I was who I was

I admit I haven’t been at my best this last decade.
- The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

I woke early the morning of January second – 5:30 or so. I’ve had to give some attention to sleep lately – as well as to how I spend my waking hours – and this was an odd enough wake time to give me pause, about forty-five minutes’ worth, while I tried to figure out how getting up that early (or not) might affect the shape and substance of the day. I might have literally tossed or turned a few times, but it was – I was – quite peaceful. I half-dozed enough to form (for example) a dream-version image of a particular suburban mall parking lot that I’ve often crossed, but has never been part of my dreamscape; the dreamy bits seemed to alternate with moments of lucid, waking thought. Eventually my mind did what it often does, returned to some small failure from the past – some imagined slight from a casual remark, or some misstep arising from a lack of attention, sensitivity or feeling on my part. Now, my old habit when this happens is to mentally replay the scene until – what? I was right? I was wrong? I’m sorry? it hurts? And the new habit is to catch the old habit, maybe laugh, shake my head, and ask myself “Umm, are you ready to let go of this yet?” That morning – and even a few hours later I honestly couldn’t remember the particular memory that had bubbled up – I had an immediate and different response: “I was who I was. I am who I am”, and of course, after a beat, “I will be who I will be”. Hmmm. Not bad. Another thought was “It’s a new year.” To my surprise, that fact seemed not to carry any freight: neither dread nor promise.

…Hey, ya know breakdowns come and breakdowns go.
So what are you gonna do about it, that’s what I’d like to know.
- Paul Simon

Also in the mix that morning was not so much a revisiting of as a random reflection on the greatest of several apparently defining childhood traumas: a failure of parenting that after some fifty years I still can’t talk about in public, a sudden shock that at the time filled me at once with righteous indignation and abject terror. Does it sound as if I hold a grudge? Oddly enough, I seem not to. There I lay in bed, recalling the scene with a certain detachment, asking myself if I was angry at my mother, my father, both of whom failed me in that moment. And the answer was no. Angry at what? At their being young, being human, being unsuited for each other? For a moment’s indiscretion born of years of frustration and mismatched desire? No. No.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison

OK, so then came another long-familiar, oft-looping, interior script: “I need something. What do I need?” Usually this is followed by a perplexed and dissatisfied silence. On this morning of unsought, apparent attunement with the universe, though, the answer came as swift and certain as it was unexpected: “Work.” Work. Duh.

I don’t see myself as a person who’s in this situation. I don’t see myself this way.
- The Squid and the Whale

How did I get to be a bum? How did I lose touch with the reality of daily living? What’s going to snap me out of this? Maybe it starts with that simple realization: the thing I need, the thing that has been missing from my life, is work. Somehow the gift of realizing this lack and this need implies to me a resolve that goes beyond resolution.

At a certain point, research is no different from running. I had done plenty of both. Eventually you’ve got to stop, make a leap, and leave the ground behind.
- Sean Wilsey

When I got up it was still dark, and too early for breakfast. But I could write. It’s taken me another month to get this little memory down in black and white. But here it is.

Love to all,

M.

I’ve moved.

I’ve moved to an easier format for doing the work of this space: alerting friends to published news and commentary that have caught my interest or outrage and may not have caught theirs. Headlines feed at left; excerpts, rare comment, more context, and a link for a direct feed (updates intermittent) are at: delicious.com/Michael.Massing/outbasket
With simple syndication (subscription) widely available, I’ve discontinued the update emails. The help page here still works if you have questions. As always, thanks for your interest and attention.
Love to all,
M.
p.s. Click on a tag or category at right to return results from this archive. Clicking on a category or tag below a post takes you out of this archive and into a list of posts on WordPress.com, mine or not depending on the popularity of the tag or category.

rest in peace

My friend Lillian Robinson died about ten days ago. My best friend died. The person on this earth I owe the most to after my mother, the person who had more to do with the formation of my consciousness as an adult than anyone else, who taught me such Yiddish and Yinglish phrases – those flying buttresses to expressiveness and sanity – as I know, who taught me the usefulness of class analysis and reinforced the usefulness of looking things up, who was on the short list of people who challenged me to be the best poet I could be, the person who gave me my best approximation of the experience of parenthood, who may have saved me in some sense by suggesting I go back to school, and then helped make it possible to do so – those I suppose are as close as I can come for now to describing her place in my life.

I was able to visit Lillian for about ten days when she was in palliative care and knew herself to be terminal, and to reconnect with her family, including her son (I lived with Lillian and Alex for five years as the other adult in the household after the breakup of her marriage to Alex’s father, and with Lillian for a few months after that before I resettled in the Bay Area). Since her death I’ve been helping her family – my second family – with making announcements to her wide network, and with memorial activities. This is the first moment I’ve taken to reflect in writing – almost the first moment I’ve taken to reflect – on what her loss means to me. And beyond the bare bones that I’ve given you above, I don’t know what to say.

You will find on Lillian’s memorial page a number of links to appreciations of her life, as well as to photos showing some of her vitality and to a video from her last recorded public appearance, which suggests some of her strengths as explainer and exhorter, as analyst, activist, and teacher. I suppose I will be able to write more one of these days, but for now I just wanted to let those of you fortunate enough to have known her have this brief summary of what she meant to me, and to give the rest of you a brief introduction to an extraordinary and all too short life.

Little children, love one another.

M.

live long enough to find the good one. protect yourself.

(click image to play – 03:00)
Everyone I’ve shown Wilfrid Brimo’s French public service cartoon on STD protection who has taken time to respond has done so with enthusiasm and usually with warmth. No French is required to enjoy it: the tagline is “Live long enough to find the good one. Protect yourself,” bracketing the name of the ad’s producer, AIDES (not AIDS in French, but “helpers”; they claim to be the oldest French organization devoted to combating HIV/AIDS). Here’s an English-end-titled version. The same production team also made a similarly structured predecessor to this film, aimed at young women.

credits (pdf)

on choosing between the presumptions of the professionally religious (east vs. west)

You may have read or heard about Buddhist monks in Cambodia being forbidden to watch the World Cup, or if they did, to maintain detachment and show no enthusiasm, on pain of expulsion from their monasteries; a somewhat more tolerant pronouncement was made in Thailand.

Well, gosh darn it if that didn’t get me to thinking, and what follows from thinking but a limerick, right? *clears throat*

Whether watching football like a stick
in the mud, or believing a dick,
if unused, is an odd
sort of pipeline to God,
I believe I would rather not pick.

Yeah, yeah, I know, celibacy is practiced and valued in both traditions, but I think it’s only in Roman Catholicism that male professional (if corrupt) celibacy is regarded as a prerequisite for passing on divinity to the unenlightened, not to mention dictating (of all things!) their sexual behavior.

By the way, recent attention on the part of Buddhist heirarchs to the behavior of their charges during the World Cup may have been prompted in part by the warm reception given Khyentse Norbu’s film The Cup.

check the local domestic dress code before making pancakes for your boyfriend’s son

Caren MacDonald testifies at her trial on felony charges of interfering with custody and a misdemeanor charge of violating a restraining order, following her abduction of her son from the custody of his father:

[T]he mother charged with snatching her 11-year-old son and fleeing the country told a judge Monday that she feared her gay ex-husband was trying to ”turn” their son gay….

[Caren] MacDonald…described for the jury how her son told her about a man in his father’s home cooking pancakes for breakfast while wearing pajamas.

At first, her son liked [his] father’s lover, Carlos Diaz, MacDonald testified. But she said that later, her son told her that he hated Diaz and that Diaz had massaged him on his buttocks several times…

[A] courtroom guardian for the boy in 2001 recommended that Diaz not have contact with the boy — but also suggested that the the boy spend more time with his father than with his mother.

Investigators could not substantiate her allegations, and…[c]ustody decisions continued to go in the boy’s father’s favor. A court-appointed psychologist described Caren MacDonald as ”mentally undone, delusional, bipolar, just about every mental illness in the book,” she said skeptically on the stand.

Ultimately, the judge ordered her to have no physical contact with her son….

The boy…testified last week that his mother forced him to lie about being molested because she felt it was unfair that he lived with his dad. He said the only touching involved a shoulder rub he asked for from his dad’s partner.

reported by Amy Sherman in the Miami Herald

jackboots in Jacksonville? it can’t happen here! teacher’s assistant manhandled by Homeland Security

News4Jax, a Jacksonville, FL, television station, reports:

Leander Pickett, a teacher’s assistant at Englewood Elementary, said he was manhandled and handcuffed by two plain clothed Homeland Security officers in front of the school Tuesday for no reason at all….[A]s Pickett was directing bus traffic, he said he was handcuffed and roughed up and humiliated…

“I walked up to him and said, ‘Sir, you need to move.’ That’s when he said ‘I’m a police officer. I’m with Homeland Security … I’ll move it when I want to.’ That’s when he started grabbing me on my arm,” Pickett said….

Several people were outside of the school, watching the incident take place, and those witnesses agree with Pickett’s story.

OK, the graphic is a bit of a stretch, but I couldn’t resist. The only attribution I have for it is hackthissite.org. If you have a better one, please let me know.

video report, News4Jax.com

gay and black history books burned – well, at least scorched – in Chicago

The Chicago Tribune reports on library arson:

Chicago police are investigating a fire in a Chicago Public Library branch on the North Side that damaged about 100 books, most of them in the gay and lesbian collection….[Library spokeswoman Maggie] Killackey said fire damaged about 10 books in the branch’s African-American history collection and 90 books in the gay and lesbian collection.

The Wikipedia article on book burning includes Heinrich Heine’s 1821 observation that “Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings”, and a photo from the infamous Nazi book burning of May 10, 1933 – which another article reminds us was fueled primarily (and I’m afraid we must say not coincidentally) by the library of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Research on Sexuality.

Bill Frist sends out a semiotically suspect invitation

He’s a Senator. He’s an MD. He’s a demagogue. He’s a medical missionary and a hospital profiteer. And he always has his intrusive fingers on the pulse of America. See what happens when Bill Frist ventures into the wild and wacky world of gay semiotics.

Al Kamen reports in The Washington Post:

It was with some trepidation that we opened a most interesting card, which announced on a blue-jeaned cowboy’s belt buckle something called the “5th Annual VOLPAC ‘06 Weekend” in Nashville on April 21-23.

Problem was you had to unbuckle the cowboy’s pants and look inside to see what this was all about. Seemed a bit too “Brokeback Mountain.”

Imagine our relief to find only that we were “cordially invited” to the event honoring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and “Mrs. Bill Frist, M.D.” This is Frist’s political action committee to raise money for other senators, making friends and positioning him nicely for his 2008 presidential bid.
….
The back of the card shows the cowboy from behind with a red flowered handkerchief sticking out of his right pocket. Wait a minute — wasn’t there something about how this used to be some kind of code in the gay community years ago? A way to signal each other in crowded, noisy bars?

So we checked the GayCityUSA.com’s Hanky Codes. Sure enough, there it was in the chart explaining what they mean: red hanky in right pocket. Oh, dear.

Keith Boykin: Mary [Cheney] had a little scam, a letter to mom, black clergy for prejudice

At the risk of giving Mary Cheney more attention than she deserves, I pass along Keith Boykin’s comments on her memoir and her career. Boykin’s perceptive and eclectic site covers books, movies, music, pop culture, sexuality, spirituality/religion, sports, and theater. He writes and publishes effectively and affectingly on the dilemmas facing queer African Americans.

Incidentally, the source links for the “Black Clergy for Prejudice” cartoon by Don Asmussen that Boykin excerpts take you to the current strip. The excerpted one is archived here.

World Bank accused of cooking the books, using wrong drugs in fight against malaria

A Lancet paper claims the bank faked figures, boosting the success of its malaria projects, and reneged on a pledge to invest $300-500m in Africa.It also claims the bank funded obsolete treatments – against expert advice.
….
The claims against the bank, made by 13 international public health experts headed by Amir Attaran, of Canada’s University of Ottawa, centre on the financial pledges the fund made to fight malaria on the African continent and a programme in India.
….
The study also claims: “The bank’s secrecy and technical errors combine dangerously when we look at malaria treatment.”Our investigations suggest that the bank wasted money and lives on ineffective medicines.”

source: BBC News

Democrats trounce Republicans on “moral values”…

…and on virtually all other issues addressed in this New York Times/CBS poll:

I was particularly struck by the shellacking the Republicans took on the question of “moral values”, given the media frenzy of disinformation after the 2004 election (when the percentage of people who said they voted their moral values was actually down from 2000).

As my friend Carol says of the upcoming election, “It’s the Democrats’ to lose,” whereupon we agreed that if there’s anything Democrats know how to do these days, it’s lose.

pdf of chart
Times commentary

in memory of Ahmed Khalil, murdered at 14 by Iraqi police for accusations of gay sex

I have to admit I’d kept the case of a brutal murder of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi boy – one of many out of the carnage in Iraq – out of my mind and my heart until I stumbled across an impassioned (and occasionally politically incorrect) reflection on the crime by Brandon K. Thorp at Mogenic (excerpted below):

But if we don’t intend to chop the balls off the evil men of the world and stick them on an island where they won’t shoot anymore children, we had better start getting serious about some of our other options.

Here’s one: When you have children, and your children ask you about the Will of God, do not lie to them. Don’t tell them that you know, because you don’t. Even if you think you know, you have no way of knowing that you know, and you shouldn’t try to pretend otherwise. When your children ask you about the Will of God, tell them this: “Nobody knows, and anyone who claims to know the Will of God is a Nazi, and likely to murder children. If anyone ever tells you they know the Will of God, run away. People who think they know the Will of God are the most dangerous people in the world.”

Jerome Taylor’s reporting on the case in The Independent may be found at Common Dreams.
edit: Brandon K. Thorp’s commentary is apparently no longer available online.

another view of the Justin Berry case

A guest has commented on the Justin Berry post of last December:

Suggesting that [Berry] is a victim is a slap in the face to real victims everywhere. He made money from his pornography sites by making adults think he was 18, and now he is making money from his appearances on shows like Oprah. Would this have had the same response had he been a 16 year old girl that filmed herself and put the videos online? Would her adult viewers have been called pedophiles?

He has also provided this alternate view, by John Farmer at Mogenic, of both Berry’s career to date and the media response to it.

(1) gender dysphoria (imposed) and (2) transgender identity in the very young

When David Reimer shot and killed himself at age 38, it was the spectacularly tragic end of a well-meant but infamous experiment in the “plasticity” of gender identity in the young. (Purists may note that the mortal consequences for David and his entire family were not directly visited on the hubristic actor in this case, Dr. John Money, erstwhile champion of infant sex assignment through surgery and socialization.) As John Colapinto points out in his reflections on David’s death published on Slate (June 3, 2004, 3:58 PM ET), there were certainly other contributing factors in the Reimer family history, but the mere facts of the experiment were such as might have driven anyone to despair.

My recent acquaintance with the Reimer case was occasioned by Graeme’s posts at DeweyWriter.com, including information on a BBC documentary on the experiment and its aftermath, and transcribing a fascinating (in context) article on transgender identity in children – some as young as 18 months – published in a very mainstream Australian parenting magazine. Thanks to Graeme for his alerts and his labor.

There’s some redundancy in the links posted here, but also some interesting variations in the facts of David Reimer’s life. The first link, to Wikipedia, ends with a brief discussion of the clinical and social impact of the Reimer/Money affair; the BBC page links further to a transcript of the documentary.

photo of David Reimer by Reuters

20 years after Chernobyl, Welsh lambs still screened before slaughter, still turn up “dirty”

On April 25, 1986, the world’s worst nuclear power accident occurred at Chernobyl in the former USSR….

Before Emlyn Roberts, a North Wales sheep farmer, can take any of his lambs to market, he has to call in the government inspectors with their Geiger counters. They scan the animals for signs of radiation because the land they graze is still contaminated from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which occurred 20 years ago this month. If the radiation levels are too high, the lambs cannot be sold for meat until they have spent time on other land.

As the twentieth anniversary approaches and the nuclear power debate resurges, Catriona Davies reports in The Age, April 2, 2006.

“Youth in the Crosshairs: the Third Wave of Ex-Gay Activism” targets children as young as 5 years old

Whether through ex-gay teen programs or traveling ex-gay conferences like Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out ex-gay programs are recommending that parents commit their children to treatment of “prehomosexuality” even if it is against their children’s wishes. Heterosexual youth are also being recruited in schools and churches to spread the message that homosexuality is a treatable mental illness.“One of the most disturbing accounts in this report is a case involving a 5-year-old boy who was subjected to conversion therapy to address ‘prehomosexuality.’ The case involves a psychologist who claims that his theories and treatments are scientific,” said study co-author Jason Cianciotto, the [National Gay and Lesbian Task Force] Policy Institute’s research director. “To the contrary, conversion therapy is opposed by nearly every medical and mental health professional association, including the American Academy of Pediatrics….Tragically, ex-gay and evangelical Christian right leaders are using bogus theories and discredited research to frighten parents into doing something more likely to harm than help their children.”

The Policy Institute’s full report (78 pages not including the back matter and including a nine-page “executive summary”) is downloadable as a PDF. The same page also offers an mp3 version. For a shorter summary, see the Institute’s press release, quoted above (emphasis added).

drugging kids for hyperactivity skyrockets in the US, is on the rise elsewhere

Nearly 4 million Americans, most of them children and young adults, are being prescribed amphetamine-like stimulants to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Up to a million more may be taking the drugs illegally.Now, amid reports of rare but serious side effects, leading researchers and doctors are calling for a review of the way ADHD is dealt with. Many prescriptions are being written by family doctors with little expertise in diagnosing ADHD, raising doubts about how many people on these stimulants really need them. Just as worrying, large numbers of children who do have ADHD are going undiagnosed.

Both trends could lead to problems with drug dependency, argue specialists in addiction.

This report by Peter Aldous continues at NewScientist.com: “Prescribing of Hyperactivity Drugs Is Out of Control” (31 March 2006)

Cecilia Fire Thunder, Pine Ridge Oglala President, vows to resist South Dakota abortion ban

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.”To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

For more, see the indybay.org report by Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji), 3/20/2006 � 2006 Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc

positive body image makes young men riskier, young women safer in their sexual behavior

Young men who feel good about their looks are more likely than their peers with a less positive body image to engage in risky sexual behavior, a new study of college students shows.The men who were most satisfied with their appearance, and the most appearance-oriented — meaning they were highly invested in their looks and considered appearance to be important — were also the most likely to have sex without condoms and to have sex with multiple partners….Among young women, in contrast, those with a more positive body image were less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, [Dr. Eva S. Lefkowitz of Pennsylvania State University in University Park and colleagues] found.
….
While sexually active students reported less dissatisfaction with their looks and a more positive body image on average, “it’s important to point out that we don’t know which comes first,” Lefkowitz said. People who feel better about their looks may be more likely to have sex, or being sexually active may confer a better body image, she explained.

For more, see the Reuters report as published in The Sydney Morning Herald, March 28, 2006.

Field Notes From a Catastrophe: foreign robins and floating roads

Mariana Gosnell reviews Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes From a Catastrophe in The New York Times, “In Epoch of Man, Earth Takes a Beating” (Books of The Times), March 16, 2006

[Ms. Kolbert] visits the Netherlands, where rising sea levels caused by global warming are expected to swallow up large parts of the country. In areas where there are already periodic floods, a construction firm has started building amphibious homes (they resemble toasters, Ms. Kolbert says) as well as “buoyant roads.” Another field trip took her to Washington, where she was treated to double-speak by an under secretary charged with explaining the administration’s position on climate change. “Astonishingly,” she comments in a rare show of heat, “standing in the way” of progress seems to be President Bush’s goal. Not only did he reject the Kyoto Protocol, she notes, with its mandatory curbs on emissions, almost killing the treaty in the process, but he also continues to block meaningful follow-up changes to it.

Yes, you’ve probably heard or sensed much of this before, but the devil is in those telling details – the Dutch engineering for a flooded future, the Inuit seeing birds for which their language has no name…

surgical intervention for intractable depression

There are some fascinating and apparently promising results from applying a brain surgery technique established as a treatment for Parkinson’s to people who suffer from severe depression that has not responded to other treatments. As reported by David Dobbs in “A Depression Switch?” (The New York Times Magazine, April 2, 2006):

The operation borrowed a procedure called deep brain stimulation, or D.B.S., which is used to treat Parkinson’s. It involves planting electrodes in a region near the center of the brain called Area 25 and sending in a steady stream of low voltage from a pacemaker in the chest.

Dobbs goes on to quote patient Deanna Cole-Benjamin and Dr. Helen Mayberg, the neurologist who devised the procedure, from a conversation they had during the surgery (the skull of the patient is bolted to a frame, but the patient remains conscious):

“So we turn it on,” Mayberg told me later, “and all of a sudden she says to me, ‘It’s very strange,’ she says, ‘I know you’ve been with me in the operating room this whole time. I know you care about me. But it’s not that. I don’t know what you just did. But I’m looking at you, and it’s like I just feel suddenly more connected to you.’ “

Mayberg, stunned, signaled with her hand to the others, out of Deanna’s view, to turn the stimulator off.

“And they turn it off,” Mayberg said, “and she goes: ‘God, it’s just so odd. You just went away again. I guess it wasn’t really anything.’

“It was subtle like a brick,” Mayberg told me. “There’s no reason for her to say that. Zero. And all through those tapes I have of her, every time she’s in the clinic beforehand, she always talks about this disconnect, this closeness and sense of affiliation she misses, that was so agonizingly painful for her to lose. And there it was. It was back in an instant.”

Deanna later described it in similar terms. “It was literally like a switch being turned on that had been held down for years,” she said. “All of a sudden they hit the spot, and I feel so calm and so peaceful. It was overwhelming to be able to process emotion on somebody’s face. I’d been numb to that for so long.”

war on gay marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships imperils legal protections for abused women

During the 2004 presidential elections, 11 states put same-sex marriage amendment bans on their ballots, including Ohio, where registered voters ultimately decided to alter their state’s constitution. By endorsing the Defense of Marriage Act, Ohio took a clear stance against legalized civil unions and domestic partner benefits for same sex-couples. [The Ohio amendment] was sold overwhelmingly to voters as pertaining only to same-sex marriage. As Ohio has quickly learned, however, bans that are meant for limiting one specific act can have spillover effects that reach far beyond the intended target.Ohio’s ban went on to forbid government bodies from recognizing the legal status of any unmarried couples living together, which has caused a sticky quagmire for judges trying domestic abuse cases.

[emphases added]

For more on how the attack on gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships is impeding the ability of domestic abuse victims – mostly women in heterosexual relationships – from seeking protection by the courts, see the rest of Larissa Theodore’s article in the Beaver County Times & Allegheny Times: “Ohio marriage law created legal quagmire” (02/13/2006).

Happy Valentines Day!

a New Year’s reflection on happiness

Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

–John Stuart Mill

For some more specific thoughts on happiness, in this season we have dedicated to it, see an op-ed, “In Pursuit of Unhappiness,” by Darrin M. McMahon, a professor of history at Florida State and author of the forthcoming Happiness: A History, in today’s New York Times.

Wishing a productive and prosperous new year to all,
M.