Lay Down and Take it

I spent a day in Boston this week.  And while I have been considering writing about this topic, I hesitated (yes, I hesitated!) as I think it is a wee bit controversial.  I am troubled by the lack of criticism regarding the closing of an entire city for a day.  Terrorism has a unique effect on people from the U.S.

For example, a friend of my father's who was "locked down" in Watertown, wrote an article about how great a job the police did and how safe they all felt, being protected under what I would call martial law.  I humbly disagree.  The unarmed, injured 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found BECAUSE people were allowed out of their homes and into their streets.  He would not have been spotted had this man not been allowed to check out his boat.  And this was in an area outside of the section the police had been searching. 

The cost of shutting down a metropolis like Boston was estimated by one analyst in The Washington Post  "between $250 million and $333 million per day."   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/19/the-entire-city-of-boston-has-shut-down-how-much-will-this-cost/

Others have suggested that closing the city for a one person manhunt demonstrates to terrorists that their individual acts of smaller bombs can have a long range effect of putting an entire city in fear, a tactic that might appeal to them.

I question all of this behavior in response to terrorism.  First of all, abortion clinics have been sites of bombings for years and years.  Do you recall Boston being shut down in 1994 when the Brookline shootings happened?  "According to NAF, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, there have been 41 bombings of abortion clinics."  (NAF)

These 41 actions do not include murders, arson and acid attacks on clinics.  But I do not recall any "shut down" of a community, town, or city after one of these attacks.  An anti-abortion fanatic can bomb abortion clinics all day long with no massive police presence.  

 
My concern for all of this is how easily U.S. citizen, who value freedom, I think, above all else, gave that up so quickly for one 19 year old boy.  It was easy.  It was quick.  No one questioned what was happening.

I expect much more from this country and from our citizens.  We are not the "lay down and take it" kind of people.  We fight for our beliefs, we debate, we value liberty, but maybe we should begin questioning much more how the media can get us to "do" anything or to "believe" anything, even if they are reporting a request from a Governor or the Chief of Police.  Police searched homes, without a warrant, all day long and people allowed it.  Protecting us should not mean we are locked in our homes for a day or that we are giving up our 4th amendment rights. 

While what happened in Boston was tragic, so were the 41 bombings, 175 acts of arson, 100 butyric acid attacks, 191 assault & batteries, 524 incidents of stalking, 17 attempted murders, and 8 murders.  In all violence against abortion clinics, the total is 769 incidents to date. (NAF) This type of terrorism, while ignored by our media and many in our culture, far outweighs what happened in Boston on April 15th.

Hey, Neighbor!

Tuesday three women were released from 10 years in captivity in a suburban neighborhood in Cleveland.  If I lived in Cleveland right now I would be throwing up.  How can three teenagers go missing and the police just give up?  Maybe it's the cynic in me, but I think if they were three young men, the search would've been a bit more thorough.  What's three less women on the planet anyway?  Girls go missing every day to human trafficking, right? Who needs girls?

We don't think this happens in the United States. And maybe fifty years ago it wouldn't have.  That was back when neighbors talked to each other and knew each others comings and goings.  I have a neighbor who we jokingly call "Mrs. Kravitz" from the old sitcom Bewitched because she knows all the comings and goings of the neighborhood.  In fact, she knew our next door neighbors were moving before I did.

Do you know your neighbors?  Take a step outside.  Look to your left.  Know them?  We were friendly with our neighbors to the left, they moved and new neighbors moved in.  They were nice, but we didn't click the way we did with their predecessors.  But even though we didn't click, we still were nice to each other.  We picked up their newspapers when they went on vacation. And they've gotten our dog George in when he's left the back yard.  Look to your right.  Do you know them?  For me, it's a Pickling Factory, so I'm good on that one.  Look across the street.  I know both sets of neighbors whose houses are across from mine. We hang out with the neighbors directly across to the left.  We'd all do anything for each other, from watching dogs, making dinner, having after-work drinks, and getting together to play our famous game of washers, or Pennsylvania horseshoes as some call it. When we have our annual summer party, the houses adjacent to mine and two houses down all get an invitation. The people across the street always bring a cooler of beer and leave it for the night.  I want to build community while alerting the neighbors that there will be lots of cars and really awesome music playing. 

All the news I heard yesterday on this case was how quite a few people claimed to have called the police on suspicious things happening in this house over the years.  What kind of a neighborhood is it?  Is it one where the police avoid?  We know there are "those kinds of neighborhoods" in this racially charged world.  Class and race play out in the criminal justice system in such an expansive way we cannot even begin to analyze how people in poorer communities get arrested for minor infractions or ignored for major needs, like this very case.

One can only hope this blip in our history is a teachable moment.  One can only hope that these young women (who aren't girls anymore, by the way, media!) get the psychiatric help they need to heal from this horrific decade in their young lives.  And one can only hope that people will begin to look out for each other in a different way.  A bystander is someone who is neither a victim nor a perpetrator.  It is someone who can call for help, stop an action, intervene.  We need to build a community of bystanders so that a story like this is never told again.

Praise Jesus! NBA Player Comes Out of the Closet!

So this week our FIRST NBA player came out as gay.  Oh Hallelujah! A few people sent me links about this, that I should be just so pleased.  Should I really be pleased that in 2013 an industry that has supported homophobia and perhaps encouraged a wee bit of misogyny has finally accepted ONE person who is gay or should I say allowed for ONE person being gay?  A colleague of mine posted this on her Facebook that day:  "things I give absolutely no sh*ts about today: athletes. gay athletes. gay athletes coming out of the closet. why? I'm really unfazed by unchecked athlete-worship, especially among folk who normally keep a close eye on institutions, athletic and otherwise, that promote and sustain racism, rape culture, and homophobia." She has a point.  Then a friend from college posted this article from BuzzFeed on Women Athletes.

And both their posts gave me pause.  

Why is it whenever men do ANYTHING that is the RIGHT thing, they get all kinds of accolades?  Let me list some:  the dishes, parenting, crying, "helping out" at home, taking out the garbage without being asked, supporting women, speaking up for women, helping stop rape, coming out as a gay athlete.  Women who are constantly trying to find balance in a world of inequality are rarely given any accolades.  How many women get accolades for working their asses off in a professional career and raising children who then contribute to society?  There should be a fucking prize for that.  Especially if the other parent in the picture was one who had to be asked to do anything that really was in his original job description of a parent.   

So maybe it is momentous that an athlete in the only sports that really get any attention in our culture, aka MEN's sports, is out and gay.  But what is the larger question here?  I think it is about why professional athletic teams are only those that men are part of.  Women's professional sports exist on a very minimal basis.  How many college women graduate hoping to continue to do their sport are left with minor league regional teams or the Olympics?  Sure, the WNBA exists, but it exists and does not have the kind of support the NBA, the NHL, MLB or NFL does.  Not even close.  

This is one of those "so-called" momentous moments in life where instead I feel like I'm lying under a pile of rocks weighted down by the immense cultural changes needed in our culture from equality for women athletes, and even their basic representation to the ways in which women in this country will never achieve balance or stress free lives if they choose to have children.  Never.  

And as for Jason Collins, I hope you take some of that privilege as an NBA player and do it to help other gay young people of color be supported in their communities, their schools and their homes, regardless of whether they are athletes or are part of the theatre club.

The Week from Hell

It was one of those bizarre weeks in the life of a person or a community.  The good news came from France that they had legalized gay marriage, yet the response by their divided community seemed so out of place, for France.  To have that many people riot in the street against gay marriage didn't make sense to me.

Rhode Island passes gay marriage making them the 10th state to do so.  But there are 50 of us.  That leaves 40 to go.  Will that all change with a repeal of DOMA?  Should be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Then we come to a week ago Friday.  My story goes like this.  I take the dog to the groomer and hear about the middle of the night manhunt for Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.   I had just gotten back from the groomer and was getting ready to go to breakfast with my brother and his wife at this lovely woman owned place in Somerset called Lina's.  I got an alert text that the university is closed.  I'm confused.  Boston is pretty much shut down on a manhunt for the Marathon Bomber so it doesn't make any sense why we are closed.  I text my boss and ask her to call me when she has a chance knowing she must be very involved with whatever is happening there.  We turn on the TV.  A ticker underneath one of the channels says that the suspect who is still alive, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev went to school "somewhere outside of Boston."  My brother jokes and says "maybe he went to UMass Dartmouth."  We both laugh, but mine has that kind of nervous undertone to it.   Then I get another alert text that the university is being evacuated.  I try to log into the website but it won't let me.  I later learn this was from too much traffic.  When I finally get in it states that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a registered student. 

We go to breakfast and when I get back I am glued to the tv.  I get an email from my bosses boss stating if  we are already on campus, can we come to a meeting.  Thankfully I'm not already on campus.  I reply I am not on campus as I was planning to go in later that day but I can.  My boss calls me and tells me she is not sure if they need me yet.  She texts later to say no and less than 15 minutes later calls and asks if I can go work at the area high school to meet the students who are being evacuated and have nowhere to go, primarily international students. 

I work at the high school for about four hours helping students get set up at a local hotel.  What I learn about how close my connection was to this young man is that he is on the intramural soccer team who we played recently in the Kick the Silence, Stop the Violence event.  I also learned, later during the week, that if the FBI had released the photos earlier, like on Wednesday night, the hunt that went on in Watertown could have happened on campus instead. 

On Sunday I worked for five hours answering parent phone calls, mostly about the safety of campus.  And I went to a meeting with the Muslim Student Association regarding their safety on campus.  Many of them, particularly the women, were afraid of a backlash against Muslims. 

On Tuesday we hosted almost 200 students to campus for our annual GLBT Youth Symposium.  This was, as usual, an uplifting event.  

So for this week I critique nothing.  I feel good about gay marriage passing in another country and another state and I feel sad that a young man is going to lose his life or spend it in jail for reasons we do not yet know.

A Culture of Violence

I remember vividly, age 10, and Dad taking me on vacation.  In Houlton, Maine, where we lived, school started in mid-August so that the last week of September and first two weeks of October school could close for Potato Harvest.  I had lots of friends who picked potatoes.  I never did.  It was a good excuse to stay with my mom for a week or two in Massachusetts.  But this year, Dad decided he would take time off and take me to Boston and to see my Grandparents (his parents) in Worcester.  He got tickets to see The King and I with Yul Brynner.  He had the lead in that play forever, playing the King 4,625 times. I was not impressed with his acting.  Clearly that part was too familiar to him.  I couldn't understand a word he said. (A theatre critic at age 10, who knew?)  He's also the guy who filmed a commercial about the dangers of smoking before he died that went something like "'Now that I’m gone, I tell you: Don’t smoke. Whatever you do, just don’t smoke."

During this trip, we also saw my first 3-D movie, some strange western. 3-D tumbleweed rolling toward us. The point of this whole trip was really to show me Boston. Dad loved Boston.  He grew up in Worcester and to this day loves every Boston sports team. That is a story for another day.  He spent a good amount of time teaching me the importance of offensive driving in a city. While I was 5 years away from getting my license, he wanted to show off his city driving skills.  He also drove me through the "combat zone," explaining what all the XXX signs were about.  At one point, we were crossing the street and he pointed to a woman and said "that's not actually a woman."  Who knew back then that I'd be advocating for transgender rights as part of my work?

Suffice it to say it was a memorable trip to Boston, mostly because my Dad was so passionate about it. 

A few years ago my brother and I spent two nights in Boston seeing the Dave Matthew's Band at Fenway.  We did all kinds of touristy things like the Duck Boats, tried to figure out the T, took a pedi-bike after dinner, ate on Newbury Street, walked along the Charles.  It was really fun.  We stayed on the Cambridge side at the Hyatt Regency with a gorgeous balcony looking over the city. 

Two days after the tragic Boston Marathon bombings, I feel like I cannot write about anything but Boston, even though I want to write about how sad I am that we live in a world where people want to kill each other, where people want to slaughter innocent people to make a point about something or to express their own anger and rage.

I often tell my students and my friends that I don't watch any of those CSI shows (that often have strong female characters) because I cannot support the culture of violence.  These so-called detective shows are all about women --mostly-- being murdered.  I don't need to spend my day dealing with rape on my campus and then come home to watch women be murdered.  Real life violence is too much for me as it is, I don't need to veg-out on fictional violence.  I don't watch horror movies either.  These movies always slaughter women.  

So maybe we should take a pause from these events in Boston.  Stop wondering who is behind all this and ask ourselves, what have we done to promote, ignore or remain apathetic to a culture of violence in our world?  Yes, someone needs to take responsibility for the killing and maiming of hundreds of people, but we live in this world too.  We need to look in our own mirrors and think about the ways we promote and support a culture of violence.  What do you watch?  What do you read?  What video games do you play?  How do you talk about people?  Do you say about a hot young thang, "I could hit that?"  That's violence.  How does your language perpetuate that culture?  How do you support a culture of violence?  Mull that one over.

Simply Devine Review

I vowed months ago I would critique restaurants as well as culture, I mean, food is culture, right?  But I need to be more consistent.  Isn't that a them for life, the need to be more consistent?  Anyway, I am going to try once a month to write about food.  We have no kids so we do eat out a lot.  We also eat out with people to be in company with them.

Simply Devine is a restaurant in Warren, RI in the old Nathaniel Porter location.  Simply Devine was opened by a couple in 2012 who also run Simply Devine catering.  We went late on a Sunday afternoon before seeing a play at the local theatre.  We were sat by an old fireplace that now runs with gas.  It was charming.

I ordered the lobster risotto and Jeff ordered the lasagne.  You can check out their menu here.  The first thing Jeff always does when we go to a restaurant is to look at the bottom of the flatware to see where it is made.  I have no clue, in general, on what is "good" flatware versus bad. I love fiesta ware! He said the flatware was average and the silverware even lower grade.  White tablecloths, candles and fireplaces require a nicer flatware.

We were brought bread, warm pieces of cut french bread that were good, with hard pats of butter.  I think a place like that should always serve whipped butter.  I ordered a side Cesar salad, which was good.  My lobster risotto was served with saffron, cremini mushrooms and peas.  The mushrooms were very hard to chew, suggesting they came dried and were not softened up enough before cooking.  They had the texture of leather.  I thought the amount of lobster in the dish was moderate.

Jeff's lasagna, on the other hand, was served in a stainless steel casserole dish, over a plate of baby arugula.  The arugula had no dressing on it, was almost there as a decorative piece, but it was strange.  He said the lasagna was nothing compared to mine.  He felt the noodles were overcooked and it had very little flavor.

We ordered the berry tart for dessert with was good.  He had coffee and a grand marnier.  I finished my Sauvignon blanc.  He said the coffee was excellent.

Our take out came in a plastic bag, which didn't seem to fit with the environment either.

Overall, we'd give this restaurant a 5 out of 10, meaning we'll go back for a drink and appetizers as the bar was very quaint, but we're on the fence on whether we would order dinner here again when there are so many other sure things in the area.

I can say, the play that followed, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, at 2nd Story, was, according to Jeff, "one of the best plays I have ever seen at 2nd Story," and I have to agree.  For a show with some clearly misogynistic undertones, the acting was top notch and the directing excellent. 

Body Awareness by Annie Baker

I went to see The Wilbury Group's production of Body Awareness last Saturday night.  It was directed by a dear friend and mentor, Wendy Overly.  In a nutshell, a lesbian couple,  live in a small town in Vermont with one of the women's sons.  Phylis works as a Psychology Professor at the local college, Shirley State, and is in charge of their eating disorder awareness week, which has been re-named Body Awareness Week.  The play takes place over the course of those five days.  Joyce, Phylis's partner's son, Jared, is 21, lives at home, and appears to have some kind of spectrum-based disorder.  Phylis and Joyce have given him a book on Asperger's and he is defensive and stubborn about having it.  Frank, a visiting artist, is staying with Joyce and Phylis for Body Awareness week. He is in town with his photography exhibit that looks at women of all ages and sizes in the nude. 

The inclusion of mental health issues in a play that examines body image issues was interesting.  Of course I am more interested in the feminist messages of the play.  Right from the start, over a discussion with Jared about his use of pay-per-view porn, Joyce informs her son that she thinks women with no body hair is gross.  She says to him "You now people don't really look like that. It will be extremely hard for you to find a real person who looks like that."  (She is wrong on this point).  She goes on "I assume you know we have pubic hair for a reason." 

One of the conflicts in the play is between Joyce and Phylis around Frank's exhibit.  Phylis thinks it's pornographic and that Frank is a creep for doing this kind of work.  Joyce decides to meet with him during his stay to get her picture taken.  As much as she appreciates his art, Phylis' criticism has rubbed of on her and she's very nervous.  She questions whether his taking pictures of naked women is creepy or makes him a sleazeball.  He responds "what if Michaelangelo masturbated to the statue of David?  Does that make him a bad sculptor?"

This exhibit in the play, I believe is based off of an art exhibit called The Century Project by artist Frank Cordelle.  We brought his exhibit to UMass Dartmouth in the last 90s, I believe.  It was very controversial because we exhibited it in our Campus Center and people had to walk by it unless they chose to walk outside the building.  The discussion continually came back to the issue of porn versus nudity, something I feel very strongly about.  I think many of us are raised in families where nudity is not acceptable unless you are a baby.  This, of course, limits how we then feel about our sexuality, our body, our body image.  I had a mom who was very comfortable walking around naked.  I always embraced nudity as a positive, never seeing it as pornographic.

Today, however, the only nudes that people get to see, outside of the art world, are the cloned-pubic-hair-less-fake-titted women who all look the same, minus the hair color on their heads.  It's sad that the only acceptable look of a woman nude in our culture today is one type.  Three years ago I taught a class called The Female Body:  Women's Health, Sexuality and Reproductive Rights.  One of the groups did their presentation on Playboy through the years to show how diverse the women use to be.  This came out of numerous discussions we had about body hair and how young women and men police other women about their need for no hair "down there."  They believe it is "dirty" to have pubic hair.   

The play has an interesting climax that deals with other "body" issues like exposure and sexual violence.  It runs this weekend at The Wilbury Theatre Group. As there is so little theatre, written and directed by women, this is a must see.