'politics' Category
who will be left to speak for you?
First, because I want to say a thing I think is important and I don’t want to be misunderstood: Black lives matter. Of course all lives matter, but Black lives are at an unfair and unwarranted level of risk today in the US (and some other countries); that’s why we need the #Blacklivesmatter movement and […]
a short sermon I need to get off my chest
Black people. BLACK people. Black PEOPLE. BLACK PEOPLE. Usually when we(1) say that phrase we’re stressing the first word – the thing that the people it describes have in common, that brings them together. And they did come together last night, along with allies of other ethnicities, in cities across the US to march for […]
assorted comments while watching the House sit-in
Holy fucking shit. The US House Minority Leader James Clyburn has just said that he’s divided Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letters from Birmingham Jail” into 46 parts, and they’re going to read it out loud in the course of the sit-in tonight. These are people intensely aware of their history and of the history they’re […]
Why it’s not good to set up memorial crosses for people you don’t know
What I said on Facebook, about the guy who made 49 crosses and brought them to Orlando, to represent the people killed the last week: “If someone put up a cross for me when I died, I’d come back and haunt them!” I also noted that I do think the people wearing giant angel wings […]
There *is* something you can do
It’s a bit depressing to watch the reaction to this morning’s Orlando shootings. The right blames Obama. The left blames Trump. People screaming to ban refugees, ban guns, their solution will fix everything. It’s as if the most important thing in the wake of tragedy is to see who can seize it first to drive […]
civil rights and good china
When Ted and I got married, we chose patterns: china, crystal, and silver. (Respectively, Royal Doulton Princeton, Waterford Lismore, and Towle Old Master, if anyone is counting.) We got some for wedding gifts and have added some more, either by buying it ourselves or from occasional gifts from family since then. It is kind of […]
mostly about books, just one thing to get out of the way first
On a quick political note: the reason I do not believe Bernie Sanders can win the Democratic nomination, no matter how many more states he wins, is that the vote is quite literally rigged. At the moment, Clinton has won 745 delegates to Sanders’ 540 – so she has a lead, but not an insurmountable […]
Social Media Manifesto
I’m beginning to feel like I need to put a disclaimer on my Facebook page and anywhere else I have a presence online: “Anything I say here, I mean. I will never pretend to an opinion I don’t hold for the purpose of trolling. However, the converse is not true; just because I don’t talk […]
Arguing over a second-best solution
I hate reading about the debate to fund Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood should not be federally funded – because it shouldn’t be needed. As one of the richest countries in the world, all of our citizens should have access to decent basic healthcare. And the category of “citizen” does not default to “male citizen”. Half […]
long live Oregon … and love
An online friend is celebrating the fact that, only seven years after her wedding, she is now legally married even when she’s at home. My response, because 2014 was a good year in many ways: If you were to come visit me, you could be hiking under the pines married. Drizzly afternoons and foggy mornings […]