Well, this has been a week

(And change)

I made it clear after the US presidential election that I think Donald Trump is a very bad pick. That is putting it mildly. I'm the kind of person who needs to get to work in a crisis, because if not I'm going to go crazy. My childhood was as short as everyone else's, but I will never forget how much I chased at the lack of agency. Now that I've got it, I'm going to use it.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel some despair afterward, and for so many reasons.  Climate. Pollution. Human rights. Racism. Sexism. Education. Health. Inequality.  Everything. I was going to do the work, but I didn't feel any optimism.

Now I do.

I am so happy that Bashar al Assad, the butcher of Syria, is gone. I did not think I would see the day. It was hard to find news of the Syrian resistance for a good few years; the last I could find, they had been confined to one area. But I did see that much of the Arab world was trying to normalize relations with Assad. All of them, evidently, had made the assessment that it was easier to work with him than against Iran and Russia. Once again, screw the Syrian people.

But a funny thing happened while politicos and pundits were playing 4D chess amongst themselves so they could arrive at doing exactly nothing: the Syrian resistance refused to die, and as soon as they saw that Russian and Iranian assets were being moved out of Syria, they moved. And they won.

I have no delusions about HTS (Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham). No, I don't care about the "Islamist" label, but they have been credibly accused of violating people's rights on occasion, and they are almost certainly receiving support from Turkey, which has been aggressive toward the Kurds in Syria, particularly in Rojava. But I don't need HTS to be perfect; I just need then to be not as monstrous as Assad. Shockingly they've met that low bar, so I'm happy to celebrate with the Syrian people. 

But because it pours when it rains, I am also proud as hell to be Korean. God damn. 

Let's back up: I take no pride in the fact that President Yoon Suk Yeol, one of the moat unpopular elected presidents ever--anywhere--declared martial law. He's not wrong to call out the opposition, the Democratic Party, for being obstructionist, but you don't mean obstruction with martial law--and especially not in South Korea after the decades they laborer under it. 

And I'm not the only Korean who said so. The South Korean citizenry came out into the streets immediately. This was not their first rodeo, and they knew that you have to stop a would be dictator immediately. There's a measure of luck--Yoon, clearly, doesn't know how to plan a self-coup, because anyone could have told him it won't work without the military under control--but this would not have ended so decisively if South Koreans weren't willing to stand in below freezing temperatures for over a week to make it clear that Yoon was done. Say what you will about us, but we know when we're being bs'ed, and we'll have none of it.

Syria, South Korea, and OG resistance as well as straight up bad assery out of Ukraine give me hope. Donald Trump would very much like to be a dictator, but even now, he's getting pushback from within his own party, some members of which still, shockingly, have either their pride or some standards. (Or maybe they just really didn't like Matt Gaetz.) And most interestingly of all, Trump seems to smell the rot on Putin and is distancing himself. (I suspect that may be the result of pressure from our own corporate interests, but it's only a guess.) There's still plenty of damage they can inflict on millions of people without being the Joker and Penguin in some kind of tag team from hell, but it's a glimmer of hope if they're not ride or die.

I can do my work--I was going to any way--but now I see a glimpse of what this might end up looking like. It just might be a future worthy of the Syrians, Ukranians, and South Koreans.

Deb in the City

Thirteen down, three to go

I have a lot to say, but it deserves more time than I can give on a Sunday with my sister. 

Though I can manage: thank god Assad is gone. Let me know when he's put on trial for everything he did.

I managed to eke out my thirteenth installment. 26618 more words than before, for a total of 342,623 words. Three more to go. 

Let's do it.

Deb in the City

The swelling emptiness of substitutions

There are a lot of things I can no longer eat. I'm in good company, apparently, and I've heard enough horror stories that I'm not going to complain that I can't eat wheat, dairy, or soy when other people--some in my family--can't eat tree nuts, sesame, sunflowers (!), or oats (!!). These allergies were almost unheard of a generation ago, and as a chemo nurse told me that in her experience cancer was 90+% environmental, I feel pretty good that the same can be said for allergies and food sensitivities. (No, this does not mean that I think Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was a good pick for Health and Human Services.)

It has taken a long time, but for the most part I don't crave the foods I used to be able to eat. A lot of us--A LOT--are used to what my daughter and I jokingly called "delicious regret": you know you're going to feel awful later, but it tastes so good in the moment, you're willing to suffer through it. My dear readers, this isn't the stupidest thing in the world if we're talking about a stomach ache, but not exactly the smartest. Gas and stomach upset are not our friends, but most of us have lived through it. But it is a really, really stupid philosophy to embrace when you experience hives, especially around your mouth, a closed throat, or, in my case, closed sinuses. Please believe me when I tell you that while dim sum rice noodles bathed in sweetened soy sauce used to be my idea of heaven, now the thought of it makes my stomach cramp up. There is no taste in the world that makes not being able to breathe later tolerable. By the same token, when I know that eating wheat is going to give me digestive difficulties for five days afterward, vegetable tempura is not going to be remotely tempting. 

There are many foods that I can now walk away from--Cheese? Yogurt? Bread? No, thank you--but there are still a few that I remember fondly enough that I do still seek out their substitutes. Vegan ice cream is a big one, in large part because it is so readily available, at least near me. I have eaten more than my fair share, but for the last six months I have been left with a profound emptiness when I'm done. I can't explain it, but that is exactly how I feel. I have eaten nothing but chemicals reorganized to resemble frozen dairy, and, perhaps, I'm so aware of it that I feel as empty as what I have eaten. It's not a hole in my gut, but in my chest.

I admit, too, that I feel a great deal of envy when I see my family eating something like pot pie. Oh, how I used to love vegetable pot pie, back in those halcyon days when I was just a vegan but could still eat wheat. It is the marriage of texture and flavor that is difficult to get to with whole grains and stew. (If I may, I think it is texture we miss more than flavor.) Seeing my son get a very large chicken pot pie this weekend (that will linger in the fridge until after Thanksgiving, I'm sure) inspired me to try my hand at a home made version with the stew that my husband made this weekend. 

You will be happy to know that my vegan, gluten-free crust was more than credible. Yes, parts of it broke, but for the most part, it baked well. It also gave me that "bite" that I had been missing for so long...and then I remembered those other things I used to experience when eating pot pie, as well as shepherd's pie. Oh, that combination of vegetables and starch is really quite filling, uncomfortably so, in fact. I looked at my pie and started wondering how bad it would be if I put in soup or stew.

There's an argument that the way I eat now--you can check out the recipes section of nutritionfacts.org to get an idea--is lacking in the glamour and sex appeal that you find in a lot of cookbooks and blogs. It's very uncool, but then again, so am I. It is probably not the worst thing in the world for me if I eat banana or mango nice cream instead of the vegan substitutes, or if I top a stew with some whole grains. Yes, I have missed some things about old favorites, but I've forgotten how relieved my body was not to deal with some of the consequences. 

A lack of regret is perhaps something we don't realize we benefit from, but maybe now is a good time to review all of the things you think you miss and ask yourself what you're really missing.

Deb in the City

You've seen this movie before; make sure you remember all the beats

Getting things off my chest a few days ago was the right call. I've had some realizations (that I don't need to share here, at least not right now...), and I'm now able to think on Things more clearly.

I'm looking for what might be called Comfort Wisdom. I want to find people who have lived through some variation of this reality before. For a couple of reasons, I've found Studs Terkel's archives invaluable, especially this weekend. 

His show ran for decades--amazing to hear the same interview Lorraine Hansberry before her untimely death, as well as Carl Sagan decades later. My heart fluttered when I heard Edward Said this weekend, and I shook my head and sighed when he interviewed someone about Gorbachev. Actual good times.

I haven't listened to even one percent of his archives, but I'm picking up on at least one theme. He talks about the violence in the United States at the time, and you can practically see him pointing at Vietnam and then nuclear weapons. It's the same point Donna Leon made in her latest Commissario Brunetti installment; for all of the complaints about baby gangs, do people really not notice that they're trying to be little militias? Where would they have gotten that idea?

It's a sociological insight that is, of course, pretty obvious, but which I really do need someone to point to. It's so obvious, actually,  that I wonder why I have to go back through archives almost sixty years old to find it. (I had heard some inklings of it before, but it was dismissed as so much handwaving.) But here we are, and find it I did. Now I'll have an extended think on it.

What I don't need any kind of review of is actual known and discussed history, but am I the only one? No, I'm very grateful for the Gaslit Nation community, because they got the memo--excuse me, history book--and actually read it. They seem to be the only ones though. 

I've been horrified for over a decade as I've seen similar scenes from the 1930s play out and people proceed as if they don't know what they need to not do if they want to avoid similar consequences. If Syria wasn't a full-on repeat of Spain, it was a close enough rhyme that we should have known that abandoning the Syrians wasn't going to help anyone. And wow, how difficult was it to predict that if Syrians had to flee their country, other countries gutted by austerity programs were going to lose their minds and lean full-on native? (It wasn't hard at all unless you were Obama and Jake Sullivan, but those were evidently the only ones who mattered.) Almost as difficult as it is to predict how trustworthy Putin would be about ending the war in Ukraine if we, you know, appeased him. Ask Neville Chamberlain how well that worked out.

I feel similarly about the consequences of voting in someone who has made fascist promises, as well as people who are calling for political violence as a counter measure. I see people talking about that, and I feel like I am in an alternate dimension. Just...are you out of your minds? That kind of violence will accomplish nothing. (I can go back to the late 19th century for that lesson.) Somebody, somewhere, might get to vent their anger, but it won't stop the much more organized violence of fascists. I will say that coming in strong numbers when there is a threat is a good strategy, but thinking you can shoot your way out of this is not the right move. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't choose passive resistance out of cowardice, but strategy. He was leading a "minority" movement, and his accomplishments were amazing. Imagine what a majority using the same strategy can accomplish?

Deb in the City

Radical honesty

Sometimes I've worried about what to post here, then I remember that I don't have a big readership, and I'm not important enough for anyone to look up. Someday, maybe, my kids might be interested in things I said, but honestly, I don't think they'll care, either.

So, really, I can say whatever I want.

There's a lot I want to say about everything that's going on, but first I need to talk about what's going on with me.

My mother needed to go into assisted living, and in July she finally did. It was years in the making. There's an extent to which she was a victim of the times she was born into, as well as the generational trauma both of her parents brought with them, but there were also important junctures in which she made the wrong choices. Some of them--maybe, really, just one of them--were so egregious that I could never forgive her, and if I shared it, I sincerely hope I wouldn't have to live through more of the gaslighting I suffered through when I was younger. But it's not my story to tell (and that is part of what makes her so unforgivable).

She was the primary caretaker of my autistic, nonverbal sister, and that was untenable as of last September. Between last November and this past March, it was a slog to have my mother removed as the guardian. Because her mental state was so compromised, she only intermittently realized that was the case. Her compromised state, along with her general disposition, had caused her to alienate her caretaker, and after she quit, I had had enough and finally told her she needed to go into assisted living. Shockingly, for reasons I'll never understand, she didn't fight me or get verbally abusive (this time), and within two weeks, she was in an apartment that one of my sisters would be happy to spend her days in as well (I mean, maybe).

The caretaker came back to be with my sister, but unfortunately, I think it's fair to say my mother had poisoned that well. In spite of my insistence that my sister needed to be fed a whole foods diet, the caretaker would sneak junk food to her. (I know this in part because my sister's day program sent me photos.) To understand why this was such a big deal, my sister had a BMI of 35, in no small part due to the amount of oil and butter my mother would give her. (By that I mean my mother would give her a small bowl of oil, sometimes with some soy sauce.) She would also let her eat all kinds of junk food, and didn't prioritize something like produce. Amazingly, my sister wasn't diabetic, but she does have a fatty liver. 

The caretaker was a hundred times better about my sister's diet than my mother, but I didn't like being lied to (or talked down to). What finally pushed me to dismiss her was when I came to the house to install a television with my husband and found her deeply asleep in the late afternoon while my sister was by herself. It was no longer safe to leave my sister there.

So, effectively, I had to step into the breach, which meant going from being at the house in the suburbs two days a week to being there seven, then, mercifully, five, once my oldest niece was able to do two nights. Which was great, until my niece, who is in college, had plans she wanted to keep. Unfortunately, that period coincided with my son, who is still at home, developing terrible withdrawal symptoms from his medication. 

This has been a rough two years, but one of the good things to come out of it is that when I hear things about pounding headaches and intrusive thoughts, I know to act immediately. What this meant in practice is that my husband stays in our home with our son when I have to be in the suburbs. I think, sadly, this will have to be the case for another few weeks (that's how medication tends to go). Neither of us got married so we could sleep alone, but we also didn't have children so we could leave them to their own devices. It's going to be a long six weeks, but then it will end.

Being in the house with my sister by myself has been very difficult for two reasons: one, my sister is on anti-seizure medication (because she had a frightening seizure five years ago) and two, the house developed a mouse problem in the last two months. There's something so perfect about the fact that my mother, who didn't think she needed to move her dishes from the table to the sink if someone else was in the house, never had a mouse problem in this house, but I do, in spite of the fact that I don't leave food out and clear dirty dishes out of the sink immediately. The exterminator has come three times, and the cleaners now come once a week. I HATE mice--they set my nervous system on edge, and you can sneer at me all you want, but that won't change it--and being around them is agony, especially when they crawl into the couch I used to sit on.

That problem may be solved (though I don't have my hopes up). My sister's anti-seizure meds are another story. One of the side effects is that it makes you agitated, and in her it has manifested as a lot of shouting, yelling, screaming, hollering, and just generally being loud and unpleasant. It's hard to be patient, and it's hard to be around, and because of the mouse and cold weather, it's been hard for me to find a place to retreat. I also kept getting notices from her program that she was agitated, with similar loud behavior, but also being intrusive with her peers. I was worried that she was having trouble adjusting to some of the changes (and felt terrible). But two weeks ago, after I remembered my dentist saying something about caffeine and teeth (my sister's teeth are another story), I removed caffeine from my diet and thought it wouldn't be a terrible thing for my sister not to have any, either. 

Within three days, the results were pretty dramatic. She wasn't shouting nearly as much, she was calmer and less manic in general, and she was sleeping much better. I believe in the power of diet (in large part because that's the only thing I feel like I can safely manipulate), but this was notable. On a hunch, my husband and I looked up the interaction with her medication and caffeine, and I was livid when I found that caffeine can, in effect, inhibit the "anti-convulsant effects" of the medication. When I thought about all of the times my mother would give my sister coffee to control her, I was outraged all over again.

This is one of my longer posts, because it's a lot. I have to handle the vast majority of it on my own, with some significant help from my husband, but as I said, I'm pretty much on my own on the weekends for the next month and a half. It's a lot, and I'm bitter about how much of it I'm being left to handle on my own and, frankly, without a lot of sympathy (and I don't mean from my husband and children, who are upset about how much time I have to spend). I also find myself having to manage bills for the house, even if I'm not paying them. Managing my sister's affairs is not nothing, and then when I had to step into the breach to fix an insurance issue for my mother, that was a lot of time I could ill afford to lose. I get it: people have things to do, but SO DO I. And this year has driven home for me how much more people and their time are valued when someone else is willing to pay for it. I work--HARD--but because I don't get compensated for it, I'm not valued, and in fact I'm seen as an expendable resource. It's really, really disconcerting when people in your family treat you that way, but here we are.

Not only do I not get paid for my work, it costs me money. Between the social security payments my sister gets, the small sum my father sends, and the amount of money available for personal care assistance, I can barely afford five days of care taking. That allows me to replenish my mental health as well as that of my husband and son, but it means there is no cushion for groceries or clothing or anything else. There was money--a significant amount--but one of the last things my mother did before she lost guardianship was spend it on who knows what, and it might as well be in the wind.

Some of this might be easier if we moved into the house in the suburbs, but my son adamantly doesn't want to, and I don't want to give up the home I've been in for almost three decades. It's worth some money to me to keep my sister safe and keep my sanity. So in the meantime I'm sitting on the weekends with what's left of my mother's furniture in a house that's riddled with at least one mouse, by myself. But at least I'm giving my sister the healthy food she needs, and being attentive to her needs. That's worth something, even if only to me.

Alright. I think that's most of what I needed to get off my chest. Now I can move onto the other issues. Those are much easier.

Deb in the City

We have to face what this means

One of the few "mainstream media" podcasts/shows I still pay attention to is On the Media. I love Brooke Gladstone, without whom I wouldn't have found Cory Doctorow, who lead me down a rabbit hole of other Very Good Things. (And I've found some good books from OTM as well, including Fearing the Black Body, which was amazing.) 

On their Wednesday show, Gladstone and her co-host Micah Loewinger dissected their role in not preventing Trump's win. While I applaud them for the self-examination, and I agree that Trump's win is one of the expected consequences of the long-term project of gutting local media, they're mistaken if they think that voters didn't know what they were voting for. Yes, they did. People knew Donald Trump was a fascist and they voted for him anyway.

More than half of the people who turned out this year wanted a fascist for president. They not only heard what he promised to do in this term--chief among them, the deportation of 13 million immigrants--they know what he did in his last term. And even if they just couldn't keep up with all of it--and that was part of the point--they saw the attempted coup in 2021. It doesn't matter that Trump and his people BS'd why he wasn't responsible; anyone with eyes and/or ears knew that he was. Everyone saw, and millions of people didn't care. In fact, some of those people may have welcomed it.

When you infantilize large groups of people for decades, don't be surprised when they're vulnerable to believing someone who wants to play daddy is going to take care of them.

It also cannot be overlooked that sexism played a huge role in this. It's really chicken-and-egg: did toxic misogyny and misogynoir give people the final push into fascism, or has fascism been part of why misogyny has become so murderous? I think Kamala Harris was an excellent candidate, and people who follow these things said she had all the right moves on the campaign. But I had a pit in my stomach as I did in 2016 as soon as Biden stepped down and endorsed her. It's not that America isn't ready for a female president, as if we're in some larval stage on the way to sprouting our beautiful wings of pluralistic acceptance; we're fully formed, and we reject anything that changes the environment we're used to.

(I was worried because Harris was a woman, not because she was Black and South Asian, but maybe I should have been. I should not have forgotten that the intersection of anti-white racism and sexism is one of the ugliest places to inhabit.)

I beg everyone else to stop the nonsensical explanation. (The price of eggs? Are you joking? Trump and his people don't have to make the people who eat eggs happy, the have to make Big Ag happy.) And stop telling yourselves that people didn't understand and they're going to be sorry. No, they're not, not unless they suffer for it. As angry as I am, I'm not wishing that kind of suffering on anyone.

People need to understand what his election means. Assume the worst. Assume that the worst interpretations of Project 2025 will apply. Assume his administration will deport 13 million people. Assume they will try to strip citizenship from naturalized citizens. Assume trans people, and especially the children, will be under concerted attack. Assume they will try to pull back recognition of gay marriage. Assume they will also bring back miscegenation prohibitions, at least in some places. Assume there will be camps. Assume there will be detention centers. Assume people will not be able to avail themselves of due process. Assume there will be politically motivated prosecutions. Assume Taiwan, Ukraine, Gaza, and the West Bank are on their own. (And shame on you for knowing that and voting as if you could indulge purity and not have to choose the best of actual options.)

Assume the worst, because maybe that will drive home how much assistance we who can provide should provide. My time and money are limited for the next year and a half--but that doesn't mean there is nothing I can do. I want to get involved in mutual aid. I want to keep people from being cold on the street (and that was already happening in Massachusetts--don't tell me how Blue we are, please). I want to keep people from starving. I want to keep libraries open. 

I want to preserve everything we have so we can someday reclaim what they are going to try to take away.

Please join me.

Deb in the City

Progress on the saga

What, that's not the most important thing today?

I finished drafting my twelfth installment. 24,368 words, for a total of 316,005 words. 

Twelve down, four to go.

Excuse me while I make some calls to save democracy.

Deb in the City

Please help Get Out The Vote (GOTV) with the Environmental Voter Project (EVP)

My fellow Americans,

If you're planning to vote on Election Day (as I am) or you've already voted, thank you, but unfortunately we need to push a little harder this time around. It truly amazes me that this can be a close race after what happened on January 6, 2021, but (once again) here we are. 

I am very happy to be working on the GOTV effort with EVP. This isn't just to preserve democracy, but also to give us a fighting chance of preserving the livability of the planet. EVP is calling people who already believe climate is the most important voting issue but don't reliably show up to vote. It's difficult to get those people to vote, but it's harder to get existing voters to believe that climate should be their number one issue. As Nathaniel Stinnett, the founder of EVP has said, it's easier to change behavior than belief, especially now.

If you haven't already started phoning, start now. They're phone banking until tomorrow, November 5 (aka Election Day) until 7 PM EST. They've already made some amazing inroads--as of yesterday, almost 11% of their targeted voters had shown up to early vote, which is amazing--but we've got a lot more work to do.

Let's do everything we can to make sure we have a democracy next year.

Deb in the City

Respite at home

In case you're wondering why I pine for more time at home, here's a picture from my walk today.

The suburbs cab keep their big houses and lots of private space. I'll take communal greenspace any day.

Deb in the City 

Winning Words and Phrases

There are very few words or phrases that should automatically shut down a discussion and force someone to concede a point, but in the last year, I've run into a few.

"Novel intestinal bacteria" This comes courtesy of Chris van Tulleken's book, Ultra Processed People, and it refers to the known effects of xanthan gum. This is why I avoid a lot of ultraprocessed foods.

"Fatty liver" This is something one of my siblings suffers from. I was reminded of this when we tried to see the doctor last month, and it made me think about all of the times that I was told I was too extreme or a "health nut" for feeding said sibling a whole foods plant-based diet.

"Rats in the community garden" This is self-explanatory, and you really would think that it would be enough to motivate board members to immediately authorize funds for an exterminator and gardeners to attend to their plots. (You would be mistaken.)

If I'm extreme or inflexible for believing these things are indicative of absolutes, what the Hell happened to the center? But maybe living in an age where we are literally in danger of *electing* a fascist in the United States for the second time in less than a decade has dulled everyone's senses.

Deb in the City

Numbers: the Victory Edition

And let's take our victories where we can. Every single one of them feels hard won.

I just finished drafting installment eleven (11) of my saga. I fell hard for a character who--spoiler alert--will not make it through to the end (or will they?). This installment clocked in at 69,593 words, which brings my total word count up to 291,637. That is very close to three hundred thousand. This is the longest installment of all, and I may have to make some changes, but I need to wait until the end to deliver the punch. It's not perfect--it's a draft--but it's pretty good.

Five more to do. One of them will be on the longer side, but not nearly as long as this.

Deb in the City

But what does it all mean?

I've found myself wanting to post something here many times over the last week and a half, but I didn't because there's so much going on, and I don't know how to tie it up in a nice bow. Because at the end of the day I'm a story teller, and stories have, on at least one level, meaning. Perhaps this does, too, but I don't know what it is yet. Or maybe I do, but then my options are limited. That's not a story I want to keep telling.

Well, here at least is what happened. 

I am no longer a garden coordinator at the garden I've been in for fifteen years. I agonized for a long time, but when I finally made my decision I was done. All of the different stakeholder groups are dysfunctional, even if among them there are some wonderful people trying their best to do their jobs. This has been the case for a long time, but when people couldn't rise to the challenge of dealing with a rat issue--and, not incidentally, fulfill their contract obligations--that crossed a line for me. I could say so much more, but out of respect for friends still there, I won't. 

That was last Saturday, and the stress of it was enough that on Sunday morning I developed a neck spasm that didn't ease up until the evening. I thought I would be done with physical therapy on Monday, but the spasm earned me not only two more sessions, but also a gentle lecture on stress management. Indeed. 

The therapist also gave my thoracic spine an adjustment. I've never has one of those before, and it was disorienting. It also let loose a lot of blocked emotions, and a weird rash. Dramatic, but not something I would chase.

In the meantime, I felt pulled to mind body workouts as I thought about my eczema, and after a week of experimentation, I settled on qigong with Lee Holden. I still love Lucy Wyndham-Read, but I feel the detox effects with qigong in a different way. Fortunately, there is no one saying I can't do both.

I can say all of that was helping me manage my stress better, because when I found my sister's caretaker sleeping in the early evening (while my sister was awake), I knew I needed to make a change but I did so with a minimum of drama (thanks in large part to one of my other sisters). I've been at the house in the suburbs since Friday morning, and while I would rather my husband and I be home with our young adult son, I am much calmer and even content than I was in a similar situation last year. 

The situation is in flux, though, so I was extremely fortunate that I was so close to my goal of 1000 calls at the beginning of the week. Happy to report that by Wednesday I had completed them, because I'm not sure when I'll be able to get on a call again. My husband and I need to celebrate, but not sure how yet. 

On Thursday, my last hurrah in the city, my husband and I went to a social with some other activists. I was as awkward as I ever am, and powered through as I usually do. It was fine; I met some nice people, but as usual I'm sensitive to power dynamics and calibrate accordingly. If I'm ever exhausted by social interactions, it's because of that. 

So that's my story, such as it is. 

Deb in the City

Hitting the Wall

Part of why I increasingly sneer at productivity is that I am a productive person, and it is not the be all end all. If knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, Getting Things Done is maybe only the beginning of figuring out what's actually important. 

I'm making calls for democracy. I'm coordinating at a community garden. I'm my sister's caretaker on the weekends. I'm still plugging away at my writing project (I have nothing negative to say about tenacity). I'm trying to shepherd one son through his first year at a four year college. And I'm trying to keep all of the things together, even if it's down to dishes and folding laundry.

This weekend the weekly caretaker needed to come a day late. I missed my son, but it was only an extra night. Except that I had caught a little something that weekend. It passed by Monday, but then my husband ended with what seemed like a more extreme version, to the point that we went straight to the ER instead of home. It turned out that this was a good call--and that's not something you can say about every ER visit--but it took all day. 

That was a lost day of work for the both of us, but there was still just as much to be done. (Okay, I didn't end up cleaning up as much as I usually like to, but that was more than made up for by the amount of time I spent searching for dishwashing gloves with my husband.) Thank the universe for my workouts, which gave me life; I reached for things like Qigong, Yoga, and Dance--things I haven't touched for a year--and it was just what I needed.

I felt good last night--until my son woke me up at 3AM. I got a little bit more sleep, but this was also a day that saw me with two meetings as well as a phone bank. I got on my mat for some Yin Yoga after the last meeting, and I realized how utterly burnt out I am. Let me tell you, there is no glory in smelling like smoke.

I met a friend yesterday--always good to see her, even if it was this week--and we came up with something of an exit strategy for one of my commitments. Yes, good. And another will be over--hopefully--on November 5. Better. I think I can make it...?

There was a time when I would have white knuckled my way through and told myself stories about my strength and fortitude. Ugh. If anyone said anything like that to me now, I would show them the door. 

I can get through this, but I don't have to like it. Martyrdom is for losers (literally). 

Deb in the City

Vegetables and activity make me happy

Sometimes I find myself underwhelmed by my online activity. I suspect I am not alone. As I sat back wondering there was a better website or platform I should look at, about different subjects than I normally do, I more and more felt like I just didn't want to be online right then. (There is a connection to be made about Socrates' unexamined life quote, but I'll let someone else make it.) I realized what I really wanted to do was move furniture around. I suspect not as many people get those urges, but I could be wrong.

My husband asked me not to do it right then as he was in the middle of something...so you'd better believe that as soon as I'd had breakfast this morning I hopped to it. There were books and other papers moving between two bookshelves, and one bookshelf moving into another room. There was also a lot of dust, as well as some pleasant surprises and depressing discoveries. (Did I mention that the reason I love Marie Kondo's tidying so much is because it gives me permission to get rid of "gifts" I don't want? Although perhaps not enough today.) It was a fun little diversion, but what it really drove home is that I have too many books and pieces of paper, in spite of my best efforts.

...Which is maybe why the "shopping" I enjoy best is for food, the ultimate disposable commodity. But I don't love Whole Foods, at all, for all of the reasons I've gone over, yet I find myself there for convenience more often than I want to. I'm happy to do more of my shopping at my local markets, and I'm fortunate to have choices, but I'd also like to support local farmers. Unfortunately, the farmers market near me isn't always convenient, and the one I used to love in Copley is even less so. 

But the world has changed in the last decade, so I'm able to order from a farm in Massachusetts when I also order the milk and dairy that my family eats (and which they'll be eating much less of after the next month). The timing of the order can be fiddly, but somehow I was able to work it out for this week and tada. 

 

Summer's bounty

Lousy lighting as usual, but that's melon, pepper, eggplant, radishes, beets, peaches(!), kale, zucchini, and green beans. I have plans--I have enough onions and garlic to make soufico happen, and if I cook the peaches down my husband can enjoy them, too--but I'm willing to let all of that go if my sons want to go to town on the kale and string beans. (And I'm happy to let them eat all of the melon...okay, maybe happy is the wrong word, but I'll let them.) 

All in all, this is a really good Monday--and I know no one hears that a lot.

Deb in the City

Boston is full of green power spots

I had a physical therapy appointment on Wednesday, then a sudden errand at my credit union. I also wanted to celebrate my boys' return home.

I had my husband drop me off at the credit union. Ran my errand, then walked to my PT appointment. After that, I walked to the Boston Public Library (of course), then met my boys at the Prudential Center to exchange South Korean won and then go to lunch.

It was not an earth-shattering day, but I loved it. Big bonus was walking along the Fens. We should of course continue to interrogate our ideas of beauty and the origins of why some get to enjoy it more than others...but sometimes it is a relief to just enjoy it.

Deb in the City

Sometimes gifts are love

My general orientation with material things is "no, please, I don't want it." As I've mentioned, my condo is extremely small, and having grown up in clutter and chaos, space is the ultimate luxury.

But sometimes, even people like me make an exception.

They caught me

This is the collection of gifts I received from my family in South Korea via my children earlier this week, next to vases my father got me two decades ago, also from South Korea. Handkerchiefs, because I'm trying not to use disposable things. A pencil and pen case, because a writer has to write with something. A travel journal, almost too beautiful to write in (but watch me). A beautiful silken bag...to slip my large journal into. A crocheted flower pot, because I do love flowers (and needle arts). And a card from a cousin I wish I saw more of.

Perfect, but I'm not surprised.

Deb in the City

Perspective

I've been trapped in the suburbs since Friday afternoon and unable to leave until tomorrow morning. This place is starting to feel a little more like my family's home and not my mother's former home, but it doesn't make me miss home much less. Worse, I haven't had much company this weekend since my husband had a couple of errands he needed to run and then a professional appointment this morning. 

Maybe I could have gone for a walk--but no. I was always scheduled to meet someone here at noon, so there wasn't much of an adventure to be had. But it's a nice day and between 7:30, when my sister's bus comes, and 12, I could have walked to the quaint city center. However, I got a call at 7:35 that the elusive Floor Guys would be coming over at 8:05, so after I ate my breakfast my husband and I were set to work moving furniture (and going through yet more detritus). 

I had time after they left (and someone came to check that they had indeed arrived) to write some emails. I was just finishing that up when the cleaners showed up. Always a pleasure to see them--they're one of the reasons I find the house more pleasant--but since I wasn't expecting them, I didn't plan around them (including to bring my checkbook) and then it was that much longer that I had to stay for them.

I complain to my husband about how trapped I feel via text. He kindly offers to console me with my comfort of choice when he gets home, then tells me that someone he knows just lost a family member in a way all too reminiscent of how I lost a family member last year. A little bit later, a friend contacts me to reach out because they're having health problems. I'm a poor choice to contact since I have no medical training, but there's a reason I'm one of the better options (not my story to tell).

Yeah, maybe there are worse fates than the one I'm enduring today.

I get to see my boys tomorrow, eat cake (or watch them eat cake), and sleep in my own bed tomorrow. That isn't soon enough, but in the meantime I can sit out on a deck and overlook some green. It's not what I want, but maybe it will do.

Deb in the City

Scenes from an adventure

I did get out and take a walk yesterday, and it was lovely. I made it to the Charles but not the Atlantic--next time.

It was just what I needed after a few weeks of planning--excuse me, organizing--a week of missing my kids, and right before I jump back into phone calls for democracy and a long weekend in the suburbs.

So much beauty, and my good fortune to share in it.

Deb in the City

Breathing room in time for an adventure

My sons left for South Korea (along with one of their older sisters) last Saturday and won't be coming back until Tuesday. You'd think I'd have taken the time to kick back, but of course not. I took the time to scrub the kitchen--that was a lot of moving stuff around--as well as clean their room. Oh my god. You don't even know. Imagine a dorm room that needs to be maintained every week but instead gets serviced every quarter. If you're lucky.

There was a lot of dust, some new sheets, pillows, and drapes, and my "suggested" donation pile. They are never buying clothes again unless they've gotten rid of something first (the same goes for their father and kitchen gadgets), and until they've proven that they can take care of their things. There's a lot that's squeezed into their bedroom, and I appreciate that it's tough to keep things orderly. But since 1) the computers and long desks were their demand and 2) they picked out and in some cases demanded their own clothing, yeah, they can manage laundry and vacuuming once a week.

In other news, I'm done with the lobbying I was in charge of this year for a climate volunteer organization I'm with. Hurray. We had two meetings, and one definitely went better than the other. Lesson learned--maybe. Some things were out of our control, and that of the national organization who led the effort. But the important thing is that it's done, and thank goodness, because I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I had to deal with an unpleasant exchange yesterday and it pretty much sucked the life out of me for a few hours.

I've done my job, at least for today. My husband, sadly, is out of the house, but I think it's time for me to have an adventure. Downtown Boston, here I come.

Deb in the City

So busy I don't even have time to complain about how busy I am

Until, of course, now.

I was willing to go about my business--which was busy enough as it was--until the "establishment" wing of the Democratic Party quite clearly pushed Biden out of the race. I did not want that to happen, in large part because people had been signalling since late 2021 that *of course* Vice President Kamala Harris couldn't possibly succeed him. My position: if Biden was going to bow out, then they needed to replace him with Harris immediately. An actual convention fight would have been suicide. 

Oh hey--looks like tens of millions of people were just as irate as I was, and Harris easily locked up her delegates and raised eye-watering amounts of money very, very quickly. 

A few weeks before that, I had raised my hand and said I'd volunteer to help organize lobbying our senators for the Jewish Earth Alliance. Organizing is always a little running around, but it would be over as of August 8. So fine.

A few days before Biden's announcement, I had been asked to help organize non-partisan phone banking. That is also more than a bit of running around, but that also had an end date--and it was for a good cause. I agreed, and we started planning.

And then the announcement came, and I was emailing like a crazy person. When democracy is on the line, it's not the time to whine about how much work I have ahead of me. Relax after I'm sure we've pushed back a fascist. 

It's coming along--there's more work to be done, but we've got time. It's one of the few times in my life I'm not worried about annoying people--again, democracy vs. fascism. And even if some people are giving me a side eye, or just straight up glaring at me, I *know* a number of them are going to come running later. (How do I know this? Oh, I don't know, maybe because I lived through November 2016 through January 6,  2021.) I don't see my job as dragging everyone into something they don't want to do; I see myself as making things available for them when they are.

I still have a lot going on in my messy personal life, but I'm kind of grateful for that. Isn't that a big part of what we're hoping to preserve?

Deb in the City

The simple things

I don't have time (or, really, the inclination) to do Self-Care if it's a big to do that involves me going somewhere or going to any extra trouble that lasts more than five minutes. But I do enjoy the little things, like using a scrub once a week, or making sure I'm eating organic vegetables. (Maybe that's not self-care, since I consider it genuinely essential for my health. By the same token, I don't count physical therapy exercises or working out, though they do have similar effects.)

But I am definitely counting this vegan, homemade watermelon lassi that I made this morning for breakfast. (Are you in the middle of a heatwave as well? Of course you are.) I suspect I'm going to need more than this to get me through the next few hours, but right now I'm staring at this very pretty color while I take some sips, and I just want to focus on the here and now.

Deb in the City

At least I'm getting things done...?

Oh wait, I remember I think that's kind of a hollow thing to brag about. In my defense, what I've been getting done has been the things I want to do...mostly.

A lot has happened since I last posted. My mother is now in assisted living. I got to see my new, extremely adorable niece. And yesterday I had the majority of the junk removed from the house my sister now lives in. That may seem like a short list, but those things required massive amounts of planning and effort, both logistical and emotional, and not a little bit of money (even if it wasn't even mostly mine). Thankfully, some of that money was spent on people who can lift heavy things for me, so there is that.

It's a big deal to get these things done, but I'm very happy to be returning to my old routine, at least in the ways I can. I don't feel good about the time that's been spent away from my children while I'm doing these things, especially because they're going to be leaving on a trip for a few weeks. But, I suppose, these are the problems of success.

I'm still transcribing, and still making some get out the vote phone calls, though not nearly as much/as many as before. But I'm confident I'll reach my clip again.

The only issue I'm having trouble negotiating is my community garden. I'm starting to feel that my continued participation might be a luxury I can no longer afford, which kills me. Fingers crossed that I'm wrong. 

Still in all, small or temporary prices to pay for doing the right things.

Deb in the City

Sewing!

I am posting the pictures below because I am stupidly proud of my progress in my quest to become a...sew-er? I have had this on my list of things I've wanted to do for years, but it wasn't until I settled on starting with hand sewing that I felt like I could do this. Cal Patch, who is awesome, has a great tutorial on Creativebug to make a hand-sewn boxy tee. I am not there yet, but by the end of the summer, I think I can.

What I like about hand sewing is that I can correct stitches pretty easily, and I don't have to jump through the hoops of rewinding bobbins (or finding a place to set up the machine and materials). It's something I can easily put down and pick up, and I'm all about things I can fit into my schedule instead of having to schedule to.

 

In case it's not clear from the photos--why would it be?--I'm working on my French seam technique, and today I felt confident enough to do what I'm going to call a double French seam, which basically means I'm using a French seam to join two pieces that were made with a French seam. (Wow, how many times can I fit one phrase into the same sentence?) If this were on a sewing machine, I would be nervous about the corner where all of them meet, but by hand it was totally fine.

My secret weapons are a pencil and one of those see-through rulers; sadly, I am not at the point where I can eyeball it (maybe someday?). I'm also using basting stitch to help me get rid of pins, which sounds like an extra step, but actually makes my life easier since I don't have to worry about stabbing myself with pins as much.

There's been stuff going on this week, which I hope to update on later. Glad to have a little time today to get back into this meditative project.

Deb in the City

Numbers, and an open letter to Cory Doctorow regarding Noam Chomsky

The good news first. I finished transcribing Evil Hides in Darkness, the tenth (!) installment of my saga. It clocked in at 15981 words, which brings my total to 222,046 words. I began to transcribe installment eleven, The Limits of Magic, this morning, and realized I had the beginning stored in a Google Drive doc (I'm not doctrinaire about my methods, even if I have my preferences). Um...let's just say, as I suspected, this installment is going to be the longest yet. Hmm...

In other news...

As I've mentioned, I enjoy Cory Doctorow's writings, and I've found him to be clarifying and informative. I not only read his blogs, I've read three of his books--and one of them was on the details around "intellectual property"--in the entertainment industry. I genuinely like this guy, and through him I've since been turned on to The American Prospect, which is providing fantastic coverage of issues I care about. 

So please take that into account when you read what I wrote to him below after reading his latest post. I like Doctorow, but I loathe Noam Chomsky, and damn, am I done with staying silent when I see someone like him promoted in any way.

Doctorow sent a polite reply, which he didn't have to do. Hopefully I'm not blocked now.

Deb in the City

---

Hi Cory,

I'm glad to see that Chomsky managed to trip into a useful opinion. Given his toxic, career-ending sexism (at least according to all of the accounts I've heard of women who studied under him at MIT), as well as his callousness (I recall hearing an interview in which he defended keeping monuments to confederate leaders), his misunderstanding of the position on NATO expansion, plus his advocacy for "peace negotiations" to end the war in Ukraine--not to mention that he was, of course, found to be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein's (I'm sure they spent a good deal of time talking about cutting edge science and culture, not indulging in anything unsavory)--it is truly amazing that he could arrive at a common sense opinion about political activity.

We go to the polls to elect someone who will do the best job out of all of the options to advocate for and legislate to our needs. We're not inviting someone into our family or even over for dinner. This is a relatively simple proposition and doesn't require any posturing around labels.

For the record, I was happy to be considered a progressive-left-liberal Democrat until the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011. I was disgusted by the shocking lack of compassion by almost everyone on my side of the aisle, especially those who were, like me, Gen X/Baby Busters/Slackers who got an education about the Holocaust and genocide and recognized what they were looking at. As horrified as I am by what's happening in Gaza, I keep looking around for those people to care about what's going on--still!--in Syria. I'll also take as vigorous a demonstration of concern for the trafficked children of Ukraine.

All to say that even while I am contacting my state and federal legislators every week--not to mention regularly bugging the city councilors in Boston, staying active in municipal organizations, and marching to help unionize businesses in my area--Chomsky and other "leftists" can keep their seal of approval. Actually, they can all try a little harder to earn mine.

Thanks,
Deb (She/Her/Hers)

My crutch is consistency. And Douglas Adams can screw.

This has turned into one of those mornings. On the way home from getting my sons some ice cream and coffee (as well as some actual groceries), someone ran a red light, which caused us to stop short and for me to spill coffee all over my sweater. Then I had an upsetting call with my mother, whose dementia is spiraling. It didn't end well, and I'm not the only person she contacted (or who's upset).

I wanted to cry, and my sister advised that might be the best course of action. The last thing I wanted to do were those grown up things that, you know, help me achieve my goals...but I did them anyway. I did my PT exercises and noticed that, hey, I'm getting much better at them. I forced myself to transcribe this new installment, and you know what, this new twist doesn't suck. And I really, really, did not want to call Nevada voters first thing in their morning, but after bracing myself to get hung up on ten times, three out of ten were pretty nice. 

None of this makes the issues with my mother go away, nor does it address my other anxieties, both personal and, well, larger. But it's not nothing, and sometimes that's a big win.

Right...I'm also keeping up with my reading (yes, thank you, I will take the medal, parade, and statue), but one book I happily ditched into the library was some edited compilation of Douglas Adams' writings. My husband really liked The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...and then came upon some bs Adams wrote about trying to be Jewish--in no small part because of the size of his nose--but, as the title says, he likes bacon.

God damn, I am so glad I never wasted my precious time on anything he ever wrote. Why someone like that repelled me, I can't tell you, but sometimes my instincts aren't wrong (see also: Roald Dahl and Doctor Seuss). Now if only I could get over The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock...

Deb in the City

9 down, 7 to go

I just finished transcribing the ninth installment of my saga. I am now up to 206,095 words, and I actually do feel a sense of accomplishment, which is rare for me. I have been planning out and seeing the scenes from this installment for decades, and while there are some things I still need to tweak, I got down on paper what's been haunting me. Maybe that means something to me because those themes have been ever more present for me in the last few years. 

Onward. This next installment was also something I replayed over and over, and the balance is just a little more difficult. You know what? I can't wait.

Deb in the City

And now a baby!

My newly married daughter, the oldest of my father's grandchildren, got to bask in the spotlight for exactly one week before she was upstaged by the littlest of her cousins, my youngest sister's brand new baby girl, born to her and her wife yesterday night a little after 10 PM. She's just a little bigger than my smallest twin--born almost twenty years ago (!)--and she looks sooo much like my sister. 

In this brave new world of ours, we were able to follow along with the progress of labor and delivery. That was great when we wanted frequent updates, but frustrating when we wished to be there to support the new parents. Still, it was precious to see the first pictures of my tiny, minutes old niece. 

This is not a normal period of time. Most months, and certainly most weeks, don't features weddings or births, much less both. Last year was pretty rough--enough said. But I'm grateful to the universe right now for the reminder that life really does go on.

Deb in the City

Copyrights for Choreography?

Over a decade ago, I read and loved *Apollo's Angels: a History of Ballet* by Jennifer Homans. (Here is my review.) It's a fascinating story, and one of the questions that stays with me is the role of the choreographer, not to mention the mechanisms of choreography. It has always been notoriously difficult to come up with a system of notation for choreography, because you not only have to synchronize movement to time, you have to note what each body part is doing--and those movements change all the time (that's part of what the audience is watching for). Ballet has developed some shorthand--e.g., first arabesque or glissade--but it's still a lot to note for one piece, especially when there are multiple dancers.

To those who would say that orchestras manage it with different instruments, I would answer that 1) musicians can use auditory cues to correct themselves, whereas dancers don't always have the luxury of seeing what their fellow dancers are doing, and 2) orchestras almost always have a conductor standing over them to make sure they get it just right; a master choreographer would have a bunch of challenges using a similar signaling system.

Video evaporated many of these constraints. Choreographers no longer had to depend on memory, they could just a watch a recording. But that, perhaps not ironically, blurred the line between production and reproduction: the price of being able to remember the exact steps means that in many cases you're less likely to innovate them, especially if it's a beloved production like *Sleeping Beauty*, *Gisele*, or *The Nutcracker*. Here I am reminded yet again about Frantz Fanon's distinction between static customs and dynamic cultures.

More recently, I've been following the saga of HYBE versus ADOR in South Korea open-mouthed and wide-eyed. There's a lot, but maybe start with this article. It's kind of perfect that when I finally found NewJeans, a group that could serve as my entree into k-pop, they would end up embroiled in a complicated legal issue. (Good thing I'd already been reading a bunch of Cory Doctorow's thoughts on the BS of intellectual property.) 

As I said, there's a lot, but it seems like what it boils down to is both creative and corporate control of entertainment. The latest wrinkle is whether or not choreography should be copyrighted. Perhaps because of what I know of the history of ballet, perhaps because of Doctorow, perhaps because I'm a writer, my blood chilled when I read that.

Of course dance is an art form, and of course those artists should be recognized and compensated--but if we copyright choreography, we are confining ourselves to constantly rewatching *Sleeping Beauty*, *Gisele*, *The Nutcracker*, or something else that's 70-, 75-, or 90-years old. We will be locked in a world of custom, and it will be more difficult to create a dynamic culture.

I don't blame choreographers for wanting more money, and even wanting more credit; as the article linked above lays out, there's a good argument to be made that they are a key element in k-pop's elevated profile. I think they should be paid more for their contributions, but *up front*, and I think they should be entitled to royalties from those contributions. But dance is movement, and while a lot of what I've seen of the k-choreography (that's a term now, I just decided) is very innovative, it is not strictly "original" because it tends to be combinations of movements that have been seen before. This isn't a criticism of any of the choreographers--this is a reflection of the limitations of the human body. 

This is also the nature of art: however you define it, it builds on what has come before it, whether refuting an idea or extending it. Almost no works of art are complete originals, like Athena sprung from the head of Zeus. This is not a criticism of art or artists: this is just a function of time, memory, and how long we as human beings have been, in effect, talking amongst ourselves. 

I bring up Doctorow because he and Rebecca Gilpin, his co-author of *Chokepoint Capitalism*, take apart the abusive system of entertainment or, if you prefer, cultural and artistic production, and the numerous ways in which those creators and contributors are absolutely screwed. And yet they do not endorse sophisticated schemes for intellectual property; in fact, those tend to take even more power away from the artists and put it into the hands of the corporations who own the intellectual property. I promise you, if choreography is South Korea becomes copyrightable, it is the conglomerates (chaebols) like HYBE that are going to get the lion's share of the payments, not the choreographer. 

I think ADOR CEO Min Hee-Jin has a point that there was a lot of "copy-paste" of NewJeans' music, dances, and "looks", and the fact that it happened under the same conglomerate that doesn't seem to have featured a lot of productive communication could feel like a slap in the face, especially when there's so much time and energy spent putting those elements together in the service of communicating ideas or ideals. I also believe that copying without innovating can lead to the same chilling effect on culture, albeit via a different route. But the answer is not to copyright and make things harder to genuinely build upon. The answer is to respect creators (and producers) from jump so that they don't have to try and squeeze every bit of their creations and innovations such that nothing will be left for anyone else. That is a harder ask because it means addressing what's wrong in a creative culture--and I don't just mean South Korea--but it is necessary for real change. 

Deb in the City

A wedding

This weekend my oldest daughter got married. If I can find one of the "detail" shots, I'll post that, but not of people. It was a small affair (as weddings go) that my daughter and her new husband (!) worked very hard on, and they were a beautiful couple.

My new son-in-law (!!!) had family members and friends, while my daughter had mostly family. This is actually fair: her three siblings and four cousins came, as did three out of four grandparents and four aunts, plus two uncles and a significant other. Oh yeah, and her parents. That is seriously about half the guest list. Both of them were surrounded by love.

It was a lovely affair, and the young couple was extremely thoughtful. But it also made me think that I'm probably over my fantasy about my "missed" wedding. No, I do not wish I wore a beautiful gown, and no, I do not wish I had had wedding cake. I have worn enough dresses and eaten enough cake. I'm good. So good, in fact, that I told my children, nieces, and nephew (and two single sisters) that the next wedding will be sneakers and jeans/sweatpants/yoga pants. That, plus the men will wear as much make up as the women.  

I'm very happy with my (?) new in-laws, particularly my son-in-law's mother (there are words for that role in Korean and Yiddish, but I don't think we've got one in English). I look forward to hanging out with all of them more.

Weddings are just the opening act. It is of course marriage that is the main event, and that's all part of a building block of family. The world is pretty frightening right now, but this event was a good reminder that good things are still possible.

Deb in the City

One bite at a time (by the numbers)

The recommended method for eating an elephant, it turns out, is the best way to get other projects done.

I want to call 1000 people this election season, and I want to call them sooner rather than later, but making 20 calls at a time can be wearying in certain states (I get it, some swing states are getting a lot of calls, but all of those hang ups and wrong numbers can be a little disheartening). I cannot make 20 calls every few days, but I can make ten calls every week day. That's what I did last week, and now I'm up to 180 calls. Hell yes. 820 more to go, and I can do it.

I've averaged 1000 transcribed words of my saga every weekday. That was A LOT when I embarked on this in December, and because of numerous appointments in May, I missed a few days. I didn't panic--no one is tapping their foot waiting for me to finish this--but I happened to have some time on my hands yesterday, so even though it was a weekend, I transcribed a lot more than usual. And then this morning, even though it's still a weekend, I transcribed a little more. Which is all to say that the eight installment, Factor of Loss, is now transcribed (and commented to hell, high heavens, and back), and the whole saga--literally and figuratively--is up to 190,285 words. 

Did I mention that this means I'm halfway through the installments?

My note-taking, which had been staring at me for almost a year, finally began in earnest a few weeks ago, and now I have stack of note cards from regular sessions of reviewing notes and "making" five notes a day. It's gratifying to see the pile increasing, even as I'm learning some disturbing things, in no small part about myself. But that's a post for another time.

And finally, I had my annual physical this week. My doctor is very pleased with my progress. It was humbling to hear that many people who had my diagnosis of cancer aren't doing as well as I am two years out (in case I didn't mention it, I'm clean as a whistle--but don't throw the party for another three years). I credit this to my diet (you can insert everything you want to about relative privilege--you wouldn't be wrong, and that's infuriating). That seems to also be having an effect on other health metrics, particularly my cholesterol. (The fact that a long-time vegan and practically eternal vegetarian can have a cholesterol issue should be the only evidence you need that there is only so much you can control.) I've brought it down a lot with legumes, whole grains, produce, nuts, and negligible amounts of refined sugar and ultra-processed foods--but apparently I've still got a little bit of wiggle room.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I'd like to be *done* with certain things so I can move on. But to what? Well, part of why I embarked on these journeys is to answer that question, and it's probably better that I take my time answering it.

Deb in the City

In real life

I had to dig deep for my 100 days of blogging experiment to *not* talk about the issue that has been weighing on me since September. There were, in fact, three or four posts that touched on the situation, but I had to unpublish them when things took a turn and I thought it would be prudent to not look too...human. 

Well, I guess now I can.

Long story short (that would be eight months into one paragraph): my mother broke her hip in early September, and my husband and I cared for my autistic, non-verbal adult sister for one month in their home nearby. It was not nearly as difficult as I always feared, but because I missed my own children, I didn't object when my mother wanted to come home. It was immediately evident that she wasn't able to care for herself, much less my sister, so, with two of my other sisters, we began pursuing guardianship. We tried to discuss it with my mother calmly, but it didn't matter. We began legal proceedings, and before my mother found out, she proved our point for us by nearly giving my sister medication that she doesn't need, which could have killed her. It was excruciating, but it was only a matter of time. The attorney my husband engaged did a fantastic job with a frustrating set of circumstances, and we were successful. 

Having spent most of my life being gaslit about my family, it was amazing to have a judge validate, um, reality. I didn't feel the proverbial weight lift off my shoulders, but I felt more optimistic than I have in a long time. Problems no longer required me to talk in circles; I still have a number of challenges I need to meet, but I now have the authority to meet them. And that is not nothing.

One of those challenges remains my mother. When she was served with legal notice, she was so angry with me that she made it clear she didn't want me to come to their home. When I did finally go back after the case had been settled, she told me how nice it was to see me. Based on conversations she's had with my sisters, I know she has no recollection of the matter, based on her manner with me as well as her conversations with one of my other sisters. And that is infuriating: a neurology nurse practitioner assessed her in November and could only come up with "mild cognitive impairment". I have no idea what the official definition of dementia is, but I do assume it includes forgetting conversations within minutes, and that's where we are now.

Where we are now, but not where we're going to stay. That is a promise.

Deb in the City

125 down, 875 more to go

Friday morning at 11 is my time to make get out the vote calls. If I want to make it to 1000, I need to add more sessions, but this is a good pace for now. 

I am one-eighth of the way to my goal. I think I'm going to make it.

Have you considered making any calls?

Deb in the City

Please make it stop

Oh come on.

I literally groaned when I read this headline: "Michelle Yeoh to Lead Blade Runner Sequel Series at Prime Video" Why? Who are all of these people clambering for more Blade Runner? And the title: Blade Runner 2099. My husband chuckled and said that sounds like a title out of the 1970s. All I can think now is how Network was supposed to be, you know, a warning, not a roadmap, but here we are.

To be clear, while I've criticized the movie sequel for its sexism, that's not my gripe here. I'm just so over sequels and reboots. I don't even have to watch them to be done with them--I can't escape them if I ever want to turn on a screen. More concerning, the fact that they are taking up all of the funding means that original content just isn't being produced. I am so done on so many levels.

I encourage people again to listen to Foreverism, an installment of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast, but also have a think on who is being served by the *constant* retread of material that hasn't been original since some of us were in grade school.

Deb in the City

Boston's Blue Bottle stores are now unionized!

Most of the time I, like the majority of all bloggers in the world, keep a blog because I have things to say about things that affect me. Rarely, it's to make sure that something is memorialized because no one else is touching it.

Such is the case with Blue Bottle's Independent Union, and it's bizarre.

I talked about the work my daughter and her colleagues were doing to unionize last month here and here. I'm really proud of her because I think this is essential work, and I'm not just saying that because she's my daughter. It has been well known since I had jobs in food service (and most other parts of retail) that you can't afford to live off of that salary--excuse me, wages. The only way to survive--and that is literally how people put it--is to be in management. That is easier said than done in many businesses, and it's still a hustle, even if you can now afford your rent and your meals.

Once you don't have to live in that, it's quickly obvious how ridiculous that is. If food service--if retail--can't offer sustainable employment, then it is not a sustainable business, period. Asking for a livable wage is not unreasonable or unrealistic, especially when the product you're serving is premium priced. And the fact that people are starting to assert their rights to organized labor is a very big deal, and it should be a bigger story.

Last month the Blue Bottle stores in Boston filed their papers with the National Labor Relations Board, but in order to be fully unionized--i.e., they could begin negotiating with management--they needed to have an election, which they did last week. This wasn't a foregone conclusion, and up until the last minute the management was trying to dissuade employees from voting to unionize. Yes, they were successful, as the title of this post indicates, but *that wasn't a foregone conclusion*.

Why, then, when I did a search for the story just now, three days after the election, is there no news of it? Someone in my family suggested that the BBIU should have sent out a press release, but sorry, why isn't the press covering this on their own? This is an important story--no, it's an important VICTORY.

Well, to hell with the establishment media. If you're reading this, now you know. So go tell everyone, and celebrate with coffee from a union shop. There may not be that many now, but soon there will be.

Deb in the City

Malice in so many combinations

A few years ago, I was leading a group at my synagogue that focused on food justice. It was really championed by a nationally renowned pediatrician who was also a member of our synagogue and started The Grow Clinic in Boston. That group's mission is to help children who suffer from "failure to thrive" due to malnourishment. While it has a food pantry, it also leads advocacy efforts and research.

My husband was similarly leading a (larger and more active) group focused on criminal justice. Because we talk a lot, he suggested to his group that they start focusing on the nexus between food insecurity and criminal justice. When I spoke to the pediatrician in question, she sent me loads of information, and it wasn't what I expected.

What I was expecting to read about was that suffering from food insecurity made you vulnerable to becoming involved in the criminal justice system. That isn't a difficult combination--the people who suffer from food insecurity are people who suffer from economic insecurity, and they tend to be the people who are over-policed and therefore more likely to be "caught". What I got instead were all kinds of research on the connection between having a parent or relative involved with the criminal justice system and suffering from food insecurity. The research also explored the problems that resulted both during and later in life, including not only physical health but mental health. It was mind-blowing, and in no small part because it explained a lot about my family of origin (but that is a story for another day). I felt like I was wading into murky waters before; now I realized that I was so far underneath it I couldn't see daylight. 

That is how I felt when I came across this report on school hardening by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Wow--wow. Here I had thought that the evil connection between guns, racism, and sexism was to be found in the increased vulnerabilities of Black women to dying during or shortly after pregnancy at the hands of an intimate partner using a gun, but these are the poisonous mixtures that just keep on giving. To read this report, you can see that *another* effect is that as schools respond to gun violence with "hardening"--metal detectors, security surveillance, and on-site security guards--it is Black girls who are suffering the most, being not only over-policed (you knew that, right?) but also sexually harassed (yeah, you knew that, too).

Why was I so naive to think there was only one truly awful manifestation that acted against the most vulnerable among us? Am I just that linear? Have I not listened to my Black friends enough to understand the multitude of ways our country is a land mine for them?

Again, we are past "having a serious discussion" or "exploring the problem". We are also past pseudo-incrementalist, half-assed measures like installing security cameras in schools or anywhere else that is subject to mass-violence. (And no, arming *teachers* or sales clerks is not a solution, either.) We need to control the distribution and sales of guns, period. We need to not allow people to assemble arsenals in their homes. We need to be less interested in "the freedom" of people "exercising their Second Amendment rights" and more interested in the people suffering from that exercise. 

I'm making 1000 phone calls to get people to the polls this election season. It's important for a lot of reasons, and this is one of them. Please go vote this year, please vote for the person most likely to push through gun reform, and please tell the people in office now that this is what you want. This isn't just a matter of democracy, this is a matter of life and death. 

Don't worry, we'll still have a lot of work to do on racism and sexism, but at least it will be (a touch) less deadly.

Deb in the City

Did I mention that I'm up to 104 calls?

I don't have to blog on the weekends, but I can if I want to.

This week has been go, go, go, and it doesn't let up just yet. But I carved out time for what's becoming my Friday routine and made 20 more phone calls, this time into Nebraska. 

While one person did swear at me (which I didn't take personally and won't deter me--we're talking about democracy), over all people in Nebraska are pretty nice. Hope I get to call them again before their primary on May 14.

896 more to go, but I feel like I should give myself a little celebration now anyway. 

Deb in the City

100 Days of Blogging -- What I learned

I was inspired to embark on the experiment after seeing Ann Wood's 100 Day Stitch Book project. There were a couple of things that kept me from embarking on learning a new skill this winter, so I thought it might not be a bad idea to improve on an existing one. 

I missed maybe four days--five?--but I "made up" for all of them, and I overall enjoyed it. *Having* to produce a blog every day, ironically, took the pressure off of me to always Have Something To Say. If I were a journalist, that pressure would be appropriate, but I'm not, and I don't want to be. I have an opinion about everything, but since I'm not trying to write that kind of blog, I'm much more comfortable now sharing some of my slices-of-life. If anyone reads this later--much later--I suspect it will be those posts they'll be more interested in. This doesn't mean that I won't share my thoughts on politics and civilization, but I won't feel like I can't share if I don't have something fully, brilliantly formed.

I used to also feel that I shouldn't post, period, if I didn't have a graphic and at least two links. When you're trying to write a blog post in the twenty minutes you have while out and about, and your connection is as spotty as it's going to be in Boston, those concerns fly out the window. And while I could have shared some beautiful pictures of Boston more often, the app on my phone insisted after a certain point that everything should be rotated 90 degrees. So, no.

I will not be blogging every day from now on, and I am not going to commit to a schedule. I will blog when I want to--but I want to a lot, and this freed me up to blog more. However, I will NOT be posting on the weekend, because carving out the time to do that got to be very stressful. 

I dabbled in some of the newer social media sites, and I'd be lying if I denied that I thought of using them to promote this blog. But I just can't. Social media in general tends to favor the kinds of performances that have haunted me my entire life, either cheerfully, frighteningly reflective of a perfection we mere mortals can't hope to attain, or the kind of angry pessimism people refer to as doomerism. I want to talk about problems, but I also want to talk about solutions. I am in some micro-communities that allow for that, and this blog now feels like the kind of safe haven where I can explore problems as well as my real life without having to make anything more than it is.

Thank you for reading my posts thus far, and I promise I will be back very soon.

Deb in the City

PS Yes, someday I am going to solve the commenting issue, I swear.

Going out with a bang (Day 100)

I'm going to do a wrap up sometime this week (but not tomorrow), but it's fitting that the last day of my experiment was so jam-packed. The universe wanted to make sure I had a lot of material for today, right?

Today was my son's last day of class, which was a critique of his work by grad students from a nearby university. I had two video calls today, and my husband suggested that I stay home, but since my son seemed like he could use the confidence boost, I came along. Plus... I wanted one final day to be in that part of Boston.

My husband and I walked into the hub of the state government area, and an hour later I phoned into the first phone call. I did try going inside a Fed Ex office, but I wanted more privacy, which, obviously, was more plentiful outside (no, really). I paced around a small pocket park for forty minutes but, miraculously, was able to stay connected through the call.

That done, we walked back through the North End to my son's school, and I got on the second call while my husband got some pizza and treats. This call was harder to stay connected to, either because there was more network traffic or because my Gs were exhausted (or a combination of the two); regardless, walking under any kind of awning was a recipe for disaster. So of course my turn came when my husband and I were within throwing distance of the school, and I had to stop in my tracks for five minutes in something of a chill. But, finally, that was done as well, and back we went to the school. I tried to stay connected for a few more minutes, but since I didn't want to blast my call--and I can't abide by any kind of ear- or headphone--I hopped off. 

My son was out a few minutes later, and he reported that he got a very good critique over all. Now off to the real event--the barbecue restaurant we had promised him for his last day of class. Home to change, then out again to get one of my nieces, then uptown to pick up my daughter at the library, then off to the restaurant. I obviously dreaded this choice initially, but the one thing they had on the menu that accommodated me was delicious. Who knew a barbecue place was going to do such a good job with a salad?

We dropped my niece off, then my husband and son picked up two cakes while my daughter and I waited in the car. We were just minding our own business, trying to listen to music, when she noticed a man in another car staring at her. I turned around, and when I caught the guy's eye, he smiled. I... smiled back, and even waved, and then miraculously he stopped staring. He also drove off a minute later. Thank god, too, because I was so sleep-deprived that I wouldn't have finessed a conversation with him, I would have just ordered him to stop staring at my poor daughter who's been subjected to this kind of thing since she was eleven. (She told me less than an hour later that a drama teacher once told her that she would make a great Bond girl--when she was fourteen. However we want to improve things, ending the sexualization of children is a must.)

Home now, and the teenager who very much wanted a cake to mark the day is asleep. Well, so it goes.

This was a very good day and very good way to end my 100 days.

Deb in the City