My tell tale – or is it bleeding – heart

Yesterday morning, during a briefly sunny interlude between storms at my favorite cafe, I found myself eavesdropping on a conversation at the table next to mine.

“I like Obama,” a 20-something prospective law student proclaimed between bites of Santa Fe scramble, “but I’m concerned.”

Her boyfriend, who had been absentmindedly watching a bird eat seeds off a saucer on my table, groaned and started chanting “Obama, Obama, Obama…”

A girl sitting next to him playfully hit his shoulder. “Let her talk,” she chided.

“Well, it’s just that I went to his site…” said the aspiring law student. She seemed a little unsure of herself.

“Short on substance?” one of the guys at the table suggested while tapping away at an Apple device with his index finger.

“Yeah, kind of.”

‘Have you read Hillary’s site?” challenged another friend.

“No, but now I guess I have to.”

“I like Hillary,” another of the girls shrugged.

“Obama, Obama, Obama…” The boyfriend started in again on his chant, this time joined by others,until everyone started laughing and then the subject changed.

I envy them their dilemma so early in their adult lives. Who to vote for? The woman? Or the black man?

This morning I read Caroline Kennedy’s editorial in the New York Times.

“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them.” she concludes. “But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”

When Caroline Kennedy’s father was assassinated I was in kindergarten. I remember being in a crowd of bewildered children released early from school but somehow knowing it wasn’t OK to be happy about it. I watched Jack Ruby shoot Oswald on TV while I sat folding washcloths and my mother ironed my father’s shirts.

Five years later when Caroline Kennedy’s uncle Bobby ran for president, I was his biggest fan. My parents, who were not similarly enthused, started to include me in their political arguments, which could be fierce but always ended with joking and laughter. When he was murdered just a few months after the murder of Martin Luther King, I sensed evil and I closed my heart around that fear.

I agree with Caroline on at least one point: I have never had a president who inspired me.

In fact, for most of my life I have been dismayed by my government‘s behavior, both at home and abroad.

During the Clinton administration I felt more comfortable, but to be honest it always seemed to be one divisive battle after another, and for the most part, I tuned out.

Sure; the media has changed, the times have changed, the world has changed. Also, I’m not a kid anymore. But I wonder how much my resistance to Obama has to do with what I consider to be his unsuitability for the job.

I listened to Obama speak after his victory in South Carolina. What a racket –what a joyful noise – rose from that crowd. I felt a twinge of sadness mingle with a kind of fear.

My long constricted heart, so unwilling to discharge its loss.

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I promised myself I’d lay off Obama…

But every time I hear him say something that’s not about the Clinton’s, I get seriously annoyed. Today it was a newsbite from a stump speech in South Carolina. Obama was talking about education. He said something along the lines of how there are lots of ways to make the educational system better but “if parents don’t parent, there’s not a lot we can do.”

I’m all for better parenting, and I agree that too many people look to teachers and the educational system to raise their kids because they’re either too lazy or too inept or because they honestly think that is how the system works, but his statement seems to lay the blame for the failure of U.S. education on bad parenting, and I most certainly don’t agree with that. I’d say that teacher salaries, crumbling infrastructure, wrong headed thinking about ways of quantifying school success, all rank higher on the list then bad parenting.

And even if bad parenting is the Number 1 reason why Johnny can’t read, we have to find ways to keep Johnny from slipping through the cracks. It’s not his fault his parents aren’t holding up their end of the bargain.

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Why I’m glad I’m not a Republican and/or don’t live in Michigan

From the NY Times: Romney Beats McCain in Michigan Vote

Mitt Romney, seizing on his personal ties to a state where
his father made his family’s political and financial fortune,
captured a must-win victory in the Michigan primary on
Tuesday…

Let’s unpack this, just for fun:

Mitt Romney, a former management consultant/venture canpitalist (the guys who help eliminate / outsource jobs so that businesses can make more profits for top management to exploit) wins in a deeply economically troubled state,

“a state where his father made his family’s political and financial fortune” (on the backs on the factory lifers who got screwed in the economic downturn brought about by the policies of people like Romney’s father who ran the auto industry into the ground)

I’m sorry, am I missing something here?

Mitt’s wife Ann, however, seems to be a formidable person.

FYI: I had a really hard time finding an unflattering picture of this guy.

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I wonder if there is a message in here somewhere…

This AM on HufPo:

Tom D’Antoni: Clinton and Obama Joint News Conference on Race/Gender

“TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY’S 9AM ET JOINT NEWS CONFERENCE WITH SENS. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY) AND BARAK OBAMA (D-IL)

Sen. Clinton: We have called this joint news conference today because Barak and I want to make something very clear to our fellow Democrats and to all of America.

Sen. Obama: For the past few weeks the two of us have been concerned about the tenor of the campaign. We do not want our supporters or anyone else to mistake what we say.

Sen. Clinton: First of all we are Democrats. Democrats stand for equal rights and justice, for all races, genders, sexual preferences, religious preferences…or no religious preferences. All of the legislation to insure these equal rights has come from Democrats.

Sen. Obama: We do not seek, as the Republicans do, to exploit divisions among people…to stoke latent prejudices and make political gains from them. And so we have come before you today to make a pledge. We don’t apologize for criticisms we have made of each other’s records or positions.

Sen. Clinton: No, they are an important part of the process of choosing a new President. What we want to make clear is that when we criticize each other, what we say is neither racist nor sexist. Therefore, we pledge here today that for the rest of the campaign neither one of us or our representatives will accuse the other of either racism or sexism.

Sen. Obama: This is new to America…an African-American and a woman, running for the highest office in the land, and against each other. We both acknowledge that there are race and gender tensions in America. We would be silly to say there weren’t. But I tell you here today, that I will never play the race card.

Sen. Clinton: And I will never play the gender card. We know that there are some Americans who will never vote for a woman for president.

Sen. Obama: And some who will never vote for an African-American. What is important in this campaign is that we will not make any statements which might be construed to appeal to prejudice. We’ll leave those to the Republicans.

Sen. Clinton: Also, we promise that we will not react to any statement by each other and make accusations of veiled racism or sexism.

Sen. Obama: We want our supporters and representatives to know that whatever we say is about what we feel is best for America. We’re going to appeal to our natural constituencies, of course, we’d be stupid not to.

Sen. Clinton: But at no time are you or anyone else to construe that what we say has an ounce of prejudice or pandering to race or gender. After the nightmare of the past seven years, we seek to restore respect for ourselves as Americans and for the United States on the planet.

Sen. Obama: Let that moral compass come from us, by example. And with that…

Sen. Clinton and Obama toether: Let the best candidate win!

And then I woke up.”

Yeah, and I fell for it!

And then I read my horoscope:

“Sure, you’re smart enough to know that life is not fair, but that doesn’t always stop you from seeking justice and equality as you journey through your days. By maintaining this delicate balance between realism and idealism today, you will be able to handle any situation, no matter how bizarre or uncomfortable it might be. Becoming a cynic might save you some disappointment here and there, but it’s much more rewarding to think that all people are equal and should be treated as such.”

Hmmmmm….

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Do you know what it feels like for Hillary?

This week I started riding in a work-sponsored van pool. Listening to music with my eyes closed instead of battling stop and go traffic to and from work is a luxury that offsets the 6:10AM departure time, and I love getting home early enough to see the late afternoon sun making the rooms in my apartment glow. I guess the one thing I will have to adjust to is getting my news in the evening rather than during my AM commute, but I get email alerts from the NY Times and BBC in case something serious happens. It was great to hear about Hillary’s “comeback” in NH, though I could have called it during the debate the night before, when Obama snarked that she was “likeable enough.” The next day, I heard Obama interviewed on NPR and deliver, when pushed, the closest thing I’ve heard to a policy statement delivered from him. To paraphrase, he said that, for instance there were plenty of health care initiatives out there and what really needs to happen is for the people to organize and demand that it happens. So – its up to us, we the people, to do the diligence and fight for the right and deliver the results and so forth, so he can green light it? Excuse me, but wouldn’t I be voting for him to do this on my behalf? I’m busy enough trying to finance my old age – I want him to deliver the goods on the health care, and on the mess we’re in in the middle east, and get the econ and education and our good name abroad back on track.

Anyway, when I started riding the vanpool I dug out my shuffle and the day after NH the first tune up Madonna’s “What it feels like for a girl,” which pretty much summed it all up as far as I’m concerned – wouldn’t you know it,but I heard the song again this AM on the radio (KCRW, natch), so I thought I’d drop the lyrics here…

Strong inside but you dont know it / Good little girls they never show it / When you open up your mouth to speak / Could you be a little weak /Do you know what it feels like for a girl / Do you know what it feels like in this world / For a girl…Hurt thats not supposed to show /And tears that fall when no one knows /When youre trying hard to be your best /Could you be a little less…
Of course the pundits who called NH wrong are busy adding questions to their polls attempting to gauge latent racism among voters (funny, no one’s knocking themselves out to uncover latent sexism) , and insisting, rather unconvincingly, that Hillary attracts poor uneducated voters, while their boy Obama rallies the Whole Foods and Starbucks crowd. From what I can tell, Hillary turned out the female vote as well as the poor and less educated (working class, if they voted for Obama) voters. The reason for the former might be that women can usually spot a player, and the latter might be because the working classes want to hear what’s going to get done, whereas the rich can afford to support pie-in-the-sky rhetoric about hope. What do I know though. I’m a voter, not a pollster.

 

And for the record, I shop at Whole Foods when I’m feeling flush, but I would never drink Starbuck’s coffee –that stuff if crap. I’m a Peets girl. I gotta say though that it feels good to be a dem when my choices are between a woman and a black man – finally!

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A few of my favorite things from 2007…

Now that I’ve put Scrabulous in its place, I can get to the posts I wanted to write at the end of last year.

My top reads of 2007:

The books that moved me the most this year are ones that took me to a contemporary place revealing a world previously unknown to me.

• In Martin Amis’s House of Meetings, a book that is a pleasure to read for the language alone, the protagonist survives Stalin’s work camps only to return to them in 2004 as an 84 year old dying man recounting his past in a letter to an American stepdaughter.

• Against a backdrop of Post-WWI historical tumult, The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa, is patterned after Madame Bovary, but begins its journey in Peru in 1950 and meanders through Europe and Asia to end in contemporary France.
• Septembers of Shiraz, probably my favorite novel of the lot, is the story of a middle class Iranian Jew imprisoned by the Revolutionary Guard in 1980s Tehran and his family. A prodigious first novel by Dalia Sofer, it suffers from a lousy title for the U.S. market, but one that comes clear in an ending scene that has a bittersweet universal quality.
• Then there is Elizabeth Hand, who’s work I only just discovered through her collection of short stories called Saffron and Brimstone. Several of these stories, set in real time or near future, had a prescient quality when I read them-they seemed to happen to me when I was grappling with aspects of their themes, so the paranormal characteristics of her style seemed to leak into my life. Filed under sci-fi/fantasy, Hand’s writing really belongs to the genre of speculative fiction inhabited by authors like Angela Carter, JG Ballard, Ursula LeGuinn, Margaret Atwood-all favorites of mine, which is why I am surprised that I’ve never heard of Hand before.
• I read lots of essays and short stories this past year, but one piece stands out as absolutely the most compelling I read all year: Werner, by Jo Ann Beard, from Tin House’s fantastic Graphics Issue. Werner has been anthologized in this year’s Best American Essays –just read it.

Favorite cookbooks: This is kind of a cheat, but my two favorites from 2007 are books I bought from Amazon UK in 2006, but were released in the U.S. in 2007.

• I still can’t get enough of Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries, which I read often and cook from only in the sense that his sensibility has slipped into my own attitude towards food.
• I also love to read Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories, which came out in paperback in the UK in 2006 and supposedly was released in the U.S. last year, but I haven’t seen it anywhere. He’s a fun writer and each chapter contains an essay and several recipes for his favorite ingredients, such as anchovy, brains, chicken, chocolate, and on through the alphabet. Try the leek tart and the steak au poivre. I’m still trying to find a humane source for fresh rabbit so I can try his recipe for rabbit terrine.
• I also enjoy cooking from How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons, and A Twist of the Wrist by Nancy Silverton, though I don’t always reach for the latter because I seldom have the pantry ingredients called for on hand.
• Favorite cookbook I can’t wait to get to: this would be Jamie Oliver’s Cook with Jamie.
  

  Yeah, you heard me right, Jamie Oliver. The new book is very pretty and full of Oliver’s inexhaustible spirit and inventiveness. I’ve always enjoyed his slightly manic, “let’s just pop round to the shops and go home and whip something up” attitude and I also admire that he has turned his fame into activism. Plus his food is always tasty, and this book really makes me want to cook, unlike Alice Waters’ latest, Art of Simple Food, which wins my vote for Most anticipated book I almost bought and then decided to wait until it comes out in paperback. Don’t get me wrong – Waters is responsible for a important shift in the way that Americans (at least on the coasts) look at food. But this book has a fussy, overprivileged aesthetic that is off-putting. And I have to admit that as much as I refer to and cook from her books-especially the collaborations with Paul Bertolli and Lindsey Shere, there is something about these books that is a little intimidating.

Long story short, if I were to invite someone into my kitchen to teach me something about cooking, it would be Jamie, not Alice. I feel like I’d be getting an education, not a lecture.

Jamie’s School Dinners Ad for Channel 4

 

 

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2007: The year Scrabulous highjacked my life

Why haven’t I been blogging you may ask? Lack of readership? Never stopped me before! The fact that my most frequently searched tag was “horse’s ass” (see Augusten Burroughs)? Almost, but not quite.

No, the real reason can be summed up in one word: Scrabulous.

Wired’s Sarah Fallon wrote what for me ended up being the definitive essay of 2007: Confessions of an Online Scrabble Cheat –in it she details what could be my own descent into Scrabulousness – the high of rekindling the flame of a beloved board game, the desolation upon the realization that game-mates might be playing by another set of rules. Add to that my own ruthless determination to compete on my cheatin’ bffs’ level only to lose my soul while wallowing in a pool of self-hating tears: how could I give up my 4-star vocab and sense of fair play for a bunch of really strange words I’d never heard before, and still don’t know the meaning of ? Like a good group therapy session, Fallon affords me the comfort that alas, I am not alone in my year-end Scrabulous bender, a dangerous interlude that sidetracked my devotion to loved ones, worthier pursuits (such as this blog, dear reader),even my personal hygiene. My moment of clarity came just in the nick of time, when the mysterious Scrabulous algorithms denied me the right to play the word “Inuit (40 pts)” while waving through words like “porny” and “toyo.”

But I’m back, I’m back, I tell you! Just as soon as I pulverize my sister’s chances at yet another win….

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My theory about Obama in Iowa…

Iowa is made up mostly of white guys. White guys don’t like strong women. White guys like to think of themselves as the Great White Friend to the Black Man. In the final analysis, they’d rather vote for a black man than a woman.

Actually when I was under 30, I would have voted for him too. He reminds me of a suave Julian Bond, with a modicum of that man’s intellect. There’s nothing particularly wrong with him, and he’s a great performer. But I’ve heard a lot about “hope” in my life, and hope just don’t pay the rent.

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