The rising of our women is the rising of us all

I'm too angry to blog thoughtfully about what's going on in Wisconsin.

My parents were schoolteachers under a string of Republican governors, and I remember seeing a photo in the newspaper of my dad and his fellow workers protesting at some school board meeting, singing union songs. When I became a graduate student, I joined unions and participated in picket lines, so I'm definitely feeling some solidarity with the people of Wisconsin.

Many times over the past few days, I've seen folks reference Martin Luther King Junior's reminder that "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." That sentence has become a sort of mantra for me over the past few days.

Suffragists, Section of Working Women, 1917 (source)

As many people have pointed out, the end of collective bargaining disproportionately affects women employees--as do various other actions being taken this legislative season in state legislatures across the nation.

I feel moved, then, to share one of my favorite songs. Here's Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco performing their version of "Bread and Roses" (scroll to 1:18, where the song begins):



Lyrics (slightly different from the original lyrics):

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are brightened by the beauty a sudden sun discloses,
And the people hear us singing, “Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.”

As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men –
For they are in this struggle and together we can win.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes –
Hearts can starve as well as bodies; give us Bread, but give us Roses.

As we come marching, marching, a hundred million dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew –
Yes, it is bread we fight for — but we fight for Roses, too.

As we come marching, marching, we're standing proud and tall –
The rising of our women is the rising of us all –
No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes –
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.

Crossfire

Have I shared with you my red-state nightmare?

A gunman enters a class I'm teaching in a large lecture hall. Students at first look shocked, but then they all stand up, draw their handguns, and start shooting. (Take a moment to imagine the crossfire and the terror.)

Thanks to the lovely politicians in my new state of delusion, that nightmare is one step closer to reality.

My campus has banned smoking anywhere on the university's grounds. But it's likely that very soon students will be able to bring guns to class.

Smart is sexy--in the classroom, on the job market, pretty much anywhere. Guns, not so much.
Photo by Janina Szkut, and used under a Creative Commons license

I know many students at Boise State come from rural areas and grew up hunting. They're comfortable, therefore, with hunting rifles. But let's be honest--we're not talking about letting students and others bring rifles onto campus. We're talking about handguns. (Including at football games. Because football isn't already enough of a blood sport.)

As someone who grew up in an area scarred by handgun violence perpetrated by teenagers and young adults, I am profoundly uneasy with this latest development.

I have no words

. . .except for these: the folks at this protest are bigots and racists, plain and simple. Even worse, some of them are elected (Republican) reps, one of whom made death threats against the Muslim families attending this charity event.

Please spread the word of these protesters' and representatives' hateful wrongdoing.

Ups and Downs, Ups and Downs

When I was in elementary school, a teacher read my class a book that followed the pattern "Fortunately. . . Unfortunately." It was like this one--and maybe it was that one, but the copyright date doesn't seem right. Anyhoo, cribbing from Amazon's description of that book, the plot went something like this:

Fortunately, Ned was invited to a surprise party.
Unfortunately, the party was a thousand miles away.

Fortunately, a friend loaned Ned an airplane.
Unfortunately, the motor exploded.

Fortunately, there was a parachute in the airplane.
Unfortunately, there was a hole in the parachute.

Lately my life has seemed to be a big, disjointed narrative of Fortunately. . . Unfortunately. . .

Some episodes:

I get a nasty head/chest cold. I begin to recover. Then I get a second round. Then I begin to recover again, but with a twist--my head and chest are clear but I have all the tiredness of a mononucleosis victim. Plus: insomnia! Today, in fact, is the first day in a while that I've had enough energy to make it through the day intellectually and physically intact.

Today I turned in a grant application I've been working on for months. Yay! I've even come to grips with the university's indirect cost rate scaling down the project to the point where it's a bit embarrassing. I even found the strength to correct the grants guy when he called the $50,000 grant proposal "small." (Those of you in the sciences may not realize that a grant over, oh, $3500 is pretty damn big for a humanist.) And then, just as I think I have all my ducks in a row, I learn there's another form specific to my university--a big, complicated one--that I need to get filled out and double-signed. And no, my first thought was not, "What the fuck am I paying indirect costs of $19,500 for if the grants folk aren't going alert me to the fact that I need to fill out this friggin' form?" Fortunately, the grants folks are actually quite nice, and this was in the big scheme of things a small oversight, and they'll help me get it filled out quickly.

Lucas starts kindergarten in the fall. Unfortunately, our local elementary school is kind of sketchy. I'm not one to look at test scores, but let's just say a 50% drop in boys' reading proficiency between kindergarten and first grade raises a red flag--especially when that decline isn't mirrored throughout the district. Fortunately, Lucas earned lucky #13 (of ~150) in the lottery for one of the area's best-regarded charter schools, the one to which local hippies and commies (read: the professoriate) long to send their kids. Unfortunately, through the whims of fate (read: large Idaho families + priority for siblings of current students), even #13 might not be a good enough number to get him into the school. We'll know within a couple of weeks. Keep your fingers crossed for us, OK? As Fang has detailed on his blog, Lucas has been running into a number of budding sociopaths in his preschool, and we'd really prefer that he fall in with the kind of kids whose parents are serious about sending them to a great school, even if it's in what's widely acknowledged as Boise's armpit.

Then there's Utah. That post was a way for me to come to grips with the fact that a doctor found a giant tumor in my 87-year-old grandmother. In her colon. Because her primary care physician is (literally, alas) in a coma and thus no one had pointed out to her that her symptoms might indicate a cancer-scale problem--which means she hadn't had a colonoscopy in, well, ever. Fortunately, the surgeon thought he could excise the tumor, do a temporary colostomy, and reconnect the remaining parts of the colon. Unfortunately, he found the tumor is cancerous, the cancer has metastasized to her liver and pancreas, and the primary tumor is inoperable because of scar tissue from an apparently botched hysterectomy from 40 years ago. The surgeon gives her two years to live.

I'll write a blog post about my grandmother when I have the emotional strength to do so. For now let's just say that I've always marveled at her strength and good humor, and that my grandmother has not just been a caretaker and adviser to me, but also a very good friend. Even today, just a couple days after her surgery, even though she'd had family and doctors and nurses and physical therapists visiting her all day long, she was chatty and even optimistic. We talked and laughed for 25 minutes--and this is a woman who recently found out she's terminally ill and had just hours before learned how to empty the colostomy bag that she'll use for the rest of her life. I love the woman dearly, and I'm having a very difficult time being so far away from her.

This geographical angst has been made even worse by Idaho politics. I love my job dearly, and what little I've seen of this state is achingly beautiful in that wind-scrubbed arid intermountain way. I do plan to stay here for a long time. Yet recent events have made me regret, just a little, putting so much distance between me and California.

Share your own Fortunately. . . Unfortunately. . . scenarios in the comments. It's good to know I'm not alone on this roller coaster.

Putting things in perspective

From Robert Reich, on the Republican strategy:

Last year, America’s top thirteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as capital gains – at 15 percent – due to a tax loophole that Republican members of Congress have steadfastly guarded.

If the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. Who is more valuable to our society – thirteen hedge-fund managers or 300,000 teachers? Let’s make the question even simpler. Who is more valuable: One hedge fund manager or one teacher?

Next stop: Hellscape

Caution: I may be channeling Fang.

Photo by Shane Gorski, and used under a Creative Commons license.

In recent years, I haven't been prone to pessimism, but I'm beginning to believe that the Republicans won't be satisfied until we're all living in heavily armed survivalist compounds outside of dead (liberal!) cities. Only then will we have achieved the vision of the Founding Fathers--only it will be a twisted, post-apocalyptic version of Jefferson's agrarian middle landscape.

I know I need not provide much evidence on a national scale to readers of this blog, but may I share a few highlights gleaned from a few of the blogs I read, and only from the past few days? (Then, my friends, only then shall we turn to the clusterfuck that is Idaho.)

First, there's Historiann's post about representation without taxation. She sums up the Colorado governor's delusion plan to make the state more "pro-business"--the plan is awfully familiar to those of us a bit to the north and west of Historiann--and then provides this commentary:

What a brilliant “pro-business” plan this is! Absolutely everyone wants to move their businesses to a state that’s cutting education! It’s so easy to get your employees to see the advantages for their children of attending schools with huge class sizes and no “extras” like music, art, sports, or anything that’s not covered on the Colorado Student Annual Progress (CSAP) tests. And if they love that, they’ll love the nonexistent state support for universities here! (And guess what? Republicans here are lauding the governor’s “seriousness,” while Democrats are treating Hick’s budget like a flaming bag of poo left on their doorstep.)

We get the politicians we deserve. The fatuousness of these conversations among our elected representatives reflects our own unseriousness as citizens. We expect to enjoy quality schools, universities, parks, roads, hospitals, medical care, emergency services, low-income assistance, prisons, public transportation, and all other services without paying taxes. We’ve been living off of the crumbling infrastructure Americans invested in fifty years ago and more, expecting that nothing would change and that no further investment was required.

A-fucking-men.

Then there's Bardiac's upper-Midwest state, which has been in the news quite a bit lately for its attempted pounding of public-sector labor unions. She provides a round-up of Republican plans to, for example, eliminate health insurance and pensions for "limited-term employees" (who, she points out, are mostly women), as well as cut funding for Medicaid, so that even the children of these newly health-insurance-free employees won't have access to affordable healthcare. She then nicely details the difference between pro-business factions and those of us on the front lines of public service and in particular education:

There's some bluster on both sides, of course. But the bluster of state workers is so much less effective. I was thinking about how ineffective our bluster is.

And here's what I figured out: our problem is that we actually care.

We value education and care about educating our students.

We care about doing jobs we think are important enough that we take less pay than we'd get in the private sector (it's in the news, not just some opinion I have).

So we aren't going to mess with students or do less work.

Can I hear another amen, people?

(Arbitrista seems to agree:

Why so glum? My nature perhaps, and the fact that these are discouraging times. But more importantly I don't have a great deal of confidence that the Democratic Party will do anything to stop it. As with abortion rights or gun control, Democrats have stopped fighting very hard for unions. They're pretty much absent from the public debate on these issues, which means that one one side you have a barrage of relentless propaganda and on the other....nothing.)

And then, via Shark-Fu, we learn of a particularly asinine proposal to eliminate child labor regulations in Missouri. Here's the summary of the bill from the state website:

SB 222 – This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.

(Take a moment to pry your jaw off the ground. I'll wait. I'll use the time to teach Lucas how to earn pennies an hour on Mechanical Turk.)

Quips Shark-Fu, "I’m guessing that [state Representative Jane] Cunningham, ever a faithful minion, consulted Satan prior to filing this shit."

Now that we've finished a rapid tour of flyover America, let's take a look at my far-flung corner of Real America.

Via Sisyphus at 43rd State Blues, I learned about the blog of state rep Nicole LeFavour, a Democrat who represents my favorite parts of Boise. LeFavour penned a post titled "How to Tank a State Economy: Easy Steps for Lawmakers." It's worth reading in its entirety, but it's such a well-organized post that it's possible to outline it here.

1. Destroy Jobs

A. Lay off as many state employees as possible

B. Reduce wages

C. Be sure that businesses doing contract work for the state go bankrupt

D. Repel Businesses Seeking to Move into Your State

2. Increase Costs to Families

A. Force Families into Crisis

B. Make Education More Expensive

C. Remain Dependent on Fossil Fuels

D. Increase User Fees for Everything

3. Keep State Government in Perpetual Fiscal Crisis

A. Turn away federal matching funds or any form of money paid to the federal government by taxpayers in your state.

B. No matter how well the national economy is recovering, predict doom for your own state.

C. Create Political Strife.

D. No Matter How Much Things Fall Apart, Don't Raise Taxes.

4. Reduce The State's Population

A. Nothing says economic disaster like death and out migration.

But really, this outline doesn't do LeFavour's post justice. Click through to read it yourself, but here are some of my favorite recent Gem State hijinks (and their results, many of which have been realized) she suggests the state should pursue if it really wants to fail big:

• Be sure your public schools rank last in the nation for per pupil spending, class size and adequacy of school facilities, course offerings, text books, lab supplies and equipment and materials essential to teaching.
• Provide no anti-discrimination job protections for gay people. Technology companies are full of gay employees. Even if a company provides its own job protections, a state needs to project a hostile enough atmosphere to guarantee that other family members seeking jobs or educational opportunities will face discrimination in employment, housing and education in any given town across the state.
• Ensure state leaders talk as much as possible about large predatory animals decimating wildlife populations and killing domestic animals.
• Even if you can not pass such a law, at least claim you will enact Arizona-style immigration policies so that employees and business owners with darker skin or names like Martinez or Perez will fear eminent racial profiling, detainment or arrest.
  
• Fail to fund or develop a network of low cost health clinics. The fewer options families have, the more likely they are to fail to access preventative care and fall into costly medical crisis and personal bankruptcy.
• Stop funding water quality monitoring, refuse to extensively regulate day care facilities and provide as few counseling services as possible in local schools to ensure an adequate supply of physical and mental health crises statewide.
• Eliminate public Kindergarten. Make sure your state's children start out behind the rest of the nation.
• Require public schools students take on-line classes in order to graduate. Decreased teacher interaction and the lack of support for those who struggle can be highly effective at wasting years of college tuition as students fail classes or need extensive remedial coursework. The impact on families of students with disabilities can be impressive as those with certain learning styles have higher failure rates and are more likely to fall into cycles of dependence later in life should support in these early years be inadequate.
• Deny local communities the ability to fund public transportation. In urban areas this guarantees tax dollars are sucked rapidly into perpetual freeway widening projects which produce few jobs but expend state revenues on raw materials. A lack of public transportation also directly increases costs to families who struggle with with car maintenance or gas prices or for those commuters who waste time in traffic during their commute.
• Ensuring failure of your public school system can help bring on privatization and a stratification of the quality of educational opportunity available to families of differing incomes. User fees in education are not a new concept. They are a bridge to stratification and ensure that some kids will not be able to reach the same levels of academic attainment that the more wealthy do.
  
• Violate federal laws so that your state faces sanctions. Refusing to enact federal health care reform for example may well result in the state losing all federal funds for medicaid --meaning a loss to health providers, businesses and families of nearly a billion in federal dollars.

May I add "Have your State Board of Education suspend faculty governance at your state universities"?

Goddammit--I don't have time to become a political activist.

Yet I heart Nicole LeFavour. It's nice to know there's someone so bright and articulate in the statehouse. When Fang gets back on his economic feet (see: We Moved to Idaho), we'll definitely be donating to her campaign fund.

What's your state doing to transform itself into an environmental, economic, and educational hellscape?

Fun with Name Profiler

Ah, I could play with this world names profiler all day. . .

Here are maps of my parents' surnames. When I say my people are from icy climes, I'm not kidding:



The map does explain the origin and utility of my ridiculously straight hair, however: no droplets from this morning's freezing fog are going to cling to it--they'll slip right off.

Methinks my Dad's people find Mormon missionaries to be highly persuasive:

Liking Ike

I can't believe I missed this anniversary, but one of my favorite American speeches turned 50 a couple days ago. It was overshadowed by the mainstream media's hoopla of the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's inauguration, so I'm dragging it into the light here.



Read Eisenhower's farewell address.

A few gems from Stephen Colbert

Colbert is on fire this week. If you haven't seen these clips, take a break--you deserve one!

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Common rites

As I write this, the midnight hour sweeps round the world, ushering in a new year. It's a half hour 'til midnight here, and I'm the only one in the house who remains awake.

I'm remembering tonight the New Year's eves of my childhood. We'd spend the evening at my grandparents' house, a classic bright yellow, brick-porched California bungalow just a few doors down from our own home. Perhaps folks would drink a bit too much, but usually my sister and I didn't notice--we were drifting to sleep as my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles laughed at The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

At midnight, we'd run out onto the porch, banging pots and pans with wooden spoons. Some of the older neighbors joined us in this rite. At some point during these years, my grandfather declared it was an old Scottish tradition to run around a tree three times at midnight for good luck. We're not a superstitious people, but we gave in to Pops's tradition, circling the block's palm trees.

Fang and I don't have any New Year's rites, though I suppose we will concoct some as Lucas grows more cognizant of the significance of a new year, and how in one moment we can be in (for the nation) a truly awful year like 2010 and in the next moment be completely free of it, at least temporally.

2010 has been a dynamic year for my little family. So that I might pursue a tenure-track job, we uprooted the family and moved to Boise. It's a move I don't regret, as I really do love my job and adore my new colleagues, but at least once I day I think of California and feel very much as if I'm in exile from where I ought to be. After all, California is more than just a place I was passing through--my family has deep, deep roots there. I suspect one day I'll return, though not any time soon, as I have lots of exploration and growth waiting for me here.

One of the things I've learned in my first semester here is that faculty here really do have a great deal of autonomy. I'm enjoying that tremendously, and I plan to write more here about how my teaching might change as a result of that independence. The expectations for my position really do seem to be wide open, and folks have seemed interested in whatever I propose. 2011 may, then, be a very interesting year intellectually.

On the home front, I have more work to do. We need more grounding in this place, as individuals and as a family. I need to help Fang find what he needs here—and that means both meeting physical needs and finding him greater intellectual and emotional fulfillment. He is, after all, a newspaperman in an era of newspaper extinction. What do you do when you're almost fifty years old and your entire industry disappears--especially if you don't have a college degree? Fang says he suddenly feels sympathy for hoop skirt makers, but I suspect under his humor there's a good deal of pain and perhaps even some fear about how he fits into our new life here.

So we need to spend more time together, to establish rituals and common rites, and to aid one another's intellectual, personal, and professional development in this next stage of our lives. I need to remind Fang that the advice offered to Seamus Heaney's narrator by the shade of James Joyce applies to both of us, even though our recent move was driven by my career, not Fang's:

‘Your obligation
is not discharged by any common rite.
What you do you must do on your own.

The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at night

dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here. And don’t be so earnest,

so ready for the sackcloth and the ashes.
Let go, let fly, forget.
You’ve listened long enough. Now strike your note.’

Here's hoping 2011 brings both roots and wings.

I'm heading outside now to thrice circle a tree. I'll take an extra lap for you and yours. Happy New Year.

This Friend speaks my mind

Chuck Fager, director of Quaker House, on the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell:

This change has two important effects, I think:

First, it will enable thousands of present and future soldiers to pursue their careers on their merits, which is only as it should be.

Second, beyond these individual cases, repealing DADT strikes an important blow to the identification of war with masculinity, with heterosexuality, with America, and all three with God.

This identification is idolatry, pure and simple. But it is all too widespread in American Christianity, and it is way past time for it to be broken up.

Enough

Someone who is close to me recently returned from six or seven months of service as a Marine in Afghanistan. He drives trucks for the military.

Earlier this year, family members were informed he had been involved in an "incident," but they weren't given details. Today I learned a bit more about the nature of this event.

I wasn't surprised to learn that a truck he was driving hit an IED. He regained consciousness in a helicopter.

Physically, he's allegedly recovered. But now that he's stateside, he has terrible PTSD. He can't sleep or drive, and even riding in a car is apparently too much for him. He cries a lot.

What's his family's response to this? They're criticizing him for not being sufficiently masculine. They can't make the connections among the Bush-era anti-terror wars they supported, the crappy economy made worse by Bush administration policies, this guy's joining the Marines because he felt enlistment was his one ticket out of Hellmouth, Arizona, and the total shattering of his life because of his service in Afghanistan.

The family's proposed solution is that he accept Jesus and go back to Afghanistan like a real man.

Fuck you, conservative America.

Public Service Announcement: For Folks on the Job Market

A good friend is hiring for a position in her organization. She instructed her assistant to run Google and Facebook searches on each applicant.

I present, then, an object lesson in why folks on the job market need to set their Facebook wall posts to be private. Here's the most recent update from one applicant:


And yes--as the applicant in question might say--THAT SHIT'S REAL.

More brilliance from Stephen Colbert

It gets really interesting around 2:50, and absolutely brilliant at 3:50.

For once, I'm grateful I speak cultural studies. Colbert's writers are awesome.

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Post-Structuralism Explained

Finally!

ART THOUGHTZ: Post-Structuralism from Hennessy Youngman on Vimeo.

I probably should mention it's NSFW--unless you happen to work in the academy.

On winter fashion

Brrrrrrrrrr! It's been cold here; a few days ago it was hovering in the single digits. It's back up to 30 degrees now, but there's more snow coming down. With the snow already on the ground, we'll probably wake up to 7 or 8 inches of snow tomorrow morning. It'll make for a white-knuckle, icy drive down the hill to preschool and campus.

Is it any wonder, then, that a pair of these Timberland boots, which arrived in the mail yesterday, are among my new favorite things?


I adore them.

They're a lot more practical than the peep-toe stilettos I saw a woman wearing today on campus when it was snowing and about 25 degrees. And they keep my legs warm, unlike the leggings I keep seeing women students wear without pants or skirts. This look, I might point out, is much appreciated by some of the 50- through 70-something men on campus; I've seen them turn around or cock their heads to leer at undergraduate ass on half a dozen occasions since it became cold and the leggings made their debut.

And so, a couple of public service messages for the local undergrads:



Again: Idaho, you're welcome.

On Faith

BrightStar blogged recently about wanting to re-embrace her faith. She wrote, "the very idea of trying and trying and not finding what I am seeking scares me."

Her short post resonated with me. I haven't written much here about faith because it's a hugely difficult thing for me to talk about. It's like several skeins of yarn all tangled together, each strand representing some years-long line of thought.

Among the strands:

- My early experiences with religion. When I was a small child, my parents attended with some regularity a Presbyterian church whose Sunday school teachings were largely inscrutable to me. When I was in the middle of elementary school, we began attending a local Congregational (later UCC) church. The Christian ed there made more sense to me, but the theology still didn't jibe with my understanding of the world. So in junior high I stopped attending church, and I considered myself an atheist. Maybe my conception of God was too narrow, but I just couldn't see the workings of a divine being in the world.

- Politics. The loudest Christian voices in this country are absolutely repellent to me. The homophobia in particular is unconscionable. (Note: I know there are plenty of queer Christians and queer allies among Christians. I'm talking here about the usual suspects we see in the mainstream media, OK?)

- My own long-term commitment to pacifism, plus a frustration with the American conflation of god with country and the resulting unthinking patriotism and jingoism.

And yet, despite my distaste for religion and my lack of belief in anything resembling the Christian god, I have retained some confidence in what might be called the soul--by which I mean not something that goes to heaven or hell once we shuffle off this mortal coil, but rather something profoundly human that at the same time transcends our everyday humanity--the essence that drives the best art, makes love possible, and allows us to empathize with people very unlike ourselves.

I am, it appears, an atheist with an abiding belief in the soul.

As you might imagine, there's not a lot of room for someone with my beliefs in the religious practices, and especially the Christian denominations, most common among Americans.

And yet I feel moved at this time to write something about my search for a welcoming spiritual practice.

* * *

In the fall of 2004, I was a graduate fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, and I found housing that was affordable, safe, and within walking distance of the National Mall in the form of the Young Women's Christian Home, a (theoretically) nonsectarian residence. I learned a lot about conservative American Christianity from my dorm mates during my three months there, and I had a lot of interesting conversations about faith and politics.

Sometimes "interesting" also meant troubling. At one new friend's invitation, I attended Baptist Bible study on Wednesday nights, an experience that underscored for me the delusions of fundamentalism based on "close readings" of the Bible. Let's just say that polysemy never occurred to these folks, and questions that suggested the possibility of multiple interpretations were not exactly welcome.

On Sunday mornings, the YWCH emptied as most of the women went to church, and frankly, after all of my nodding during dinner conversations with young conservatives and listening to one particular Baptist minister persuade his flock that the second coming of Christ will look like an atomic bomb blast and seeing the congregants imagine the schadenfreude the newly raptured would feel when that day finally arrived, I needed to cleanse.

My childhood best friend was Quaker, so when I was looking for someplace to be on Sunday morning, perhaps it's not surprising that I found myself walking from the Metro station in Dupont Circle, up Connecticut Avenue toward the neighborhood of ambassadorial residences that surrounded the Washington, D.C. Friends meetinghouse.

* * *

I had been reading a couple of books by Shelby Spong, who writes in Why Christianity Must Change or Die, "Institutional Christianity seems fearful of inquiry, fearful of freedom, fearful of knowledge--indeed, fearful of anything except its own repetitious propaganda, which has its origins in a world that none of us any longer inhabits." This really resonated with me, as did Spong's explanation in A New Christianity for a New World of his own beliefs. Spong is a former Episcopal bishop who, according to the first chapter of this book, is a Christian. Yet, as he writes,

I do not define God as a supernatural being. I do not believe in a deity who can help a nation win a war, intervene to cure a loved one's sickness, allow a particular athletic team to defeat its opponent, or affect the weather for anyone's benefit. I do not think it is appropriate for me to pretend that those things are possible when everything I know about the natural order of the world I inhabit proclaims they are not.

Spong writes that because he does not see God as a supernatural being, he cannot claim the divinity of Jesus, nor his virgin birth, miracles, or resurrection. He continues,

I do not believe that this Jesus founded a church or that he established an ecclesiastical hierarchy beginning with the twelve apostles and enduring to this day. I do not believe that he created sacraments as a special means of grace or that these means of grace are, or can be, somehow controlled by the church, and thus are to be presided over only by the ordained. All of these things represent to me attempts on the part of human beings to accrue power for themselves and their particular religious institution.

As I read on, and learned that Spong espouses feminist, antiracist, and queer-friendly stances on civil and human rights, I uttered an involuntary amen.

One more bit from Spong:

The primary question I seek to raise in this book is this: Can a person claim with integrity to be a Christian and at the same time dismiss, as I have done, so much of what has traditionally defined the content of the Christian faith? Would I be wiser and more honest if I were to do what so many others in my generation have done--namely , resign from my membership in this faith-system of my forebears? . . . . In the eyes of many, both in the Christian church and in the secular society, it would. . .have represented an act of integrity. It would not, however, have been honest, nor would it have been true to my deepest convictions. My problem has never been my faith. It has always been the literal way that human beings have chosen to articulate that faith.

Dude was an Episcopal bishop. He knows whereof he speaks, and I suspect he knows to whom he speaks, that his audience is a very large one.

I'm definitely a member of that audience. I'm open to Christian philosophies of empathy (walking a mile in another person's shoes), forgiveness and nonviolence (turn the other cheek), and deep caring for people who are unlike oneself. I don't see sufficient embrace or application of such philosophies in the many, many church services I have attended across the Christian spectrum.

So I wouldn't call myself a Christian. Maybe Christianish, though even that makes me uneasy because I find nauseating what passes for Christian discourse in the American political sphere.

* * *

Back in the fall of 2004, I found myself spending increasing amounts of time on the Friends General Conference website. The overview I found there of Quaker belief was reassuring. I don't remember if the website had the same content then as it does now, but these questions in particular interested me:

• Are you seeking haven in a world which may not be in pace with your needs?
  
• Do you wish to join with us to help in finding ways to implement the historic peace testimony of Friends "to oppose all wars and preparation for wars? "
• Do you wish to discover how you, as an individual, can help to create a better world?
• Do you seek a religious home, without creeds or required statements of belief?
• Do you desire to wait upon God in an expectant silence without the presence of intermediaries?
• Are you looking for meaningful spiritual community?

Aside from the primary testimonies of the Friends—simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and care for the earth—perhaps what most attracts me to Friends is their willingness not to always have an answer at hand. I've found other Christians and pseudo-Christians, when asked a question they cannot answer, turn to the Bible, a book that has never really spoken to me. Friends, on the other hand, will sit with something for a while, individually and communally, listening to the wisps of God within themselves and reflecting on what they hear. I also appreciate that, at least in the strand of Quaker practice that most appeals to me, they don't have a theology of heaven or hell; instead, they focus on this life, on this world. Theirs is a faith, it seems to me, rooted in contemporary concerns and with practices that allow for dynamic engagement with the world rather than judgment of it based on static creeds.

* * *

At the moment, I have many things I'd just like to sit with in silence.

* * *

This past Sunday I attended the local unprogrammed Friends meeting. There were only nine of us in the room, which is a bit small for my taste, but we just about filled the room at the local literary center where the meeting gathers. The meeting last Sunday was a completely silent one, and afterward, instead of people shaking hands as I've seen elsewhere, we joined hands in a circle and shared our thoughts on the previous week.

I met some very interesting people, and I intend to go back, but since there weren't any other kids there, I'm not sure how I'll handle the Lucas situation. I do want to raise Lucas with Quaker values, and establish his dedication to the peace testimony--assuming he chooses to embrace it--so that if there's a time when he needs to be a conscientious objector, he'll have a long personal history to draw upon.

I haven't said anything here about Fang, but he's shown some interest in Quaker values, but I know that he and I don't always tune into the same faith wavelength, so we'll see if he joins me in my latest experimentation with faith.

I'm still uneasy writing about faith in this space, because as I said, I'm an atheist, and I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking I'm opening my heart to their particular conception of Jesus, or that I'm open to proselytizing or evangelism. I wouldn't say I feel as if there's something missing in my life so much as I feel there's something there that I haven't adequately addressed.

What about you? What are the things you're uncomfortable writing about? And how did you find yourself where you are in your particular faith journey?

Corrupting Idaho's preschoolers, one classroom at a time

Lucas has gotten waaaay into spelling lately. Since the letters of the week at his preschool are "O" and "Q," on the way into school this morning, he was asking me how to spell "Q" words. We spelled "queen," and then Lucas spelled "queer."

"Mommy, what does 'queer' mean?"

I explained that queer has a couple meanings he should know and provided the definitions, emphasizing once again that some men love men, and some women love women, and that some kids have two mommies and some have two daddies.

Fast-forward 9 hours. I walk into his preschool classroom to find Lucas sitting at a table with two other little boys and a classroom aide. One of the little boys flashes a peace sign at me.

"Some dudes," he says excitedly, "love dudes, and that's OK."

My work is done here. I can move back to California now, yes?

You're welcome, Idaho.

Uncomfortable, and aspirational, conferencing

I'm attending a regional women's history conference right now. It resembles pretty closely many of the conferences I've attended. As a women's historian and feminist, it's pretty common for me to find myself at conferences where 85 to 90 percent of the participants are women, and even a higher percentage are white, with a majority (or nearly so) nearing retirement age or older.

I have a great deal of affection for such women—perhaps because I expect to be one of them in 30 years.

Yet there's something about these conferences that always leaves me a little bit cold. I often feel as if I've stepped back in time 20 or 25 years, as these conferences are very second-wave feminist—and it's not just because the women attending cut their feminist teeth in the 60s and 70s. It's because these conferences remind me that so much second-wave work has yet to be done in K-16 history education (and yet I'm beyond ready to move on). Many of my U.S. history survey students say they never had to consider women's history or black history or Chicano history in their K-12 years, and education-focused panels at this conference have reminded me that it's not just Idaho students who aren't engaging with women's history—students in much more progressive states are still getting mostly privileged-white-male history.

At the same time, if you drop me down into a more third-wave conference packed with feminists of color or with a more queer sensibility, I'd be equally uncomfortable. The cultural studies Ph.D. in me thinks they're fighting the good fight and that American society is waaaaay behind the curve in terms of civil rights, but my inner second-wave, white woman history educator also realizes that, in education at least, we haven't adequately set the foundation for such work.

So, for example, on my midterm for my U.S. history survey a couple weeks ago, I told the students they would have an opportunity to answer a question about the three greatest challenges to women's advancement in colonial and early federal America. We had just read Clarence Walker's book Mongrel Nation, and we had watched bits of documentaries addressing Jefferson and slavery. I even pointed out that slavery was a barrier to advancement for all American women. And yet fewer than half the students who addressed that question placed slavery in their top three challenges. Black women weren't even on their radar when they answered the question—even when the question itself asked them to be sure to consider women of color.

* * *

I don't mean to criticize conferences of the second-wave or third-wave persuasion. Rather, I'm trying to express my discomfort with both of them.

I'm also trying to find a way to articulate—in the sense of bones and joints, as well as of language—my own theoretical and methodological and physical space in the field of American women's history. And I need to do so in the next, oh, six hours, as I'm stepping in for a more senior colleague from another institution when I sit on a roundtable this afternoon. And hoo boy, do I ever have a sense of impostor syndrome.

When I agreed to participate in the roundtable, I didn't look closely enough at the timing and the participants. I didn't realize it was the closing plenary with a couple hundred women's historians in the audience, and I certainly didn't realize that some giants of women's history in the U.S. west would be sitting on the panel. I also didn't realize the focus would be primarily on women's history in Washington state, which is a topic with which I'm only passingly familiar. When I saw the long list of questions the moderator suggested we might address in the panel, I had a tiny panic attack.

But someone has to be the most junior person on the panel, so why not me?

I'm thinking, therefore, that my small contribution to the roundtable is likely to be methodological. I suspect if I can stave off further panic attacks on the dais, I'll be pushing (gently) for a democratization of public history, specifically for more innovative and participatory digital history projects. The subjects of public history projects are becoming more populist—for example, yesterday an architectural historian discussed attempts to get National Historic Landmark status for sites of queer struggle or sites significant in labor history. However, I'm not seeing—and maybe I'm just not looking in the right places—projects in which historians are, borrowing a couple of pedagogical terms, guides on the side rather than sages on the stage. Even many oral history projects make me uneasy on this account. I'll have more to say on this topic, I suspect, in the coming months and years, but for now I'll end with this question: How do you think we ought to go about increasing public interest in, engagement with, and initiation of history projects? Which is more important, broadly speaking, in increasing engagement—a project's subject or its methods?

Fun with midterms

It can be frustrating, yet fun, when a student confuses the source of a quotation. After reading Clarence Walker's Mongrel Nation, a student attributed the following to none other than Thomas Jefferson:

The blacker the berry the sweeter the juice
I want a black woman for my own special use.

I need wine. Lots of wine.