Idle Thoughts, Not Idyll

What I'm thinking about:

Well, mainly my own obstreperousness and reactivity to the patriarchy.

I keep thinking of all the discussion about the events in Ferguson and all the pressure for balance and civility. Sometimes, obstreperous and reactive, I think staying composed is a whole lot of bullshit.

I'm not thinking about reacting -- except in my mind.

When I see a woman with her head and face veiled walking behind a guy in khakis and a sweater, I want to rip it off her with a flourish, then rip my own shirt open and flaunt my breasts to her man. Actually, maybe he's not her man, but she's definitely his woman.

Again, this is in my mind.

To be fair, I'd do the same to the woman in the wig, wheeling and walking her five or six small children down the street.

Give me liberty or give me death?

I'm not ashamed to say that American history has never moved me in the way it's supposed to.

I wish I were smart enough to understand Noam Chomsky. Reading his words is like entertaining fish in my brain. They flit by with fantastic ease, but they're slippery. I just can't catch one before it disappears into murk.

I'm thinking about what kind of world it'd be if Officer Wilson were more like Barney Fife, let's say, yelled out the window at the two teenagers walking in the street, on their way to dinner at Aunt Bea's and shouted, Ya'll get on the sidewalks, boys!, and drove on.

I'm thinking about all the ruckus in the middle east, how it just goes on and on and on and there are some people who are evidently not tired of it. 

I'm thinking about the death penalty, the Texas machine that would kill a mentally ill man who wore a cowboy hat with bling to his own trial. Evidently, there's a stay on his impending execution, and we're all supposed to feel relieved. This needs to be debated and figured out?

I'm thinking about that hallowed thing -- The C O N S T I T U T I O N and how I'm sick of those who say it's something akin to The Ten Commandments, but don't pay any attention to something like the Eighth Amendment.

I read that when you're dead, you don't know that you're dead. The people left behind have a difficult time. It's the same when you're stupid.


To live outside the law you must be honest, said Bob Dylan.

Raging Against the Machine in Little Tokyo with Howard Zinn's American Voices

The evening began in Little Tokyo, downtown, where Oliver and I went and slurped noodles. He had some sort of beef bowl, and I had seared tuna with a spicy wasabi dressing. Afterward, we walked over to the Aratani Theater, a small but classy joint where I've seen Toni Morrison and other literati. Some of you might remember that as part of our homeschool curriculum, Oliver and I are making our way through the young people's version of the great radical Howard Zinn's controversial People's History.  In a nutshell, Zinn writes American history from the point of view of the exploited as opposed to the "great" leaders, statesmen and warriors. The book has been suppressed over the years, bemoaned by the religious and patriotic right, but Oliver and I are finding it compelling reading, as well as overwhelming and sobering. Tonight's show had actors reading original texts of some of these people in American history -- familiar names like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X and Naomi Klein, and then ones less so like poet Marge Piercy, union activists and labor leaders.

An 1880 speech by the women's suffragette and populist Mary Elizabeth Lease who cried out against the excesses of Wall Street was weirdly prescient and brought down the house. The folk musician Joe Henry sang a Bob Dylan tune, and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine sang Springsteen's Ghost of Tom Joad. Can I just tell you that while I recognized the name Rage Against the Machine, I didn't know Tom Morello from Mr. Morell, my eighth grade English teacher? Ya'll, I'm a believer after hearing this guy's voice and guitar-playing and just overall -- well -- passion. I might have even jumped up and down at the end during a rousing rendition of This Land is My Land when he told us to do so.

Oliver, who earlier expressed his reluctance to sit through all of these performances was completely jacked up when John Kresinski of The Office walked onstage, and don't tell him I told you, but I think he was smitten by Kerry Washington. Aside from feeling energized by the wisdom and spirit of these voices of our distant and near past, I left, too, feeling sober and not a little depressed at how little has changed, how we seem to be moving backward, again, in this country, involved in endless wars, rallying to deport and demonize the immigrants who do the bulk of work, taking away women's reproductive freedom, shooting men of color or throwing them in jail and allowing those who brought the country to its economic knees to walk free, their pockets newly padded, buying elections and driving an ever greater wedge between those who have and those who have not. For a few glorious hours tonight, though, I looked around and saw people of every age, shape and color, and the sight of my boy's smiling face and shining eyes made me feel a tiny bit hopeful.