the rain wasn’t coming down hard but it was persistent. i draped my letter jacket, leather side down, on the soaking parking lot and squinted in the waning light looking for the locked lugnut so i could remove the flat tire.
my sister had hit a curb and didn’t seem to readily recall how to change the tire. she watched me intermittently pulling my maroon skirt back to my knees as i struggled with leverage, moisture, and darkness. an overweight security guard watched me struggle from the semi-dry of his golf cart.
a young man sporting tear tattoos often associated with murderers approached to see if he could help. feeling rather proud i thanked him but smugly declared i was finished. he offered to tighten the bolts and bent over in the rain to do so.
my bolts weren’t tight at all.
after lending a hand he motioned to the tire and my need to add air. he followed us to the gas station across the street and made sure we got off ok.
now i could have looked at his tattoos and dismissed his humanity…or i could have respected the uniform of the security guard and not realized his indifference.
how a person looks is only how a person looks.
and so i read this mornign with disgust about the muslim family denied their flight to florida after a misunderstood comment and the fbi clearing them to fly.
“it is saftest to sit over the wing. or, failing that, at the back of the plane.”
someon in their party said something to that effect and overreaction reigned down.
i think i said something similar to the pleasnt older woman who was my 13 hour companion on the cairo nyc leg of my trip recently. i’ve had variations of that conversation with my father (who used to fly in the air force) and subsequently, whoever seems interested.
my conversation never caused a panic or emptied the plane or deprived me of my flight to wherever i was going. but then i don’t wear a hijab or look like i come from one of “those” countries. my appearnce assures me amnesty in talking about flight saftey (although not petty theft or permiscous sex assumptions).
such is danger of racial profling.
i’ve been flabergasted for years now that so few brown people have been outraged by the acceptance and even praise for racial profiling for all things “arab”. i quote that because folks here aren’t even sure what they are looking for. we’ve honed in on muslims but in the scurry to scream terrorists we’ve thrown in anyone with cafe au lait skin and no kinks in their hair.
and it isn’t ok.
post 9/11 everyone was edgy and vulnerable. we got a field trip of the daily lives of palestinians or iraquis and countless other people the world over and we didn’t like it. and the best way to feel clothed when you are really naked is to point and jeer at someone else. someone “other”. and so we have picked our “other” for hte moment and now, seven years after the fact we calm ourselves by believing the worst in anyone who fits that profile without even thinking…or feeling anything. empathy is scarce these days.
i do not belive in racial profiling. i do not believe in racial profling. i do not believe in racial profiling.
Tags: Add new tag, race, soapbox, socialcommentary
No Uganda. Got the email today. I have to say that I still maintain that email rejections – though inexpensive – are among the crueler things technology has wrought.
Fog in the oakland is more than a cloak or ominous shadow, it is a living thing wafting its cloudy breath across the bay. Driving into it is like descending into another world. The air is moist, sound muffled, light distorted,.
Foggy mornings filter the sun, leaving it an unimpressive white disk; as if the fog requires all attention focused on it. Drivers slow to a crawl – homage to this omnipresent thing that seems palpable but somehow isn’t.
I don’t think any politician is just like me. In fact, I pretty much assume that the lives they live are not just different but VERY different.
Point in fact, no one clamors to see me (let alone pays for that “honor”) when I visit a town. There are no signs with my name on them in front yards or on the bumpers of cars. People don’t donate money to me or voice public support for any new job I might apply for.
Recently I read a gentle chastising of the obama family for taking a hawaiian vacation in a nice home. The sentiment was how dare they celebrate in such a nice way when so many Americans are suffering. I am boggled by this much as I was boggled during the election when media kept alive the notion that Americans want a president they can have a beer with.
I don’t want that president. I don’t like beer.
Even if I did want to drink I don’t want the person who is supposed to be fixing the mulitiple crises that have befallen America out drinking with me. But I digress…
I know that obama and his family are in another world. And although he was clear that he and michelle understood student loans in a very personal way he never pretended to be just like everyday America. In fact, when he was discussing his tax plan he said clearly that he was willing to pay a little more if it gave a break to the rest of America…it wasn’t a pointed finger that others should, but that he was willing to.
I don’t expect obama not to take a nice vacation any more than I would have expected john and cindy to sell 6 of their homes and 12 of their cars.
My president doesn’t have to struggle so much as he must understand that others are struggling. he doesn’t have to pretend he is in my shoes so much as he must recognize that our shoes are different and mine need resoling.
After a long multi-state/country campaign with people insulting him daily in a way I can’t imagine, the obamas are taking a vacation. I say, rest up, in a month you’ll need all the strength you can get.
Tags: politics, soapbox, socialcommentary
i spent christmas day in my apartment accompanied only by facebook, my cell phone, and pizza rolls. sounds sad, but i was technically at work. so as i tried (unsuccessfully) to connect to our server i edited various power points and watched the grayness of 7:45 am mellow into a rather beautiful afternoon.
it might have been easy to feel sorry for myself. although it wasn’t my first christmas away from my family it is never an easy time. it is less the holiday and more the reality that everyone else has gathered together and i am not a part of that togetherness.
only this year i had an abundance of invitations extended to me from family and friends. one of the unforseen advantages of moving to the bay has been family i didn’t know much about but who make sure i feel welcome. today it was all about my cousin jamila and her family.
i find it interesting – seeing howother people celabrate. how they interact with each other.
jamila and her family started off quiet. i wasn’t sure what kind of interaction it would be…how much of an intrustion i might pose. i needen’t have worried. after a big bowl of gumbo and a couple of cupcakes conversation jumped over all politically correct boundaries and we launched into an animated discussion about religion and relationships.
almost seven hours later i found myself trying to pry myself away in order to prepare for work tomorrow. it was an unexpected pleasure. a time where i felt like family and not intruder as they folded me into their holiday experience. and i am so thankful for it.
i live in an urban area. and by urban i don’t mean the media’s definition of urban as black (although that is true as well). i mean urban as in highways and mass transit and asphalt and traffic and houses and apartments on top of houses and apartments.
so why is it on my way home today i watched to huge raccoons scurry across the four lane street, dodging cars and pedestrians, before disappearing between houses on MLK?
Tags: observations
it is beyond my capacity to understand how americans have so wholly lost control of our country. not just in the little ways, but the big and meaningful ways that are made up of the billions of little ways. how we didn’t pay attention to the loss of small farms and the loss of agricultural knowledge that went with them- leaving only pesticides and petro-chemical fertilizers in their wake (and in our diets). how we didn’t care that for every cheap thing we buy at wal-mart we make it necessary for those workers to only shop there because they can afford nothing more because of the crap pay, lack of full time hours, and absence of insurance. and as for politicians…i’m not even sure where to begin.
i could lament the loop-holes that have become as standard as the double speak that politicians have adopted as their mother tongue. the yesnomaybe that at some point in the lifespan of the comment will be all of those things and nothing. sometimes a yes often a no and when necessary a maybe.
and so it is that i find myself reading frank rich of the new york times today and want to scream (actually…i did a little bit). his scrutiny of madoff’s ultimate ponzi scheme and how it relates to our special form of capitalism boggles my mind. what we have watched happen…been silent and sometimes unwitting partners to…is depraved. and yet we are still asleep at the wheel.
had madoff not confessed we still might not know that $50 billion…that is BILLION…dollars is gone. vanished from philanthropic groups who thought they were being smart. and there will be no bailout for them. unlike the auto industry and major banks who fly around in private jets and have half million dollar parties in the wake of their begging for money.
if i don’t watch my savings i will be living with my sister and brother-in-law…my money is good enough to help big business but not enough to help myself were i to need it.
but even that got me to thinking…as we write these checks for billions of dollars as if we were the tooth fairy or some states mega lottery. it isn’t any more real than madoff’s checks. he wrote and people cashed but at some point it was revealed…the emperor has no clothes – er – no money. and yeah it is a mixed metaphor but i’m raging inside. george bush is writing checks that my generation and the one after mine won’t be able to pay. the money is absent in any real sense.
we are playing an even bigger ponzi scheme than madoff…taking money from some future schlep (me, my kids, even theirs) to pay for right now. and right now is spending money like they earned it.
and i keep reading articles discussing how americans have lost faith in our capitalism and how important it is to revive it. but losing faith in something that doesn’t work seems to be the smartest thing americans have done as a collective in a really long time.
we are a short sighted nation. maybe watching our government throw good money after bad will help us to think more down the road. of course for that to happen we’ll have to wake up…god i hope we wake up.
Guilt is an interesting emotion…I guess you can call it an emotion. Like love or rage, it often defies logic. I would have assumed that I would be immune to guilt – my parents don’t use it on me, never have. But then again, maybe that is why it works so well, I’m not used to its insidious nature.
I’ve had people try to guilt-trip me and that seldom works. it is the contrived nature that works against them. But left to my own devices I can feel guilty about things deep in my heart and worry about them…fret over them…feel bad for years…knowing all the while that guilt doesn’t change anything but my stress levels.
And so it is with a friend of mine…a guy I dated not too long ago… And maybe guilt isn’t the right word – but the feeling that somehow I should have done more…been more…strikes at me. And although I’ve gone over in my head our perfectly amicable parting of ways, I don’t feel any better for it. Although I can’t think of how I would have done it differently I can’t help but feel like I somehow I should have.
We don’t talk anymore. A request by him. And maybe part of it is that I hate that we were able to be so cool and then just like that…nothing. Maybe it is less guilt and more loss. Whatever it is I wish I could lay it to rest.
Ok I’m not anymore but…delta, I guess, needed to balance out my travel karma. With such an amazing trip with so few issues it stands to reason that something had to give…and give it did on my way home.
After breezing through Egyptian customs (something I was told would take 3 hours by my expediter) actually took only 20 minutes leaving me 2 ½ hours to sit around. That turned into 3 ½ when the incoming plane from NYC was late prompting us to be one hour late in arriving in NYC.
Once landed everyone was apprehensive – connecting flights abounded and we were all anxious to get through immigration, retrieve our bags, get through customs, and on to our connections.
No such luck with the exception of 35 people all headed for tampa – they held their plane. The rest of us watched time tick by and our luggage carousel remain empty for too long a period.
Delta flight crew in JFK was NOT helpful. Overwhelmingly they seemed resigned to our missed flights and uninterested in even helping us to figure out next steps. At one point, after I received my hotel and meal voucher (my meal voucher was $7…SEVEN…whatever) I asked where I should go to catch the shuttle. I was given some mumbling directions. Upstairs downstairs upstairs again, me and another woman waited around outside in the freezing weather (dressed more appropriately for cairo) before she managed to extricate from someone where we needed to go (there was walking and a train involved).
Once at the shuttle point we were met with a 7 seater shuttle that as making continuous rounds to accommodate all of the stranded passengers. From that line to the line at the hotel for check-in…it was like I was living in some kind of purgatory.
The crappy room and crappier dinner served their purposes and Saturday morning I popped up ready to return to the airport only to find my fellow passengers assembled outside waiting for the same 7 person shuttle. I made friends with a couple from Canada (in worse straits than me) and we grabbed a cab just as a bigger bus rambled its way to the front of the building.
More lines and confusion (they were trying to charge me for my bag) and I finally made it to my gate where we sat for a while waiting for the crew to fill out some kind of paperwork.
The flight itself was fine but upon landing my sneaking suspicions proved true…my luggage didn’t land with me. I was near tears…not for any real reason other than a mere 5 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours…but I held it together and the baggage guy assured me it would be there eventually.
And he was right…they dropped it off at my job before noon. I have no idea if everything is there but then I can’t imagine what I have that anyone would want to steal.
Alas…I encountered about two pleasant delta folks but overall…delta and jfk get no love (and the delta planes were so subpar i can only shake my head and dream a dream of emirates air…now THAT is an airline that knows how to treat you.
But I’m back and in a few days I might actually be able to think straight…pictures to follow.
protest or riot
the thing is…it does more damage. not simply to property, although the blazing cars and crushed car and business windows show proof of that, but of lives. fourteen arrests so far and what does that mean for young brown people. livelihoods of folks who own property that has been destroyed. resentment – on both ends – and fear and distrust mounting between shiny gold badges and stricken brown faces.
a protest would have been loud and obnoxious and filled with cameras and footage of people lying down in respectful imitation of the posture oscar grant III was in when shot to death.
riots happen when anger turns palpable. when pounding fists find something to pound. when a single irrational voice becomes a medley of irrational voices screaming incoherently and demanding something the circumstance can give.
the streets couldn’t dispense justice tonight. neither could the assembled riot police or even the mayor.
protests can quell anger and frustration but riots feed fear and consequences.
and so tonight i pray for calm. i pray for rational thinking. i pray for composure…even as the tear gas has been released and city hall opened for an emergency meeting.
there will be no righting of the wrong of shooting an unarmed prostrate (potentially) handcuffed young man. but if we stay vigilant and step back from destructive distractions, we may demand justice. his family – and the city – deserve at least that.
Tags: race, soapbox, socialcommentary