Tonight I was researching (ok, surfing around) and I came across two stories that I really liked. I’d never heard of Issa Rae or her web series The Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl, but DeNeen L. Brown’s write up has inspired me to bookmark the site and watch. I was struck by Rae’s transition between an idyllic childhood here in Potomac to the challenging tween years in an upscale black Los Angeles neighborhood that ironically made her less comfortable with herself.
…and then there is Jennifer Weiner’s current piece in Allure magazine about The F-Word. No, not that one. The three letter word that rhymes with rat. I have always loved Weiner’s writing; her training as a journalist makes her concise and descriptive and her characters feel like friends of mine. She’s also been pretty clear about her struggles with food, so I wasn’t surprised that she had parenting ideas around the issue of the F-Word. Even so, this story takes very unexpected angle and is worth a thoughtful read.
There’s obviously much to be explored about the interaction between appearance, socialization and self-perception that touches a spark for these two fine artists and all of us. I’ll be sleeping on it, and writing more on another day.
Today happens to be the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi and so it seems appropriate to celebrate one of the fruits of his lifelong dedication to nonviolent social change. According to The Atlantic, his philosophy strongly influences Burmese member of parliament Aung San Suu Kyi and she often quotes him. Her father was the commander of the Burmese Independence Army and was assassinated when she was two. Her mother was a much loved official who eventually became ambassador to India. Inspired by her parents, Aung San Suu Kyi dedicated her life to the people of Burma and spent several years under house arrest due to her activism against the military junta. Like her mother, she is affectionately called “Daw,” a title of respect, and known throughout Burma as “The Lady” due to her grace and persistence.
As her native Burma continues its slow but definite progress towards a thriving democracy, the Nobel peace laureate has used part of her recently won freedom to tour the United States. She has persevered through decades of oppression, house arrest and political struggle in the name of her people. Her opposition to the military junta is rooted in a firm belief that “democracy offers the best balance between freedom and security,” which are both essential human rights.
You can watch part of her Congressional Gold Medal acceptance speech on C-SPAN and read more about her accomplishments and recent travels on CNN.
Yesterday as we left the National Book Fair, my husband and I were able to catch the first few minutes of a speech by Congressman John Lewis, who has authored two books and been the subject of many more focused on his work in the civil rights movement. He opened with a story about raising chickens on the his family farm during his childhood. He had two kinds of hens, layers and setters. The layers laid the eggs, and the setters kept them warm for three weeks. Then newborn chicks would be given to another hen and the sitting hen would be tricked into accepting a new batch of eggs for her nest. Deploying such ruse against a hen is cruel thing to do, but his family didn’t have $18.95 to order an incubator from the Sears, Roebuck catalog, also known as the big wish book.
There were a lot of things Lewis wished for as a child and very little his family could afford. Yet he remembers his days on the farm with fondness and speaks of a childhood blessed with loving, faithful parents who taught him to pray and the art of “making a way out of no way” when ends didn’t quite meet. He learned of the evils of segregation during his first trip to town at the age of six and ached to erase such a fundamental unfairness from that moment on. Even before then, however, Lewis dreamt of being a preacher, and he practiced on his chickens. He and his sister played church and lined the chickens up in rows so he could preach. As he retold the story today, he got laughs by pointing out that the chickens were more productive than Congress.
More importantly for his eventual success, living on a farm and raising chickens taught Lewis to be patient. Nothing happens overnight. It takes three weeks to for a chick to hatch. How many of us understand that today? My eggs come from a cardboard box that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the grocery store, which got it from a truck that picked it up from a distribution center. The distribution center uses other trucks to collect the eggs from the producer whose hen house likely contains thousands of uncaged birds of not hundreds of thousands of caged birds. There’s no six year old boy bonding with these creatures and proclaiming the Gospels before them as they cluck and peck.
Before we nostalgically yearn for those simpler days, let’s be real about the world that John Lewis was born into on February 21, 1940. His mother Willie Mae had ten children, a husband and a large extended family to feed and manage. While there was plenty of love and work on the farm, at that time a black person in Alabama had no functional right to vote. Segregation forced black children to endure separate but unequal schools, restrooms, and pools. Seating rules were enforced in theaters and on buses. Restaurants might serve a black family in a separate section, but more likely they handed food out the kitchen door if they served you at all. So few hotels allowed blacks that driving across the south often meant packing your food and sleeping in the car.
John Lewis lived through all that and the kind of rural poverty that meant you ate what you raised, and if that wasn’t enough, too bad. Somehow, he did not become bitter and angry as so many people might. Instead, he dedicated his life to practicing nonviolence. He studied to be a minister and learned how to create social change through patience and persistence. He grew from a boy who tried to convert chickens to Jesus into a man who is now considered the conscience of Congress.
What was it like to be the mother of that boy? To see your precious child hide under the porch so he could go to school instead of joining his siblings in the fields? In an interview for the Academy of Achievement, Lewis recognized his mother’s struggle:
But I think my mother had a tremendous impact because she knew we needed to get an education, and she would say, “Study, get an education,” but at the same time she was torn. She knew we had to work to help around the house and help gather the crops. And my father and my mother did their best, and when I look back on those early years, I don’t know how they made it. I don’t know how we survived.
Knowing of her son’s aspiration to become a minister and the family’s limited budget, Willie Mae gave John a brochure for the American Baptist Theological Seminary, a school in Nashville which allowed students to work for their tuition. While in Nashville, Lewis became involved in the civil rights movement and eventually got arrested during a 1960 sit-in.
My mother, my dear mother, she was so worried. She was so troubled. She didn’t know that I was even involved, because I hadn’t had any discussion until she heard that I was in jail, when the school official called and informed her that I was in jail with several other students. The next day or so I got a letter saying, “Get out of the movement. Get out of that mess. You went to school to get an education. You’re going to get yourself hurt. You’re going to get yourself killed.” And I wrote her back and said, “I think I did the right thing. It was the right thing to do.” Years later she became very, very supportive, especially after the Voting Rights Act was passed and she was allowed to become a registered voter.
(source: Academy of Achievement)
His mother was right about the dangers: John Lewis was badly beaten on “Bloody Sunday” during the March to Selma in 1965. In full view of cameras, Alabama state troopers and sheriff’s deputies charged and bludgeoned the marchers. Lewis managed to return to the starting point of the march, but he was soon hospitalized with a fractured skull. What was it like to get that phone call?
At one time, Willie Mae Lewis may have wanted nothing more than for her son to quit the movement and get himself a proper, normal, safe ministry in a church. A few weeks later after John Lewis and nearly 25,000 others successfully marched to Montgomery, how did his mother feel? Was that the moment that caused her to finally support his work, or had it come earlier? Perhaps it was in 1963 on the day of the March on Washington, when he gave a speech from the same podium as Martin Luther King, Jr.
Transformation takes time. That is a key lesson of farming, of motherhood, and of citizenship. In his book Across that Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change, John Lewis writes an entire chapter on the value of patience as a catalyst. It begins with this quote from another mother, one who nurtured the world through her example:
Without patience, we will learn less in life.
We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less.
Ironically, rush and more usually mean less.
–Mother Theresa
More thoughts soon on how patience and chickens connect to Congress.
Phyllis Diller left our world today at the age of 95, and we are better for having laughed with her.
After several other careers, including raising five children, she became a comic in the mid-1950s on the rising edge of the feminist movement. Until Joan Rivers came along, Diller was mostly alone among the male wolves that prowled the top stages for laughs back then. She defied every rule. At a time when most comics wore suits or at the very least button down shirts, her wild costumes and outlandish wigs made a statement. She wasn’t trying to be one of the guys; she was an uber-woman despite having “two backs” and “chicken legs.” Self-deprecating and witty, she said the things many women were thinking, and laughed along with her audiences.
Boy, did she laugh.
A brilliant gag writer, she maintained a joke file better organized than many libraries. She honed her craft constantly and let the audience be the judge of a joke. If they laughed, she kept it. If not, onto another joke. Her rat-a-tat-tat delivery came with a smile and she was proud of being able to deliver twelve jokes in one minute.
She earned every laugh.
Ok, yes, she dressed like a clown and her costume had the same counter-instinctual purpose. It made the audience drop its expectations and listen. It takes a confident woman to mock herself as relentlessly as Diller did, and smart one to mock the world around her. Diller’s daft housewife comedy wasn’t necessarily social commentary but it pushed boundaries and implied that it was ok to ask questions and forget washing the windows.
Thanks to her, women like Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner, Whoopi Goldberg, Roseanne Barr, and Samantha Bee built their careers on being female and funny. She was known to encourage rising comics, though she never forgot that “the audience will let you know if you’re funny or not.” One of her best lines was “Aim high and you won’t shoot your foot off.”
I could list all the challenges women athletes still face even getting to the Olympics. There are plenty, but I think that today is a day to celebrate. Our women’s water polo and soccer teams are both going for the gold tonight. Hear the crowds roar!
I’ve been loving all the fuss about the Mars Curiosity rover. NASA and JPL have done a great job of publicizing the event given all the competing news events this week. The writers for Curiosity’s Twitter account have struck just the right mix of funny and real. They’re clearly overqualified to do late night comedy so I’m glad they’re finding an outlet between developing algorithms or conducting experiments. Like Andy Borowitz and so many other people, I’ve taken a poke at the event myself on DonBac Forever, where my husband and I maintain a public record of our married fun. For the record, he is from Tuscon, not Mars, and he believes air conditioning is a natural right.
The surprise star of the mission turns out to be flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, aka Mohawk Man. Scientists with a sense of humor and an ability to communicate are worth their weight in lutetium. Cute scientists with a sense of humor are invaluable. To Bobak’s credit he has flavored his ride on Spaceship Media Frenzy with encouragement for more people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math. What he’s gotten in return are some pretty funny pictures, and a lot of marriage proposals. I hope his girlfriend has a good sense of humor too.
Of course the proposals are just jokes and teasing, but lost in all the giggles is the sad reality that Bobak doesn’t have many female coworkers. Pictures of his team feature row after row of men in powder blue t-shirts with only a the occasional woman. This jubilant video illustrates the issue:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9hXqzkH7YA&w=560&h=315]
Tara Tiger Brown has been working with JPL to compile a list of women who dare mighty things for the Mars mission, and so far the count of women in the flight room is seven. One of them is Ann Deveraux, Deputy Lead for Entry, Descent and Landing. So basically, she was totally in the middle of the Seven Minutes of Terror. I’m not sure about the hierarchy of mission control, but I’m betting she’s one of Mohawk Man’s bosses. While not quite the same media phenomenon as her creatively coiffed colleague, she has done some local television and radio interviews. She was also featured on the Women@NASA site, where she was asked about gender discrimination:
I went to school and now have worked in very male oriented disciplines (communications and electronics) and many times – even now – I can go into good sized meetings and not see another woman attending! But I’ve always considered myself to be just an engineer, and I find my male colleagues have treated me accordingly.
It’s great that a talented woman can rise to a position of responsibility at NASA and be treated fairly. The final head count of women working on the Curiosity mission will surely rise if this press conference is any example. Yet unfortunately, it seems like more women would still prefer to marry a flight director than become one. What can we do about that? I know that NASA has a Women and Girls Initiative and that Sally Ride dedicated her life to encouraging girls to consider science, technology, engineering and math careers. Let’s hope that Ann isn’t the only woman in meetings much longer.
I always love to read about the women writers who’ve come before me, so I have to thank Annie Cardi for this post and for turning me on to publicdomainreview.org.
I just kissed my husband goodbye as he headed out the door to work. It wasn’t quite a long enough kiss (are they ever?) but he left smiling and that makes my heart shine.
Here at home, the wind is picking up and the sky is shifting colors. I’m enjoying the momentary juxtaposition of blue skies, sunshine and storm clouds. Though Virginia has been affected by the drought plaguing the rest of the country, there’s been just enough rain to make people forget to water their gardens. We haven’t had many good soakings, but we are getting showers or at least sprinkles a few times a week.
Roberto has found summer rainstorms to be a revelation, especially when it drizzles while the sun is still out. His exact word for that is “weird.” He grew up in Southern California and equates summer with sunshine. In his experience, rain only happens for about six weeks in the winter accompanied by media warnings at nearly the same level of hysteria one would expect for an alien invasion. Here in the gentle South, seasons are a bit more complicated, meteorologists try to be analytical and most people recognize that rain is a year-round precipitation option, with occasional snow, sleet or hail thrown in for flavor.
As a Midwestern transplant to Los Angeles, I always missed the ferocious summer thunderstorms that sprinkled my childhood with just enough excitement. I remember hiding under the dining table with my siblings, delighted that the sky was turning green. After two decades of relentlessly sunny California, it’s been a thrill for me to move to the land of hurricanes, floods and derechos.
Let me clarify.
I’m not fond of power outages, destruction of property, or the casualties of nature that inevitably follow a blowout meteorological concert. I don’t want people to suffer just so I can enjoy an awesome show of power with wind and lightning effects as yet merely mimicked by Hollywood. But severe weather warnings seem to be a fact of life here and so I try to make the best of it. I’m not going to be a storm chaser, but if I’m sitting on my patio and one rolls by, I’ll take pictures.
The little valley where I live seems to have its own microclimate; a brief rainstorm here can be a serious downpour up the hill. This means that I’m often watching weather reports for my general area that have no reflection on what’s happening outside my window. Since the biggest storms often skip my neighborhood, sometimes I feel like I’m missing out on all the fun.
In the brief time I’ve been writing this post, the sky has gone from blue and sunny to overcast and cloudy. Right now it smells like rain but the birds are still singing and sailing into the bushes and trees. I don’t know their trills well enough to tell whether they are warning each other to take cover or discussing last night’s baseball game. Several sparrows take shelter under the cream-colored Cadillac a few spaces away. The clouds are swiftly drifting by, low to the ground, a dull white followed by dark gray splotches. All is quiet. The wind dances through the trees, dies down and returns again. The rain arrives.
Tonight the Nationals lost a game they had been leading 9-0.
(Photo credit: Wonderlane)
After 3-run homers in three different innings, including a season record 465-footer by Michael Morse that landed at the Red Porch restaurant behind center field, the pitching staff wilted in the rain and the power hitters of the Braves took full advantage. Danny Espinoza’s wonderful plunker into the Braves bullpen was an exciting moment but ultimately tying the game merely postponed the loss. It’s an unfortunate lead-in to tomorrow’s double header, but this team has frequently defied expectations. That’s about the only thing it does consistently, and the response to this humiliation will determine whether they are truly playoff caliber or just having a surprisingly good season.
Die hard fans have a lot to freak out about, but I’m not a blind passionate fan of anything. That’s just not my style. I scream loudly for my chosen heroes but I can appreciate a good performance, even from the other team. I might be a little more down if I had actually sat in Nationals Park for the four hour game in the rain and then had to hustle to the Metro, but I’d probably forget about it as soon as my husband kissed me goodnight.
Then again, I’m aware that I’m fortunate to have him at home and kissing me. Friday morning, our country woke to the news that a lone gunman had randomly opened fire at the beginning of a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, uncannily confusing fans who thought he was a performer hired to match the action on the screen.
Tonight, there are twelve fewer people kissing their loved ones goodnight.
Dozens more are injured, and an entire community is shattered while we as a country wonder why such tragic shootings keep happening. Random violence is a problem that’s too big, too systemic, too beyond our control to prevent. Or so we think. Most of the perpetrators are isolated young men, often with a history of instability. Their odd behavior causes many people to avoid them and gives them the freedom to acquire arsenals and attack gear right under our noses. As the people of Norway discovered last summer, even the strictest gun control laws can’t prevent a determined, intelligent lunatic from stockpiling weapons and planning sophisticated attacks.
What evil has been unleashed when college students can’t attend class, a congresswoman can’t meet her constituents at a grocery store, and families can’t attend the movies? We’re so inured to it that we try to find reasons where there aren’t any, we analyze what happened down to the smallest detail, and then we do nothing to create change.
Yet, we always pray. Whatever our religion, after these tragedies we gather, we hug, we sing, we pray, we light candles, and leave flowers and draw posters. We honor the dead and support those they left behind. A lot of goodness erupts. We don’t always notice through our tears, but eventually we look back and can trace a line of hidden blessings that emerged in the aftermath.
The entire premise of Batman is creating good from tragedy, justice prevailing over evil. Maybe the message for us today is that we don’t have to be superheroes. We just have to take care of each other.
