Senator Scott Brown and Don't Ask, Don't Tell

I called Senator Brown's office in Washington, D.C., yesterday afternoon to urge him to vote to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that ridiculous law that affects everyone in the armed services in the United States.  Senator Brown has made comments, on the record, indicating that he will vote to repeal the law, which I reminded his staffer who answered my call.  She told me she was aware of Brown's comments and would pass my message along.  I told her I am a constituent of Brown's, that I vote in Massachusetts' fifth district (though, voter fraud alert, I live in the eighth district), and that I REALLY HOPE he will represent us, the people who sent him to Congress (though I didn't vote for him, he's still my senator) when this vote comes to the floor.  She was silent.  I asked her which district she voted in, and she told me she's not from Massachusetts.  Why is Scott Brown hiring people from out-of-state to answer his senate office phone?  I doubt she analyzes legislation for him, she ANSWERS THE PHONE, so why can't that job go to one of the many smart and skilled and unemployed folks in Massachusetts?  Maybe he couldn't find a Republican with a sweet phone voice here, or maybe she's a friend of one of those daughters of his he's always trying to pimp out.  Senator Brown, are you willing to go on the record about this? 

"For it is in giving that we receive" --Saint Francis of Assisi

Saint Francis is a favorite of my dad's--my parents were at one time considering purchasing a statue of him to put in their yard (and they're not really yard-statue folks).  He's had something of a resurgence in the general consciousness lately, as December (holidays, end-of-year) is traditionally a time when people donate their money or time to those in need.


"I am lucky, lucky, lucky," says Betty Londergan in Catherine Newman's article about charitable giving in the December issue of Whole Living magazine.  Londergan gives 'til it hurts--she's given away $100 a day for the entirety of 2010, for a total of $36,500 on December 31.  She gives to all kinds of charities and organizations--those that help kids, schools, farms, small businesses, people who are ill, all over the world and here in the United States.  I feel lucky, lucky, lucky too, I am bowled over at times by how fortunate I am, even as I skip buying fresh vegetables in favor of frozen (cheaper) and re-use plastic baggies and return bottles to the liquor store so I can use the $1.20 I get back to buy more beer.  I mean, frozen broccoli and plastic baggies and BEER?  How lucky am I?  More fortunate, better off, than most of the people alive in the world right now.

I've been carefully buying gifts for my family and friends and for the kids whom I babysit for Hanukkah and Christmas and birthdays for about two months now, making sure I still have enough money for groceries and car insurance and rent and all those other necessities that, if I fail to pay for, would require ME to ask for monetary help (which, though I could get, wouldn't be a good use of charitable dollars.).  My boyfriend and I are giving some family members a donation to my friend Tim's organization, Awesome Army, which helps Tim and others suffering with ALS, but we're not really giving 'til it hurts (see BEER, above).  When so many people need stuff--heat, warm clothes, medicine, plumbing, education, toys, dignity--how are we to decide where to send our dollars?  BE PICKY.  You probably can't give 29 million dollars to help eradicate malaria (just the idea that 29 million dollars is a drop in the hat in that fight is depressing), so maybe finding something that is smaller and more focused, where you know what your donation will purchase, is a nice option.  Be choosy, and give something.  You'll feel better. 

Picky About "Beauty Tips"

I keep reading and hearing about all these look-great-for-the-holidays tips, so I've decided to add my two cents: for thick-haired gals like myself, just make sure you're having sex more often than you're washing your hair.  Your scalp and SO will be very happy.  Happy December! 

A lonely, delusional life? Or just a choosy, committed one?

Jennifer Nassour, the Chairman of the Massachusetts GOP, is probably having a rough day.  Her party fared well across the country in yesterday's midterm elections, but not here in the (still, again) blue state of MA.  Scott Brown's election to the Senate seat long held by Ted Kennedy may turn out to be a fluke rather than a symbol of the changing tide of Massachusetts politics. 

Yet Nassour was on NPR sounding determinedly optimistic, disagreeing all over the place with the host of Radio Boston, Sacha Pfeiffer, as Pfeiffer asked her if she was disappointed with the election results.  She cited the Worcester County sheriff's race won by a Republican, as well as a few other, relatively minor races taken by the GOP.  She claimed that Jeff Perry, that lunatic Republican who was the supervisor of a police officer who illegally strip-searched an under-age girl several years ago and who then claimed, over the course of this campaign season, that he wasn't present when it happened and couldn't have prevented it, lost due to a vicious and harmful campaign strategy enacted by the Democrats.  Um, Jennifer, you're probably trying to save your own ass right now, but it was your strategy that channeled many MA GOP dollars into that race, and Jeff Perry lost, thank goodness, because even the state's registered Republicans (around 11% of registered voters in MA) probably saw through his bullshit and decided he is not a fit candidate for office.  Perry garnered a surprising 42% of the vote (surprising to me, anyway, since he's a crazy asshole), and then he LOST.  Hopefully he won't run for anything, ever again.

So, is Jennifer Nassour desperately trying to hold onto some credibility within her party, clinging to her conviction that the Republicans are the guys to trust, even in the lonely landscape of ultra-blue Massachusetts?  Is she a transplant from another, redder, region of the country?  Did she grow up in a working-class household, where Republicanism translated to "planning for the day we get rich" while continuing to vote for folks who make it more and more unlikely?  Or is her family more the country-club shade of Republican?  Who knows?  Who cares, when Mass GOP candidates had such a poor showing last night?  I'm curious about her own brand of picky-ness.  Maybe someday she'll grant me an interview, which I'll of course blog about here.  Attorney Nassour, are you out there?

Women, VOTE tomorrow!

Since the 1980 presidential election, women in the United States have outnumbered men at the polls.  There's been a lot of talk (and written words) focused on the theory that women in this country are so hopeless about the state of the economy and so disgusted by the lack of action on the part of our elected officials that they will skip voting in the midterms tomorrow.  I really hope this doesn't turn out to be the case.  Women voted in overwhelming numbers in the 2008 presidential election, and Barack Obama became the president-elect.  Many of those women were first-time registrants.  Many people (pollsters, pundits, commentators and journalists) claim that Obama won the election in large part due to the public being fed up with George W. Bush's disastrous foreign policy and generally piss-poor leadership.  This sentiment often discounts the brilliant and superior campaign strategy Obama's team enacted in the face of incredible odds.  Was the man, in addition to being super-smart and good looking, lucky?  Maybe, but he was also pretty picky about his campaign staff, and pretty picky about his message, and pretty picky about being inclusive. 

I watched a clip of the Sex in the City 2 Movie (actually, I watched two clips, but the first one was where Miranda and Charlotte claim to not understand how mothers who don't have full-time paid help manage their lives, which I found annoying) in which the four women, visiting the Middle East, sing at a karaoke club.  They sing "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar" to a bar full of men and women of all nationalities.  It's cheesy (the entire movie is cheesy, I've heard), but the song seems newly inspiring to me:

"I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore, and I know too much to go back an' pretend, 'cause I've heard it all before, and I've been down there on the floor, No one's ever gonna keep me down again...
I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin' arms across the land
But I'm still an embryo
With a long long way to go
Until I make my brother understand"

So, please vote tomorrow, American women!  Be picky, be choosy, and VOTE.  

Behave, please.

So as Bubbles said on the phone earlier this evening, "People just don't know how to behave sometimes."  Agreed, Bubbles!  Last night I was at Jacob Wirth's in Boston with my friends Sarah and Gina, and there were two couples at the bar, standing directly behind Sarah's seat.  They were seemingly straight, seemingly married couples, as both women were wearing (really ugly) wedding and engagement rings (I'm talking uuuugggglllyyy here, folks).  The two men appeared to be in their late thirties, maybe early forties, which made their behavior all the more confusing: they kept leaning on Sarah's chair and even put their elbows on the bar next to her plate while she was trying to eat.  They also were using outside, football-stadium voices, and remember, we were inside, at a bar.  They talk-yelled about how the Yankees suck, and how they're pro-union, and how they're in a union, and the Yankees suck, and they're in a union, and the Yankees suck, forfuckingever, while the wives stood behind them and didn't talk at all.  Not at all: not to each other, not to the men, not to anyone else in the bar.  It was quite strange. 

Why don't people like those guys have a sense of how to behave in public?  I accept that one can't be picky about one's family: families are the luck of the draw, it's a total crapshoot.  And yet, presumably these guys have been away from their original families (mom, dad, siblings) for awhile, and forged other relationships outside of those families (see above: wives with bad rings), and thus, should be able to recognize and correct the bad behavior that was maybe accepted in their original families.  And what about the women?  Why not say, hey, buddy, you're being kind of obnoxious, so why don't we move down toward the three empty seats at the bar and stop bothering these gals?  Why aren't they pickier?  Why'd they pick these guys, and why'd they, or the guys, pick those horrible rings?

So maybe I'm going to be called a big snob, but really, I'm not; I'm just PICKY.  I've gotten progressively pickier about the food I eat and the underwear I like and the soap I use as I've grown older, and I want everyone to evaluate, or re-evaluate, the food they're eating and the clothes they're wearing and the products they're using so that we're all living lives we choose, not just lives that are most convenient or cheapest or easiest.  Do it!  Be picky.  And be picky about the ring you wear to symbolize that you're partnered up for life.  You'll be wearing it forever, so don't choose or let someone give you a tacky ring.  Everyone you encounter has to look at it.  It's just polite.  

this was me, before I could vote.

I'm wearing a tiny sweatshirt from The Balsams, an amazing resort in Dixville Notch, NH!  Dixville Notch residents are the first people in the nation to vote in presidential elections.  They (there are about twenty-three of them or something) vote at midnight on Election Day.

THINK BEFORE YOU VOTE, and then, VOTE!

This morning I heard a brief story on NPR about a political ad that aired on a Spanish (television?) station. The ad urged folks to refrain from voting. The producer of the ad was interviewed and said that due to the 60-second time limit, he edited the last phrase of the ad, the phrase urging people not to vote, from the original, which urged people to refrain from voting for candidates who have betrayed or ignored them. While I understand the sentiment (why vote for someone who does not have at least some of your interests at heart?), in this, as in so many other things, context is key. Thanks, NPR, for doing an in-depth story and giving the producer a chance to explain his editing decision.

November is fast approaching and with it comes the end of all those commercials on tv promoting candidates or trashing candidates or urging us to be single-issue voters. This year an inordinate amount of money has been spent by "independent" groups who obliquely endorse a candidate under the guise of advocating for a cause. The Supreme Court decision that allows these groups to lawfully do so is a sound one, legally, but many groups are slacking on reporting how much money they're spending and completing FCC forms, the purpose of which is for reporters and the public are able to track these funds.

Being a U.S. citizen is a pretty sweet deal, generally, especially for those of us who were granted automatic citizenship by dint of being born in one of the 50 states. We're free to complain about everything about our republic, we're free to gather and protest and criticize our government and leaders. I see my basic obligations as a citizen as being confined to paying taxes, returning library books, moving my car on street-cleaning days, and voting. That isn't so much for our government to ask of us, is it?

My dad (a pro-life, smart, thinking Catholic who is a staunch Democrat) and I went to see and listen to the excellent historian and academic Jill Lepore the other night at Porter Square Books here in Cambridge, and she reminded the audience that our experiment is a new one, that our country and government are novel tests for what happens when democracy is put into action. To this end, citizens are pioneers (sans the irritating and dangerous covered-wagon travails). We are obligated to research and think about candidates and, after they are elected, to track the job our representatives are doing.

Be picky! Picky-Picky Quimby was freed from these responsibilities, as he was a cat, and didn't even get a vote within the family on what he ate or whether Ramona ought to be confined to the basement instead of him. If you're reading this you're likely not a cat, and so you are held accountable for your actions (or non-actions) as a citizen. So be picky, think, and then VOTE next month.

People need to be pickier.

This is my best friend, Bubbles, and my ex-cat, Maorou. They're both beautiful, complicated mammals. They are not to be taken advantage of, although in the past, I've taken advantage of both of them.

Folks ought to be pickier, in so many ways. We need to be pickier, choosier, about the people for whom we vote to represent our interests in government; about how we get our news; about how we find our information; about the books we read and the people we date and the food we eat. My dear friend Gina suggested recently that we (meaning she and I and our other friends) are "niche people" which means, to her at least, that we are not representative of women and men of our generation in the United States. I am resistant to this idea! I am not an artist or an intellectual or someone with lots of money or someone who doesn't know where her next meal is coming from. I am not an victim or survivor of abuse or serious physical illness or disability. I'm grateful and bratty every day. I want the same things millions of women in this country want: I want more money, more time, more physical stamina, more athletic ability, fewer chores, better sleep, better skin...I am not seeking fame, but rather, a way to restore my teeth and boobs to their sixteen-year-old loveliness.

Oh, to be Picky-Picky Quimby: old and tired, with clear memories of a toddler Ramona yanking on his tail; distrustful of the grade-school aged, gentler Ramona; disdainful of the discount cat chow the Quimby family feeds him due to their reduced circumstances. Remember when Picky-Picky meets his inevitable yet still untimely end? Beezus gets blisters on her hands from digging his grave.