Culture Clash

A cure for spirits
Clashing, thrashing in the night
Escapes this mortal

The Well-Written Blog Post

I just stumbled onto the Blue Girl in a Blue State blog, via Shakesville. I like her style. This post in particular ("What We've Got Here Is a Failure To Communicate") is the kind of writing I aspire to. Worth a read...

Driving While Sleeping

Really, it's going to be all the rage soon. And why not? We've turned cars into home offices, why not into homes as well? Sorry--I have been fuming all day about the article in today's New York Times about cell phoning and text messaging while driving. The first time I saw someone texting while driving I was apoplectic and flabbergasted. Now I just get apoplectic. It's way too common to be surprised anymore. (Then, of course, there was the time I was almost killed by the driver who was texting so rolled right through the cross-walk I was in. Yelling at them had no effect. They were too busy txting thr frnds 2 notce.) How DARE someone be so callous with my life? We're sharing the road, and you can't even be bothered to look in front of you? Not even while hurtling down the highway in two tons of metal at 70 miles per hour? Does your sense of personal grandiosity and privilege have no limits? Honestly.

I have nothing pithy to say about this; no pearls of wisdom, not smart-ass comebacks, no wise insights. Just pure fury. Driving takes concentration, being alert, paying attention. No one is so good at multi-tasking that they can see children/cars/animals darting in front of them while they're looking the other way. So knock it off. And you, legislators, who refuse to act because you're too addicted to your crackberries, you are the worst. May you be the next ones to cause the inevitable accidents that are going to happen on your watch. Clearly nothing else--certainly not the science you've been beaten over the head with--will get your attention.

The Joy of Writing

Smug, satisfied sigh
Ecstasy of completion
Having written rocks

Saying Goodbye

I often find saying goodbye to places nearly as painful as saying goodbye to people.
How long does it take for a place to become home? Apparently just a few months for me. (Less if it's Hawai'i.) For reasons having to do with the circumstances of the move, I was less than thrilled with the need to move to California last December. But I've been here awhile now. I've settled in a bit. I've gotten used to the redwoods and the rolling golden hills, the cacophony of crows and the San Francisco life. Leaving tomorrow is going to be harder than I expected. It's strange to me how quickly a place can start to feel "right." I never truly settled in because I always knew this would be temporary, and I thought my detachment would make leaving a breeze. But I like it here. I just need to remind myself that I like it at home, too, even if home isn't as sexy or as full of adventure. (I'm talking about the place; I can't wait to be back with my partner!) It's funny the way a place can work its way into your sense of self. I never thought I'd be one to get attached to locations as, growing up, I was so anxious to leave my hometown. I never looked back though I've obviously taken a lot of that place with me as well. But the environment and the people in Cali have come to feel very much like "home" now, in the sense of being comfortable and welcoming. I'm surprised by the melancholy the end of my visit is bringing given what an ardent East Coaster I've always been. And I'm amused by the realization that it's going to take awhile to get back into the East Coast groove. Who knew I'd be so susceptible to the California charms?

Be Your Gay Self

Vandals Strike Again

obloquy still rife
suggestions for how your bat
can be better used

A Novel Break

Sunday siesta
necessary indulgence
for overworked brain

I Need A Laugh

and this video delivers!

Can This Chapter Be Saved?

My book writing tale:
I once had an idea
but then I lost it

At Least Thievery Has a Point

Oh vandalism
Pointless miscreant antics
Grow up. Get a job

June 2009

A month of Mondays
frenetic work and no play
while life crashes down

Where's Waldo?

• Waldo Station Road (Rte. 131), Waldo County, Maine
• Richardson Bay, Marin County, California
• The intersection of 98 and 371, Columbia County, Arkansas
• Outside of Gainsville, Alachua County, Florida
• East of Cranbrook, Vancouver, British Columbia, eh

Hot Pants for Everybody!

Over at the NY Times today there’s a lovely little piece on the sartorial habits of legal eagles—specifically sexy, overly casual, or otherwise “inappropriate” clothing in the court room. Apparently many judges find sexy dressing distracting. All of the responses in the article from both women and feminist lawyers expressed disdain at the judges’ remarks, finding it sexist that judges can’t ignore ample cleavage or skirts that are too short for women to sit down in. My immediate response to this article was to think, “I’ve had this conversation repeatedly with my colleagues, only about classrooms rather than courtrooms.” I was surprised that the “problem” persists into professional life, as I thought prime time television’s portrayal of women professionals’ dress was sexed-up for ratings, not because someone had done some actual research on the matter. My second response to the article was to feel like a bad feminist. On the one hand, I agree with Professor Koniak who wonders if men and women should all just wear burqas if judges can’t look past the clothing to hear the arguments being made. On the other hand, when I’m having these conversations with my colleagues, I’m usually closer to siding with the judges. Occasionally the clothing (or lack thereof) is distracting, but most of the time it just seems, well, inappropriate. Feminists have spent years arguing that women should not be sexualized inappropriately; that they are more than their sex, and sexualization should take place outside the context of the workplace, not in it. Yet the clothing in question seems to scream “look at how sexy I am!” “Check out my breasts!” “Plumber’s butt: not just for plumbers anymore!” (Okay, that last one is probably not the intent of the clothing, but it certainly has been the effect of the low-rider pants.) And this sexy dressing phenomenon isn’t exactly gender neutral. I don’t have male students—and there was no mention of male lawyers—wearing “package” enhancing jeans, or unbuttoned shirts that show of buff, freshly waxed chests. So while I firmly believe that a woman can wear whatever she wants and still demand to be heard and not just seen, I’m suspicious of this whole sexy dressing phenomenon. The more women infiltrate the halls of business and legal power, the higher the “trendy” hemlines and the lower the necklines. Sexy dressing seems to be almost de rigueur. Are women overcompensating for a “loss” of femininity as they take on “male” roles? Are clothing designers making sure women stay in their objectified place regardless of the size of their paychecks? Am I just a prude? I have lots of questions and no answers. I will have to ponder this more as I continue my often-futile shopping excursions in search of flattering, but not-so-damn-revealing, clothes to fill out my professional wardrobe.

Unintended Consequences

I ended up carpooling to work this morning because of an accident on the Caltrain line in the Bay Area. This is the third fatal accident on Caltrain in ten days. The first two accidents have been ruled suicides; the cause of this morning’s accident is obviously still being investigated. Last year there were 16 fatal Caltrain/pedestrian accidents, of which 13 were suicides. I’m blogging this not to complain about having to carpool or public transportation delays or any such triviality. And I don’t know whether to hope that this morning’s crash was a tragic accident or a deliberate (and successful) suicide attempt, because either way the result is incredibly sad. I’m writing about this accident because it has me thinking—for the third time in ten days—about the rash of suicides in the news (bad economic times will do that, I guess) and the means people use to take their own lives. Suicides are tragic by nature, but the method of suicide can have wide-ranging repercussions. I think that suicide-by-train has to be one of the worst ways I can imagine taking one’s own life. I assume it’s always—or almost always—successful, for what that’s worth. But aside from being an incredibly painful way to die, it’s also incredibly selfish in that the suicidee is inevitably and irrevocably implicating some innocent by-stander (the conductor) in this dramatic act. She or he is going to have to live the rest of her or his life with the final images of the suicidee’s life emblazoned on the brain. I don’t know if one ends up feeling somehow guilty or responsible in these cases, but certainly one cannot help but feel implicated in a death, or so I would imagine. I know many people say that suicides are always selfish, and there’s a lot of anger out there toward people who take their own lives. I tend not to view suicide through the global anger lens, as I think the extreme mental anguish one must be in to attempt suicide exonerates the depressed person at least to some degree. But I do get angry with people whose method of choice so directly and selfishly drags some unknown outsider into his or her personal drama. I’m sure Caltrain engineering training involves some mention of what to do in the (apparently likely) event that someone steps (or sits) in front of you, but that can’t make living with the reality of it much easier. While I feel for the family and friends of the deceased, I feel just as sorry for the conductors whose lives have been intruded on in a very personal and violent way.

Safe travels everyone.

End of the Writing Day

San Francisco nights
city lights cast long shadows
hide your demons well

The Other Religion

"House" is on t.v.
opium of the masses
hitting the sweet spot

Neglect

As I've been working feverishly trying to finish a book manuscript, I've been neglecting the little blog that could. Sorry about that. I will be back more regularly very soon (if all goes well...). In the meantime, Jonathan Weiler has a good post up today that I wanted to point you all to. In the wake of the news that Justice Souter will be stepping down from the Supreme Court, Weiler traces the evolution of Souter's jurisprudence with the politics of his home state of New Hampshire. While the bit on Souter is interesting, I was more taken by the discussion of New Hampshire politics. The state's political evolution partially confirms and partially expands the Women and Politics literature in political science. Scholars of women in legislative politics have argued that for women to begin to change the culture of and the substantive law produced in a legislative body, they need to reach a "critical mass" of that body, usually thought to be around 20 percent (though that's not a hard-and-fast number). New Hampshire ranks third in the states for percentage of women in its legislature, at just over 37 percent. What makes New Hampshire different from other state legislatures with a critical mass of women is the number of women in positions of power. Numbers are nice; power is better. And it seems that sheer numbers alone cannot produce power.

Pressure

Billy Joel was right
It's the ninth; two out, three on
Big Bird can't help now

Got Inspiration?

I took this shot looking out toward the main entrance of Santa Clara University's campus after a bad few days of severe writer's block. It's going to take some divine intervention to break through this mental log jam...