Tilting at Tomorrow

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe. I get so wrapped up in making flyers, planning activities, visiting and traveling and trying to keep up with myself - and after a long, happy day of hard work and hobbit-wrangling, it's a shock to log on and read about a profoundly broken world.

I worry sometimes that I'm too fortunate and insulated - that all of what I'm doing basically amounts to building castles in the sky while Rome burns. I hope that's not true. More than anything, I want what I'm doing to matter. I expect we all do.

But here's what I know for a certain fact: there is going to be a tomorrow in which the all-consuming crises of today don't feature. Our current problems will pass away, just as surely as the Cold War and the 1918 flu did before them, and new ones will grow in their place.

And when tomorrow gets here, I want to make sure that we still remember how to co-exist. I want to make sure that clickbaiting and fearmongering and runaway intellectual inbreeding don't deprive us of our friends and neighbors. We're in the middle of a hard and essential fight right now, but there's something completely unlike it already waiting in the wings... and whatever that is, we absolutely can't afford to meet it at half-strength.

I hope you registered to vote today, if you weren't already signed up. I hope you have been using every good means at your disposal to weigh in on the big decisions, and take ownership of the small ones.

But I also hope we remember the last vital stranger who helped us - on the side of the road, in the hospital, a thousand miles from home - and how little their political views mattered when we really, desperately needed them. And I am going to join my fellow big-hearted eventroverts in continuing to raise up little tentpole-spaces for good people to meet face-first and practice helping each other out... because that's the best way I know to ensure we still have a common ground left to come back to after today's fight is finished.

And because I just god damn love wearing a fancy name tag and buying tax-deductible donuts.

America the Bountiful

Y'all, I'm sorry I've been so neglectful with replies and comments and all. I'm averaging seventy/eighty hours a week so far this year, and feel like a fat pile of tired lying beached on a heap of broken promises.

I tell you what, though. I wouldn't be half this knackered if I hadn't gotten so dang addicted to going and doing in every random corner of the country. We have so many wonderful places and people here, from the homemade truck nuts of Texas to the gluten-free toasters of Oregon to the ukulele-enhanced worship services of Ohio and the feral beach-chickens of Hawaii. 

It probably shouldn't be surprising that we have such trouble feeling like one united nation sometimes. And silly as it sounds, I really feel like we would treat each other so much more kindly, if only everyone had the luxury of visiting their thousand-mile neighbors on the regular.

But don't despair, guys. I'm gonna make those mega-millions any day now, and when I do, I'm handing everyone a fat check so that you can quit all that awful day-jobbing business and come romance the open road too. And we will love this country whole again, from sea to shining sea.

Letter Rip!

I see you, progressively-minded DFW writers. I see you sick at heart about the state of the nation. I see you calling, writing, and patriotically jimmy-rustling our senators and representatives. I see you amping up for November.

And I am here to cheer you on, with a caveat - because it's not about November 6th for us here in Texas. It's about *March* 6th. There are a shedload of brand-new brilliant grassroots candidates who have poured THOUSANDS of hours and dollars into getting their names on the primary ballot for your selection pleasure - and if we don't roll out and support them, we're going to get whichever pre-approved comfortable establishmentarians the Party has chosen for us. 

If we vote like we've always voted, we're going to get what we've always gotten. 

Only 14% of registered voters from *either* major party voted in the Dallas County primaries last year, and the rest of North Texas wasn't much better. That means 86% of our eligible population doesn't know they have a choice, doesn't care, or doesn't have access to the ballot box. If you've read this far, you already know how important this fight is. And as writers, we have a democratic duty to use our story-telling skills to inspire our fellow citizens to act.

And if my little story-telling exercise just here has got you fired up at all, I would like to invite you to lend your penmanship to a righteous cause - as Allison Campolo For Texas Senate District 10 and I undertake to print, sign, date, hand-address, fold, seal, and stamp 12,000 real, actual letters, telling her story, to her first 12,000 voters. Because mailers are cheap and easy, and go straight in the trash. Because this campaign is not about taking the easy, traditional, conventional way out. Because being the scrappy grassroots outsider means that your only infinite resources are love and give-a-damn - and y'all, if you have any damns to contribute to the cause, we would LOVE your company.

You know how it feels to see something like this in your mailbox. You KNOW how it feels to realize that someone cared enough to go the trouble of sending you an honest-to-god real letter. If you can help us bring that attention and care to people who have never felt seen, considered, or truly represented before, I believe we can change the whole game. Our first 'write-in happy hour' is this Thursday night. RSVP here, and we promise not to make you lick stamps!

Living at One Minute to Midnight: A How-To Guide for the Whelmed

I haven't posted much of anything about politics, for a whole tiresome list of reasons. But I am foremost a student of humans and human emotions, and I'm seeing a *lot* of my favorite humans getting fried by the bug-zapper that is our news right now. So if you are feeling burnt and crispy, here is something to think about.

Whenever you are involved in something significantly larger than yourself - a club or group, a company, a family, a nation - it is essential to understand your role. If your job with your company is to get and keep clients, then that is what you do. You pay attention to marketing and budgets insofar as they touch your own work, but you don't stay up all night worrying about the 401ks. That's someone else's job.

The problem with the intersection of politics and social media is that nobody is handing you a clearly-defined role. And without that, it's easy to think you are supposed to do everything. Every outrage that comes across your virtual desk is somehow your responsibility. Every worthy call to action has to be acted on, every objectionable comment replied to, every feed fed. And that is too much, y'all. No wonder we are getting overwhelmed and dropping out.

But nobody is going to come over to your desk and dump half your virtual inbox in the trash on your behalf. You are going to have to decide for yourself what is and isn't your responsibility. Right now, I can see two ways of organizing your give-a-damns:

1. Filter by cause. Let's say you are all about minority rights, healthcare, and gun control. Those aren't just issues you have opinions about - they are the three hills you are willing to die on. So you go to the mat for *those causes specifically* - you call, you march, you research, you debate - and let everything else pass you by. Climate change is somebody else's job. Economic issues are somebody else's job. You are fighting in the Pacific theater, and you can not worry about Europe.

2. Filter by role. You know, a medic does not do the job of a sniper. If somebody needs some killing, don't call the medic. Conversely, the medic does not sign on to treat only a certain kind of soldier. They will use their specific skillset on *everyone* they can, to the absolute best of their ability. Maybe that's you. Maybe you have zero stomach for Facebook arguments, but you will gladly call your representatives and give them hell at the town hall meetings. Good! Appoint yourself the legislative muscle of the movement, and leave the diplomacy and debate to someone else. Or maybe you can't blow up phones and streets, but you are a rational, persuasive *boss*. Good! Be an outpost of reason and kindness here on the virtual frontier - help people understand each other, dig up the facts and figures that are getting buried under the hyperpartisan headlines, and add to the ranks of the thoughtful and enlightened. (God knows we need it.)

Regardless, y'all: it is essential, now more than ever, that we tap our individual talents and strengths, and trust our fellow-humans to do likewise. Don't do the things that hurt you. Don't let yourself get so tired and frazzled that you pass on the hurt to other people. This may be a war, but you are not the only soldier - and nothing proves that you have smart, sustainable passion for a cause like a list of ten other things you gave up to pursue it.

Retweeting is Not Enough

Well, this really hasn't been a banner week for race relations in America.

Marissa Alexander took a plea bargain to avoid a potential 60-year prison sentence for firing a warning shot when her estranged husband assaulted her.  Daniel "Lemony Snicket" Handler thought it would be funny to make watermelon jokes when presenting Jacqueline Woodson with the National Book Award.  Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy, was killed by police who mistook his toy gun for the real thing.  And then, of course, a St. Louis County grand jury made the statistically exceptional decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the shooting of Mike Brown.  EDIT: And manslaughter charges have just been dropped for the officer who killed 7-year-old Aiyana Jones during a botched police raid. 

So really what I should be saying is, this has been a god-awful week for black people in America.

I should mention that my Twitter feed blows up pretty reliably for every social shitstorm: Wendy Davis' filibuster, the Israel-Gaza conflict, #YesAllWomen, GamerGate, and so on.  And thanks to the magic of the retweet function, it's an eye-opening education every time: I get to hear from the most amazing, eclectic assortment of people - folks I never heard of or would have known to follow - because their voices have been signal-boosted around the world.

I don't tend to say anything myself.  Partly because I find social media tediously stressful whenever I use it as anything besides a newspaper.  Partly because Author Training School teaches you to play nice and get along, because the Internet is forever and the world is watching.  And partly because I'm either worried about appropriating victimhood within a group I belong to (for example, what right do I have to shout about sexual harassment when I've never been sexually harassed?), or else - as this week, when it's about a group I *don't* belong to - anxious not to speak out of turn.

We feel that a lot, don't we?  Whenever we are members of the dominant/majority group, there is always that urge not to be seen as insensitive, bigoted, or tone-deaf.  Maybe you don't want to be attacked for saying the wrong thing.  Maybe you don't feel qualified to render an opinion.  Maybe you are worried about speaking over the voices of the people who are most affected by the issue at hand.  Regardless, in this age of "like", "share", and "retweet", it is easier than ever before to let a one-click "yeah, what s/he said" do the talking for you.


But the National Book Award foul-up last week let me hear a really interesting case against that.  Here, let me re-blog-tweet it for you (and then advertise this post on Facebook for a veritable turducken of media incest):

(Please note that I have curated this page above - for the unabridged version, I recommend following @djolder himself.)

It's a hell of a proposition, isn't it?  Maybe it's just surprising to me because I've steeped for such a long time in the 'Hippocratic' school of social activism: don't tone-police, don't concern-troll, don't speak for, over, or above marginalized voices, and definitely, definitely don't make your feelings their problem.  "First, do no harm" sounds good until it turns into doing nothing, which is actually harmful.

But at the same time, this conversation up here was also a big relief to read, because it says so explicitly what maybe I should have realized a long time ago.

That EVERYbody struggles with this stuff, first of all.

That getting it wrong is as inevitable as it is survivable, secondly.

And most importantly, like... you know, doing the right thing is not like making a box of mac 'n cheese.  There is no such thing as a clear, unvarying, universal set of instructions to follow.  Doing the right thing is uncomfortable, messy, and different every time, because the issue at hand is different every time.  In fact, the only place where consistency seems to congregate is in the act of doing the *wrong* thing - that is, in saying little and doing nothing.  Maybe consistency itself is at the root of the problem, via those pattern-hungry urges we have to make everything fit into a reliable narrative - to treat everything we experience according to the same set of four-legs-good/two-legs-bad mental protocols.

So from here on out, I aim to do a better job of speaking up.  And here is my first exhortation: resist the pattern-spiders, people.  Fight them as hard as you can.

Love the NRA?  Ask yourself where their open-carry fervor went when Tamir Rice and John Crawford were shot for even appearing to exercise their 2nd-amendment rights.

Think this Ferguson mess would be better if we'd voted in more Democrats?  Gotta deal with the fact that the prosecutor on the Darren Wilson case (not to mention the state governor and the president) is a Democrat.

Big on men's rights?  Can't sit this one out: the overwhelming number of black boys and men who are incarcerated or killed by police, *especially* for appearing 'threatening', makes the problem of gender profiling incredibly clear.

Feminist at heart?  Definitely can't sit this one out: not only does a movement advocating equality for everyone need to stand up when it's men's turn on the institutional chopping block, but it also has to acknowledge that those deaths and convictions above are still being perpetuated by white feminine finger-pointing.

I'll stop here, because snark is unbecoming, and you wonderful people have almost-certainly done more than I have (which is again, shamefully close to nothing.)  But you get my point: we are biologically programmed to look for patterns, build a worldview around them, and then sort out everything we encounter in a way that fits that vision.  Making changes to that framework - demolishing bits we've realized were wrong, making new additions, remodelling the existing parts to fit together in a different way - is uncomfortable, messy, and different every time.

...you know, kind of like doing the right thing.

Anyway, I'm going to do a long-overdue right thing, chip in for Ferguson, and get me one of Daniel José Older's books.  Good luck in your own striving for rightness, y'all: it's a hell of a challenge, but one we can't afford to sit out on.


"The worlds within and without the Veil of Color are changing, and changing rapidly, but not at the same rate, not in the same way; and this must produce a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment."

A Psychological Portrait of Deschutes County, Oregon

Today, I'm writing from a town called Bend.  It's in central Oregon, the site of this year's Thompson Tour.

(Long story short: instead of getting together at Christmas, when everything is crowded, closed, and/or seething with winter plague, we gather the clan in the fall, at a different place every year.  By spending the money on travel instead of presents, we can see all kinds of fun and interesting places, and nobody has to cook!)

I've ventured out from my North Texas hobbit-hole a fair few times now, and let me tell you – there is really something special about going out west.  It's not because the nature out here is somehow magically better than anybody else's nature.  It's not necessarily some epigenetic American pioneer fantasy, either.  I think maybe it's because the ratio of earth to civilization is still so high here, even after all the Manifest Destiny and Go West, Young Man and Get Your Kicks on Route 66 of the last three hundred years.  Look here:

from Wired Science, and more specifically, NASA's Suomi NPP Satellite

Isn't it striking?  Out here on the left side of the country, the constellations of our towns and cities are still – even in the year 2013 – such sparse little specks in the vastness of the world... and you can't stay here long without feeling that.

It's frightening, really, to drive up roads that close for snow six months out of the year, and wonder what it would be like to break down in a blizzard and find yourself helpless, miles from any other human being.

image courtesy of my sister's enormous phone

Or to sit by a still lake, your phone at zero bars, and imagine how long you would go unfound if you suddenly had a heart attack.

taken by me

I have a taste for that kind of fear.  Even experiencing it in this safe, limited, touristy way pulls you back through thousands of generations of humanity – to people who huddled around fires in the dark, hoping to get through the night unnoticed by the things that lived outside the light.

Actually, I think that's one of the Western's most powerful attractions.  It's the only genre I know of that centers on a place – and more than that, a place so immense that it affects every living thing within its boundaries.  You had better step lightly and stay wakeful, it says, because nobody is coming to help you if you can't.  It's not horror – there's nothing malicious about it – but a place so vast and ageless as to be almost incapable of noticing you.  Human emotions like love and hate have their opposite here, in hundred-mile stretches of geological indifference.

sister again

Of course, while I-the-individual am tiny indeed, we-the-species are not, and it's dangerous to forget the power we have to alter our planet.  Still, in many ways, coming here feels like going home to my parents' house: we are bigger now than we were even a thousand years ago, and maybe even slightly more mature... but it's good to visit every now and again to remember where we came from, and to reflect on our smallness.

...and again.  No, I don't know how she does it either.

Happy birthday, me.  And thank you, Earth, for letting me live on you.

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

No, He Really is a Cunning Linguist

Okay, I'm like... six weeks late to the game, but I finally saw Django Unchained last week.

I won't write a whole review here, because the movie's too big and I'm too dumb (I need to see it at least two more times to get even half a grip on it).  Still, I'll get in line behind my hip compadre Matt Borgard in saying, "Loved that it was a movie about slavery that said more than 'Slavery sucks, aren't white people awesome for ending it?'"

But let's scoot over out of the massive shadows of racism and history for a sec.  Let me tell you what was really exceptional and interesting and surprising as hell.  (Spoiler level: mild.)

It's rare enough to get a story with a protagonist who's explicitly multilingual, and rarer still for that ability to be central to the plot.   But I can't remember EVER seeing a bad guy "baddened" by his ignorance of other languages.  

Well, so why is that?  Why is this so unheard-of?

Possibly it's a byproduct of our famed American anti-intellectualism.  After all, science gets you Frankenstein, Godzilla, zombies, super-viruses, the Matrix, Reavers, SkyNet, GladOS, HAL 9000, and Krieger Kleanse.  And whatever learning the heroes need in order to handle up on all that is usually about controlling your powers, using the Force, Eye of the Tiger, the power:responsibility ratio, or some other montage-friendly combination of physical know-how and moral fortitude.  Basically, unless you're tracking down a serial killer or doing night shifts at a magical museum, fancy-pants learnings are a gateway drug to supervillainy.  (So put down the book and go for a jog, Faustus, before you get us all killed.)

Every time somebody does science, somebody else gets a workout.

And possibly it's simpler than that.  Americans skew monolingual (only 20.3% speak a language other than English at home, though of course that doesn't catch multilingual people who default to English), so why would we want heroes who make us feel stupid and inferior? 

Here's what I don't get, though. Even setting aside all explicit fantasy, our heroic canon is full of exotic people with fantastic skills. We thrill to watch secret agents and fighter pilots and unstoppable kung-fu badasses, cops, soldiers, athletes, cowboys, explorers, gangsters, smoldering playboy billionaires, and yes, even the occasional noble attorney or oddball inventor.

So it's not like we're threatened by heroes who are cooler, smarter, or more talented than ourselves.  That's practically a prerequisite.  If we thought it was sexy to speak other languages, the silver screen would be full of people doing exactly that.

Inflect your prepositions for me, baby.  I want your relational noun.

Quick, name three movie characters who speak French.

I got Inspector Clouseau, Pepe le Pew, and Gomez Addams.  For the record, that's an idiot, a skunk, and an Addams.  If you want someone more respectable, you can hit up Le Chiffre or the Merovingian, but then you're over to villainy in pretty short order. 

And if that's what we think of what's widely regarded as a lovely and sophisticated language (which is to say, the mother tongue of those cheese-eating surrender monkeys), what hope can there be for German (Nazis), or Spanish (illegals), or Russian (wacky potato-drunk commies), or Mandarin (sinister industrial commies), or Swahili (wait, where's Swahiland again?)

Is part of the reason our heroes don't speak these languages because we don't respect the people who do?

I don't know.  I do know that it is really, dangerously easy to fall into the "Americans are stupid xenophobic bigots" mindset, where we gnash our teeth and pillory the tabloid-reading, reality-televising, Bieber-beliebing lowest common denominator.  That way lies madness, and yelling at the kids to get off our lawns.

But I would like to find out more about when we lost our reverence for the so-called "classical education", and whether there's any hope for reviving the intellectual sexiness of languages.  (By the way, this is one reason why I'm so jazzed for Russell Connor's Sargasso - danger, mystery, and monsters in the Bermuda Triangle, and one of the leading ladies is a linguist!)

In the meantime, please feel free to add to my list: which of your favorite books and movies have language is a central feature?

--I am simply trying to ascertain -
--Speak English, goddammit!

America: Chasing the Bear Since 1776

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The Acne of American Independence

So as you know, we of the American persuasion celebrated our Independence Day this month.  Or as Chris Rock tweeted:

"Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren't free but I'm sure they enjoyed fireworks."

He took some heat for that, but it's worth a mention. American liberty started with white men, and over the last 230-odd years, we've expanded the boundaries of legally-codified freedom to include former slaves, women, children, people of different colors and nationalities and abilities and beliefs.  Inch by bloody legislative inch, we are adding to the non-discrimination clause on the McDonald's job application.  And we're not hardly finished yet.

We tend to be proud of how far we've come - we in Texas celebrate Juneteenth, for example, to remember the day on which slaves finally achieved their freedom - but when you think about it, many of our most momentous social-progress moments were less a pioneering world achievement and more the end of a prolonged temper-tantrum.  We fought a massive, bloody war over slavery (seriously, what other country had to kill almost a million of its own citizens to get person-owning off the books?), spent the next hundred years perfecting the feng-shui of separate drinking fountains, and when the Supreme Court finally said "no, but seriously" in 1954, the result was Massive Resistance.  Nowadays, discrimination needs a softer touch - for example, just-so-happening to give hiring preference to "Laura" over "Lakisha", even when they have the same resumé - but it's still a fine American art.

To be clear: we are not a nation of assholes.  I firmly believe that.  Our national trophy cabinet is full of fantastic achievements - in the arts, in science, in government and industry and discovery and technological innovation - that fully merit the "we're #1" foam finger. 

But socially, in the way we treat our citizens, we've lagged behind.  We were, what, the 25th country to end slavery, the 30th to grant women the right to vote, the 98th to pass something resembling a universal health care system (behind freaking Tajikistan!)  If we abolished the death penalty tomorrow, we'd be the 99th country to do so. 

Which is why I don't think we've reached true independence yet.  In this one aspect, we are still a pupating adolescent - you know the ones.  They define their cliques by who's in and who's out.  They're obsessed with siblings and peers who might be getting unfair advantages or special treatment.  And when Mom even opens her mouth to say "Honey, could you please take out the - ", she triggers a boiling geyser of indignation.  "I KNOW ALREADY - get off my back, Ma!"

Yes, the trash will be taken out.

Yes, segregation and discrimination will be ended.

But by God, we are going to do it sullenly, shoddily, and at the last possible minute.

Because that's how someone behaves when they feel insecure - when they're still trying to stake out their independence and worrying about every little infringement upon it.  Think about how different life is as an adult.  Mom's on the phone, carping at you about grandbabies and how you're not getting any younger and and what about that nice Jamie Wilkerson from last summer's Bible retreat?  "Sure, Ma," you say, hoisting your black-leather knee-highs into the stirrups on the body swing.  "Hey, I gotta let you go - I've got a few friends over."

To me, THAT is what real independence looks like.  It doesn't mean you stop caring about other people.  It doesn't mean you don't take an active interest in things that affect your life.  But you no longer have to lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling and tasting bile at the thought of someone, somewhere, telling you what to do or getting something they don't deserve.  You are secure, because you have enough.

So!  Here's to American independence, y'all: it's going to be glorious, even if it doesn't come with a bow-topped red ferrari in the driveway.

Oh, and here's to my fellow AbsoluteWrite bloggers!  Check out these truly superior links on this month's blogging chain:

orion_mk3 - http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to this month's post)
knotanes - http://knotane.wordpress.com/ (link to this month's post)
meowzbark - http://erlessard.wordpress.com/ (link to this month's post)
Ralph Pines - http://ralfast.wordpress.com/ (link to this month's post)
randi.lee - http://emotionalnovel.blogspot.com/ (link to this month's post)
writingismypassion - http://charityfaye.blogspot.com/ (link to this month's post)
pyrosama - http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/ (link to this month's post)
bmadsen - http://hospitaloflife.wordpress.com/ (link to this month's post)
Poppy - http://poet-slash-writer.blogspot.com/ (link to this month's post)
areteus - http://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/ (link to this month's post)
Sweetwheat - http://gomezkarla.blogspot.com/ (link to this month's post)

and stay tuned for:

ThorHuman - http://knikriverstatic.com/
MelodySRV - http://createamelody.com/
Tomspy77 - http://thomaswillamspychalski.wordpress.com/
dclary - http://davidwclary.com

--Beavis and Butt-head, on behalf of your fellow Americans, I extend my deepest thanks. You exemplify a fine new crop of young Americans who will grow into the leaders of this great country.
--Huh huh huh huh. He said "extend."