, 2004. 

Everything before that?  Y'all are on your own.  No idea what happened then, but it wasn't us. Sorry!

And, while I'm owning up to things, I guess it's time to point out that obviously EVERYBODY'S gay.  Well duh, right? 

I mean, once we're allowed to get married, once DOMA is finally repealed then everyone's going to come bursting out of the closet and marry the nearest person of the same sex that they can grab.  Right? Of course right!

Have you figured out who YOUR same sex spouse is going to be? 

And once DOMA's repealed and all you formerly straight folks are happily married to your same sex spouse, then the human race is doomed because  no one will ever have babies again.  And let's face it, we all know that the only reason all y'all soon-to-be-ex heterosexuals got married in the first place was to have babies.  It's the only way it can happen!  You have to be in a heterosexual marriage before pregnancy can occur.  Duh!  Obviously!

But we're here to end all that.  In the not-too-distant future, all the women will be fixing the plumbing and the cars, and the guys will be inside redecorating.  That's always been the master plan and it's almost here!

Hurray!

Man, there really IS a need for a sarcasm font.  There just is.

If you need talking points for those who might not get it, DOMA is still being enforced.  Sure Obama told the DoJ not to defend it, but that doesn't immediately repeal the law.  It just means that the DoJ is going to move on to defending things that really are constitutional.

And for those folks who get their panties in a twist, saying, "But the Department of Justice HAS to defend these laws" and "Obama's overreaching his authority", then I have to ask them, why Obama does but neither of the Presidents Bush had to.

George the First had the DoJ refuse to defend, of all things, a cable issue.  TV cable.  And I have to think that cable laws affect a lot more of us than our getting married has.  But that's just me.  Maybe Lillian and me getting married is more important to you than access to local cable channels.  What do I know?

And George the Lesser had his DoJ refuse to defend censoring marijuana ads.  Hmm, I'm seeing a TV theme here. . . And I suspect that there are more people who have a deep, personal relationship with Mary Jane than are affected by my marriage to Lillian.  Again, I could be wrong.

Well, and Bill Clinton had his DoJ refuse to defend the constitutionality of a Miranda case.  In fact, there's a law that says the Attorney General has to tell Congress whenever that office declines to defend a federal statute, which makes it pretty clear that the DoJ does have the right to pick and choose what it wants to defend.  As I understand it, Congress can't order the DoJ to defend something, it's more a courtesy announcement, not to be undertaken lightly, but available.

So Obama's decision to have the DoJ not defend DOMA is not something new or unreasonable.  What it is, is both a nod to the inevitablity of DOMA's repeal -- and once DADT is gone, DOMA has to go because there will be too much inequity in federal benefits offered to military spouses -- and the fact that, according to sociologist Darren Sherkat of Southerin Illinois University, approval for same-sex marriage has finally reached the tipping point where more straight folks approve than disapprove.

 

This is very big news.

 

But to hear all the much-married right wing nutjobs shout about it, you'd think my getting married to Lillian was the end of the world as we know it.

Well, I feel fine.

 

 

 

In praise of teachers

Sorry, my loves, I only got an hour's worth of sleep last night and I'm kinda running on empty, so this is short.

But you all know I was a teacher, and I've been watching what has been going on in the teaching field around the country, and I'm appalled.  Did you see that a Rhode Island school fired ALL its teachers?  They're planning on rehiring some of them, but. . .there's no telling how this is going to play out. 

It is with this in mind that I introduce you to Taylor Mali.  He's clear, concise and I wanted to stand and applaud.  Let's hear it for teachers, my friends!