I've often wondered how, exactly, bigotry continues in this world. You would think we were more enlightened by now, as a civilization, and yet it goes on.
Yesterday I figured out why: because people don't pay attention.
Direct quote from a phone conversation:
"So what do you think about those Hispanics who are trying to change the National Anthem?"
"I don't think they're trying to change it...I think they're just making a version in Spanish..."
"Well, whatever," said the other party. And off she went into the usual anti-immigrant objections, some of which I even share (well, ONE of them: like her, I have a problem with people who accept service jobs dealing with a largely English-speaking public, yet don't learn enough English to communicate effectively with the people they're supposed to be serving. And I mainly share that objection because I'm tired of getting my food orders screwed up.)
While I listened to her my-grandparents-came-to-this-country speech, and her litany of reasons why she objects to the same opportunities being given to a new generation of immigrants, I had to ask myself: How do you take an argument seriously when the person has already demonstrated a glib dismissal of a fairly-major fact? "Well, whatever..." There's a big difference between re-recording the National Anthem in a different language, and changing the anthem entirely. That's a pretty big leap--how do I know the rest of the argument isn't similarly shoddy?
And then I thought about it; a whole lifetime of half-truths and sorta-facts and not-quite-exactly-how-it-happeneds, coupled with the usual misunderstandings and fear of the unfamiliar, and throw in a handful of media manipulation while you're at it...yeah, I could see how someone might manage to stay a bigot, if that's how they were raised. It's hard work to change one's assumptions, and not everyone knows how. I'm as much an example of this as anyone else--just not on this issue, I guess. We all have our blind spots.
Still, it's disheartening to hear it.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Miracles, Volume 736
Ladies and gentlemen, lurkers and commenters and conscientious readers, a miracle has taken place in the life of your humble blogstress:
THE CATS ARE GONE!!!!
Yes, it's true: for the first time in eighteen months, one week, and four days, I am responsible only for my own cat and its associated byproducts. Words simply cannot render my joy at this fact.
This miracle had been building for about three weeks now; one evening, after opening in the front door after a long day at work and walking into the most oppressive cloud of cat-funk I have ever experienced, and after discovering the source of the funk piled on the floor two inches to the left of the litterbox's rim--a favorite trick of Sosa's--I called Tim and left a VERY irate and unpleasant message on his voice-mail, in which the words "animal shelter" and "this weekend" were mentioned.
He called me back the next day; claimed that his work schedule would keep him from getting the cats til that Sunday, but he'd found someplace he could take them and blah, blah, blah. (Every conversation with Tim to which I refer during this post should be assumed to contain large blocks of extraneous monologue on his part, during which he conveys vast qualities of utterly useless information which totally fails to be germane to the situation at hand. In my effort to divest myself of Tim's cats, I have heard about his work schedule, his friends' work schedules, his friends' study schedules, the state of various individuals' cars, apartments, and/or relationships; and infinite amounts of similarly fascinating minutiae which he somehow felt I needed to know. So when I mention talking to Tim, you should mentally pad the conversation with about fifteen to thirty minutes of needless details.)
Sunday came, and at about 6 PM he called me to tell me that the place he thought he could take the cats would not accept them without their immunization records, which Tim thought were somewhere among his belongings stowed in my garage, but which he could not swear were there. And since the friend who was driving him had to be at work at such-and-such a time, and it would take thus-and-so time to get here and back, and etcetera, blah blah yada...the cats were staying. "Next weekend, though, I promise," he said.
And next weekend came, and went, and no Tim, and Dr. J told me I was being a doormat and needed to follow through on this, which only made me more angry with Tim because, you know, I'm only trying not to be a bitch here, and it's getting totally taken advantage of. He called later that week and gave me twenty minutes about how he didn't want to talk on that phone because he didn't have any minutes left--I didn't even TRY to go down the very-obvious road that presented--and he would be out Sunday, no matter what, world without end, Amen.
Sunday came, and went, and when I tried to call his phone at about 10:00, I got the "subscriber not available" message. So I guess he shouldn't have spent twenty minutes telling me how he didn't want to use up his minutes, eh?
I tried again Monday, and got his voice mail, on which I left a snippy-yet-restrained message. He called back Tuesday and absolutely swore that he would have the cats out of my house by the end of the day on Wednesday--again, this claim was surrounded by twenty minutes of irrelevancies regarding the schedules of his assorted friends and co-workers.
I didn't believe it was going to happen, but it did! After several phone calls (each of which came at a crucial moment of the various reality shows I watch on Wednesday night, and each of which was padded in the usual way with extraneous information) he and his friend showed up at about 9:45, packed up the cats and begged a couple days' worth of cat food from me (he wanted litter too, but I was out), hugged me and thanked me profusely, and waddled out the front door, struggling under the weight of a combined 50-60 pounds of portly feline-ness. I closed the door, locked it, turned on the alarm, and picked up White Cat for a dance of joy.
So between the departure of the cats--FINALLY!--and the wonderfully-satisfying trifecta of reality-show eliminations that happened last night (Nnenna, from America's Next Top Model; Kellie "Ralph Wiggum" Pickler, from American Idol; and Stephen from Top Chef), I am a very happy girl. And Whitey is a VERY happy kitty-cat!
THE CATS ARE GONE!!!!
Yes, it's true: for the first time in eighteen months, one week, and four days, I am responsible only for my own cat and its associated byproducts. Words simply cannot render my joy at this fact.
This miracle had been building for about three weeks now; one evening, after opening in the front door after a long day at work and walking into the most oppressive cloud of cat-funk I have ever experienced, and after discovering the source of the funk piled on the floor two inches to the left of the litterbox's rim--a favorite trick of Sosa's--I called Tim and left a VERY irate and unpleasant message on his voice-mail, in which the words "animal shelter" and "this weekend" were mentioned.
He called me back the next day; claimed that his work schedule would keep him from getting the cats til that Sunday, but he'd found someplace he could take them and blah, blah, blah. (Every conversation with Tim to which I refer during this post should be assumed to contain large blocks of extraneous monologue on his part, during which he conveys vast qualities of utterly useless information which totally fails to be germane to the situation at hand. In my effort to divest myself of Tim's cats, I have heard about his work schedule, his friends' work schedules, his friends' study schedules, the state of various individuals' cars, apartments, and/or relationships; and infinite amounts of similarly fascinating minutiae which he somehow felt I needed to know. So when I mention talking to Tim, you should mentally pad the conversation with about fifteen to thirty minutes of needless details.)
Sunday came, and at about 6 PM he called me to tell me that the place he thought he could take the cats would not accept them without their immunization records, which Tim thought were somewhere among his belongings stowed in my garage, but which he could not swear were there. And since the friend who was driving him had to be at work at such-and-such a time, and it would take thus-and-so time to get here and back, and etcetera, blah blah yada...the cats were staying. "Next weekend, though, I promise," he said.
And next weekend came, and went, and no Tim, and Dr. J told me I was being a doormat and needed to follow through on this, which only made me more angry with Tim because, you know, I'm only trying not to be a bitch here, and it's getting totally taken advantage of. He called later that week and gave me twenty minutes about how he didn't want to talk on that phone because he didn't have any minutes left--I didn't even TRY to go down the very-obvious road that presented--and he would be out Sunday, no matter what, world without end, Amen.
Sunday came, and went, and when I tried to call his phone at about 10:00, I got the "subscriber not available" message. So I guess he shouldn't have spent twenty minutes telling me how he didn't want to use up his minutes, eh?
I tried again Monday, and got his voice mail, on which I left a snippy-yet-restrained message. He called back Tuesday and absolutely swore that he would have the cats out of my house by the end of the day on Wednesday--again, this claim was surrounded by twenty minutes of irrelevancies regarding the schedules of his assorted friends and co-workers.
I didn't believe it was going to happen, but it did! After several phone calls (each of which came at a crucial moment of the various reality shows I watch on Wednesday night, and each of which was padded in the usual way with extraneous information) he and his friend showed up at about 9:45, packed up the cats and begged a couple days' worth of cat food from me (he wanted litter too, but I was out), hugged me and thanked me profusely, and waddled out the front door, struggling under the weight of a combined 50-60 pounds of portly feline-ness. I closed the door, locked it, turned on the alarm, and picked up White Cat for a dance of joy.
So between the departure of the cats--FINALLY!--and the wonderfully-satisfying trifecta of reality-show eliminations that happened last night (Nnenna, from America's Next Top Model; Kellie "Ralph Wiggum" Pickler, from American Idol; and Stephen from Top Chef), I am a very happy girl. And Whitey is a VERY happy kitty-cat!
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Yes. I Am Twelve Years Old.
From Robert Feder's column today...
(Man, the things you have to get approval for, these days...)
(Man, the things you have to get approval for, these days...)
Monday, April 17, 2006
Guilty
From the Tribune website:
Cynic that I am, I thought they were going to let him off scot-free. I'm fairly impressed that they didn't. I'm not so optimistic that I think it will change anything in the culture of "government as usual" here in Illinois--as corrupt as some third-world countries--but it's nice to see someone (or in this case, twelve someones) standing up against it.
Of course, it will be months or years before it's over--they're already talking about appeals, and I'm sure the two dismissed jurors are going to be a good starting point--and Ryan's an old man; he may never see a moment of jail time. But the fact remains: the legacy he was hoping to create for himself, of George-the-Humanitarian, George-the-Nobel-Prize-Nominee, is dead. In its place he's leaving George-the-Criminal, George-the-Convict. And frankly, even putting all my cynicism aside, that's as it should be.
Cynic that I am, I thought they were going to let him off scot-free. I'm fairly impressed that they didn't. I'm not so optimistic that I think it will change anything in the culture of "government as usual" here in Illinois--as corrupt as some third-world countries--but it's nice to see someone (or in this case, twelve someones) standing up against it.
Of course, it will be months or years before it's over--they're already talking about appeals, and I'm sure the two dismissed jurors are going to be a good starting point--and Ryan's an old man; he may never see a moment of jail time. But the fact remains: the legacy he was hoping to create for himself, of George-the-Humanitarian, George-the-Nobel-Prize-Nominee, is dead. In its place he's leaving George-the-Criminal, George-the-Convict. And frankly, even putting all my cynicism aside, that's as it should be.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
All Quiet
I'm still here, still sober, still hanging on. I'm going to start looking for another job, and at the same time I'm finally working towards getting the business started. Most of my time, though, has been eaten up by work, or by recovering from work, and so I've not had much energy. I hate my job, and it's precisely because it's so inoffensive and bland and unexciting. It's like living on three meals a day of unsalted crackers and water. You -can- live that way, but there's not much joy in it.
I've also been thinking about how I need to start preparing for the rest of my life. It occurs to me that I'm quite likely going to die alone, and that's not a pearl-clutching "poor-me" statement; it's a statement of a very likely fact. LJ, even if he does stay around, will not outlive me; he's already leaning heavily towards some serious health problems. I'm not going to have kids to take care of me, and I've got no siblings, and thus no nieces and nephews. I'm not close to my extended family, and my mother will be 77 on her next birthday, and my closest friends live far away. There is not going to be anyone to take care of me when I'm old, and I need to start preparing for that eventuality. I need to think about money, and where it's going to come from; about appointing someone to make decisions for me in case I can't, or to look out for me when I'm no longer able to look out for myself. And these are all good, motivational-type thoughts, in a way-- but in another way they're not, since they all invoke the specter of being, at the end of my life, all alone. It's not a happy thought, but there's not much about it I can change.
You know what I think about most, when I think about the end of my life? I think about all the things that mean something to me. I think about the afghans I've crocheted, the quilts I've made, the books that used to be JP's; I think of all the pottery I painted with Firefly, and all the little artsy things I've done since. I've been spending a lot of time in thrift stores lately--there's a great one just down the street from Dr. J's office--and I see a lot of things that I know once meant a lot to someone. Cookbooks, for example; today I bought a cookbook from 1948, autographed by the author, with a bookmark in it that was a slip of paper which turned out to be a ticket from a 1961 train trip to Pennsylvania. I see a lot of paintings in the thrift stores, paintings that look like they were done by amateurs; the proprietor tells me that she gets a lot of photo albums with the photos still in them. She and I have talked for a long time about how amazing it is, some of the things that people part with sometimes.
And when I think about it, I think: those must have been people like me--people who, when they died, had no one to leave these things to who would see them for what they were, and how much they'd mattered. I've been guilty myself, I know; some of JP's belongings ended up in the hands of people who couldn't possibly know their importance. But I made it a point not to be stingy with the memories I had of him; I know I wasn't the only one who lost something when he died. And then there were the things that didn't survive the various habits, things I had no business selling. I think about those things sometimes too.
Mostly I think: there's going to be no one else who has my memories, when I'm gone. Huge swaths of time that mean everything to me, and nothing to anyone else, are going to die with me. And maybe that's true of everyone, but somehow I think of everyone else as having someone--a sibling, a child, a partner--to pass some of these memories on to. I'm not going to have any of those things; and then again, so much of it is trivia, little things that wouldn't mean anything if I -did- have someone to pass them on to.
It's almost enough to make me question: what's the worth of doing anything? But then I think: I'm here; I may as well do something, after all, and it may as well be something I enjoy. So I collect my old cookbooks, and hunt through the thrift stores for other people's afghans, which I then take home and rescue from oblivion. Some day they'll go back out into the pool of forgotten objects, along with a few things of my own. Maybe that's just the way of the world.
I've also been thinking about how I need to start preparing for the rest of my life. It occurs to me that I'm quite likely going to die alone, and that's not a pearl-clutching "poor-me" statement; it's a statement of a very likely fact. LJ, even if he does stay around, will not outlive me; he's already leaning heavily towards some serious health problems. I'm not going to have kids to take care of me, and I've got no siblings, and thus no nieces and nephews. I'm not close to my extended family, and my mother will be 77 on her next birthday, and my closest friends live far away. There is not going to be anyone to take care of me when I'm old, and I need to start preparing for that eventuality. I need to think about money, and where it's going to come from; about appointing someone to make decisions for me in case I can't, or to look out for me when I'm no longer able to look out for myself. And these are all good, motivational-type thoughts, in a way-- but in another way they're not, since they all invoke the specter of being, at the end of my life, all alone. It's not a happy thought, but there's not much about it I can change.
You know what I think about most, when I think about the end of my life? I think about all the things that mean something to me. I think about the afghans I've crocheted, the quilts I've made, the books that used to be JP's; I think of all the pottery I painted with Firefly, and all the little artsy things I've done since. I've been spending a lot of time in thrift stores lately--there's a great one just down the street from Dr. J's office--and I see a lot of things that I know once meant a lot to someone. Cookbooks, for example; today I bought a cookbook from 1948, autographed by the author, with a bookmark in it that was a slip of paper which turned out to be a ticket from a 1961 train trip to Pennsylvania. I see a lot of paintings in the thrift stores, paintings that look like they were done by amateurs; the proprietor tells me that she gets a lot of photo albums with the photos still in them. She and I have talked for a long time about how amazing it is, some of the things that people part with sometimes.
And when I think about it, I think: those must have been people like me--people who, when they died, had no one to leave these things to who would see them for what they were, and how much they'd mattered. I've been guilty myself, I know; some of JP's belongings ended up in the hands of people who couldn't possibly know their importance. But I made it a point not to be stingy with the memories I had of him; I know I wasn't the only one who lost something when he died. And then there were the things that didn't survive the various habits, things I had no business selling. I think about those things sometimes too.
Mostly I think: there's going to be no one else who has my memories, when I'm gone. Huge swaths of time that mean everything to me, and nothing to anyone else, are going to die with me. And maybe that's true of everyone, but somehow I think of everyone else as having someone--a sibling, a child, a partner--to pass some of these memories on to. I'm not going to have any of those things; and then again, so much of it is trivia, little things that wouldn't mean anything if I -did- have someone to pass them on to.
It's almost enough to make me question: what's the worth of doing anything? But then I think: I'm here; I may as well do something, after all, and it may as well be something I enjoy. So I collect my old cookbooks, and hunt through the thrift stores for other people's afghans, which I then take home and rescue from oblivion. Some day they'll go back out into the pool of forgotten objects, along with a few things of my own. Maybe that's just the way of the world.
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