Where have I been? What have I been working on?
This: Benjamin.
And yes, I will look like the nanny when we head out, but I know the truth. He is all mine...and my husband's.
He is, yes, I am going to use this terribly overused word, amazing. And yes, he is a genius, creative, curious, observant...all at 15 days old.
My husband is convinced that he will get darker as he gets older, though I personally think that his pinkness is permanent. My mother married a man with dominant genes and it appears I have done the same. But it does not matter as Benjamin is certainly no less handsome. But it will be amusing that first time someone says something like "You tell his mother..." (this happened to the friend of a friend...)
I plan on being back to work and getting more seriously back to this blog by March at the latest. The present presidential candidates are giving us all far too much material to work with at present for me not to be writing, even if it is with one hand typing while the other holds the baby...
KEEP PAYING ATTENTION!
Peace --Alex
I keep trying to like Texas...
as I know that not everybody there loves Rick Perry and George W. Bush, nor do they all want to get rid of art, hate illegals or eradicate women's rights.
But then, there are people like Rick Perry.
And he's the frickin' governor.
And he's running for president.
I heard this
story this morning on NPR this morning and I really didn't need to deal with it. I really did not need to hear that he is cutting funding for women's clinics that provide contraception, counseling and other medical treatment (pap smears, diabetes testing, thyroid testing, annual physicals, etc) for women and girls while not even providing abortions. But the fact that they recommend abortion providers to women and girls who ask, suddenly is losing them their funding.
In the meantime, the money that they are losing is not going to help out with anything useful, like health care, infrastructure, or job creation. It is going to "Crisis Pregnancy Centers", those places that are made to look like women's health clinics, but are actually staffed by Pro-Life activists. They offer no health education, no medical services and no contraception. They offer sonograms and counseling about adoption and keeping your baby. Thing is, these "centers" most likely will not take state money and, due to their deceptive advertising, they primarily get calls about abortion services - so this money is going where? Only 1%-2% of the girls who come in to their centers end up keeping the child or giving it up for adoption, yet, at the family planning clinic, you can hear a story like this:
"For hundreds of thousands of Texas women and teens between the ages of 13 and 50, the 71 family planning clinics in the state serve as their gateway to health care, and for many of those women, visiting the clinics is the only time they see a nurse practitioner or a doctor.
Rosalinda Roman, 19, discovered the People's Clinic in East Austin after she got pregnant at age 16 and gave birth to a boy. Now, she comes to the clinic every three months to get her comprehensive well-woman exam and her contraceptive shot.
"I come here and I do my annual physical here. I also get birth control here [and] Depo shot," Roman says. "I don't know what I would do with a second child right now."
With the encouragement of staff at the clinic, Roman has gone back to school and is two months away from becoming a medical technician."
In the meantime, Texas spends more on teen pregnancy than any other state: "The budget cuts to family planning clinics won't in the end save Texas money. The state estimates nearly 300,000 women will lose access to family planning services, resulting in roughly 20,000 additional unplanned births. Texas already spends $1.3 billion [that's billion with a "B" folks] on teen pregnancies — more than any other state."
And somehow that's okay for the state budget?
I would love to suggest writing to Gov. Perry and the Texas legislature, but this is a period of time where I cannot guarantee that they would be listening. Still it can't
hurt either...
KEEP PAYING ATTENTION!
Peace --Alex
What Are You? at the Brooklyn Historical Society...
Jen Chau of Swirl NYC will be facilitating a conversation on the What Are You culture in America and Katrina Grigg-Saito, in whose documentary film and installation
FishBird I am featured, is one of the panelists. (and yes, if you see promo materials for this event, that picture is of ME(!) taken by Lindsay Brandon Hunter for the
FishBird project).
http://brooklynhistory.org/blog/2011/08/18/crossing-borders-this-fall/
Peace --Alex
Swirl NYC on Twitter
I think this is going to be a great chat and totally worth being a part of. And heck, just join Swirl on Twitter!
Follow Swirl on Twitter and then join us for our next TweetChat this Friday: "Naming Race: What others call us, what we call ourselves" - a conversation about the language of race.
Swirl (@swirlinc) on Twitter
twitter.com
Sign up for Twitter to follow Swirl (@swirlinc). Swirl is a national anti-racist organization that promotes cross-racial, cross-cultural dialogue. @jenkchau @onlyONscripting @kadavids
My contribution to the Discussion about "The Help"
I told this story for the first time at the Word Up! bookstore as part of the No Name reading series www.nonamenyc.comI have read the book and may see the movie. There are good things, there are missing things, but overall it is a good book. And it makes me wonder how I would have been seen in those days…but I learned recently that I do not need to go back in time and down south to wonder what a little of that feels like…
The other day, I was talking to a friend of mine who told me about a friend of hers for whom she babysits. The friend is of Mexican descent, is married to a German gentleman and they have two children, both of whom are very fair. Thus, there are folks who believe she is the nanny to her own children. There is a great picture of her on Facebook holding a sign that reads “Do I Look Illegal?” For anyone that may see her here in the Heights or in Inwood, she is not illegal, they are her children and as to what she does for a living, when she is not teaching women to properly wrap their babies, she is a Soprano in the Metropolitan Opera Chorus.. Yes, those people who think she’s a nanny most likely have a subscription to see her on stage…and she probably makes more money than they do.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, my friend Jane is a white girl from Western, MA. She married a man from Cameroon and they had a son who primarily looks like his father. When Jane goes around town in rural Massachusetts, no one may think that she’s the nanny, but they do tend to think that she adopted her own child. If you meet her out there, she will be sure to tell you that she is pretty sure that after dealing with 36 hours or so of labor, Xavier is indeed her child.
I think about these situations more now as I am due in January. I am mixed and my husband is white and we are indeed curious as to what our child will look like. Will it be lighter? Will my dad’s dominant genes come through causing it to be darker? Will someone think I am the nanny? Or will someone think it so wonderful that we adopted this lovely brown child? And will I care? I bring this up as, seriously, I just finished
The Help a few weeks ago, and while I was reading it, I was up in New Hampshire. A friend of mine invited a few us up to her family’s summer house by a lake, and it’s beautiful. We had an awesome and relaxing week, but, of course, the last day came and it was time to clean. My friend and her boyfriend went out for a trash run, my husband was taking care of the kitchen, while I was finishing up the laundry.
The washer and dryer are right by the front door. As a slung a pillow case over my shoulder and continued to fold sheets, I noticed a car pull in the drive. A white lady and her son got out of the car. I saw that she was holding a bible and Jehovah’s Witness materials, thus this made me go for the door to tell her “I’m sorry, I’m not the regular owner of this house, so if you would like to come back at another time…” To which she replied as she handed me a
Watchtower and an
Awake!, “Well, maybe you could look at these when you’re on your break…”
As she turned and left, I realized something…She thought I was The Help!!!
I was brown, not the owner of the house and doing laundry, thus, of course what else was she to think?
Now I would like to believe, that if she saw
anyone doing what I was doing, white, black, brown, yellow or red, and they also had said that they were not the actual owner of the house, she might also assume that they were The Help. But then again, particularly as during the week we were there - save for a waiter we saw - I was the darkest person up there, I have a feeling that was not the case.
At the time, I was too surprised and they had walked away too quickly for me to stop them and say something. As they pulled away, it really hit me and, admittedly, my first thought was “Oh my God! I have new material for my show!!!”
But as time has passed, I realized, I would love to have said something to this woman’s child. And it's something I am going to have to say to my child, save for the door to door part, as well. This is what I would like to have done:
Excuse me, m’am? May I have a word with your son real quick? Hi, I’m Alex. Could you do me a favor? When you grow up and are walking door to door on your own, if a person comes to the door and they have laundry or cleaning supplies with them and they look like me, or even if they look like you, do not do as your mom just did and assume that they are the help. Because they may not be. Like me. I am a guest here helping my friends clean up before we leave. So don’t make any assumptions about who a person is by what they look like or what they appear to be doing, just offer to tell them about your faith and go from there. That sound good? Because you know what happens when we assume: you make an "ass" out of “u” and “me”. All right, you just remind your mother about that, okay? Okay. Bye now! Have a good day!”
KEEP PAYING ATTENTION!
Peace --Alex
How getting pregnant has made me more Pro-Choice than ever...
Wow, it has been a long time since I have posted. Over a year! And hear I am, kicking things off with a bang, jumping right into the abortion debate.
I've been wanting to write about this for months, but my first trimester was spent in a near chronic state of nausea and exhaustion and I've been playing catch-up during the second trimester, though still vomiting on occasion.
So, as you can see, the man and I are having our child. How has this made me MORE Pro-Choice?
Because, we HAD the choice.
No one was forcing us to have the child, or NOT to have it for that matter. We found out the news, sat down and talked about it and decided to go forward.
Not everybody has this opportunity...
Let me tell you how all this went down for us.
When we got married, we talked about having kids, but, like a lot of couples, we knew we wanted to wait a couple of years first. Well, three years had gone by and we still were just trying to live our lives and not sure we were ready to have a child.
And then, last year, due to my getting a blood clot (and no, I have never smoked in my life, but I did a LOT of long distance travel in a short period of months and next thing you know...), I had to go off the pill. We talked about other types contraception (condoms) and what we wanted to do and then it came down to, "well, let's see what happens..." At the time, I was 38 soon to be 39 and I knew my pregnancy chances were slimmer, but then again, I have what my husband calls "child bearing hips", thus, if bone structure is an actual factor in fertility, perhaps I had a better shot than most women my age. I also am a product of a later-in-life pregnancy as my mother was 36 when I was born, and my mother was a later-in-life surprise to her mother. Still, we were guaranteed nothing and decided to just see how things played out. If we got pregnant, great! If not, fine!
I went off the pill in June of 2010. In May of 2011, I got a symptom I never had with my period. And I got it the day I was supposed to start my period. And I didn't start my period.
Now, as my period used to be highly irregular until I went on the pill, I was never very good about keeping track as to when it happened. It would just surprise me(!) After being on the pill, my period came around like clockwork; I knew it would come on the Tuesday or Wednesday of the last row of pills. The first few months after I went OFF the pill, it was clockwork...and then not as much. I still wasn't great at paying attention to exactly when it came until I finally decided in March to keep track. That was how I knew in May, something was up.
I still wanted to believe that perhaps my math was off, but something in my gut told me otherwise. And even my husband seemed to notice as he asked me two days after I was supposed to have begun my period "Honey, have you had your period yet?" GAH! Luckily, I had a physical coming up a couple of days later so we could settle this once and for all.
I can honestly say that I was actually praying that I was NOT pregnant the morning of that physical. I was completely freaking out. I was like "We can barely take care of our cats, let alone a child!!!" Were we ready for this? This is THE life changer!!! We have stuff to do, still! Stuff we have not done yet, as in procrastinated on!!! How can we fit a child into this?!?! My husband knew I was freaking out, knew I may have wanted to make a decision that, liberal as he is, he may not have liked, but he was ready to support me.
I went to the doctor, asked for the pregnancy test, peed on the stick and got the result. Yes, I was pregnant.
I remember feeling something powerful at that moment. I wish I could describe it as joyous or scary, but I can't. It was just...overwhelming. I knew I still wanted to talk to my husband about this. That I still wanted to take some time and think on it and how we wanted to move forward. I told this to the Nurse Practitioner and she gave me the number of the hospital's family planning office and also told me that she would give me the number of a good OB-GYN if I decided to keep it.
I called the family planning office later that morning to make an appointment to talk about my options...the appointment was for a week and a half later. In the meantime, I had also called my husband with the news and said we needed to sit down and talk about this.
It was then that I realized how good I had it.
I am in a healthy and happy relationship. I am 39 rather than 13. I have been having a life. We may not make a lot of money, but we can make this work. We have insurance. I have a husband who was ready to support me either way. I live in a state and go to a hospital where, if I felt I needed to terminate this pregnancy, I could do it safely and discreetly and get proper counseling before and after.
There are so many women and girls who are NOT in my situation. Women and girls who are dealing with every situation from the one-night stand where the condom broke to the teenage girl who's been told "If you loved me..." to the girls and women dealing with rape and incest. They have families who think sex education is sinful or unnecessary as you should just be able to abstain. They live in states where there's only one clinic left in the entire state...and it's six hours away. They don't have insurance, can't afford it or can't get a job with benefits. They don't have access to contraception. The list goes on...
I am lucky. I am in a good place. We still freak out on occasion, but we are excited about the undoubtedly hyper-active mutant we are going to bring into the world. Nobody is ever really ready for this, but we are as ready as we can be. And we knew we could make the choice.
KEEP PAYING ATTENTION!
Peace --Alex
Oh...Dr. Laura...
There were times I actually kinda liked her as she occasionally could talk some sense...but then she would start talking crazy and we'd have to turn her off.
It was one of those moments when I heard the clip from her
broadcast the other day. A woman calls - a black woman with a white husband who doesn't say anything when his friends make insensitive remarks. Dr. Laura automatically thinks the caller is being overly sensitive. And then she goes on about how "black comics on HBO" and such say "Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er" all the time, basically trying to make the argument that perhaps there is a double standard as white people can just never say "the N-word" (and rightly so). Now I get trying to not be over sensitive and wondering why black people still use the n-word (pretty much to take back a derogatory term and make it their own...but it's still ugly to me), but then, when the caller remarked on Dr. Laura's rather free use of "ni**er", Dr. Laura picked up that shovel and started digging her hole with "Don't NAACP me!". She then kept digging, telling the caller that she was oversensitive and that if she didn't have a sense of humor she shouldn't have married outside her race.
And now she is going to leave her radio show and claims that she is fighting for her
1st Amendment Rights...just as she did back in 2000 when she got in trouble for ranting
against gay people saying that they were an abomination and essentially that they needed to be fixed and she knew some good programs that did just that.
Yes, you have a 1st Amendment right to spout your bigoted nonsense, but you have to remember that, like with all of us, there are consequences...particularly when you spout ugliness.
The real problem here is how conservatives are sticking up for Dr. Laura.
Conservatives have been encouraging race baiting ever since Obama became president. They can't handle the change and are doing everything in their power to make it impossible for him to do his job properly. It is a sad state of affairs when they, under the guise of promoting free speech, merely support and perpetuate race baiting and fearmongering. Is that really the best thing for our country? Personally, I think not.
KEEP PAYING ATTENTION!
Peace --Alex
'Cuz it really just more posturing...
I am getting real tired of people succumbing to the conservative fear mongering and posturing when it comes to the "Ground Zero Mosque".
Again, all it takes is a handful of words, Ground Zero Mosque, and people get freaked out, and then Fox news and other such folk start fanning the flames of fear, and next thing you know Harry Reid and Howard Dean, rather than try to put out the fire, pick up a fan and join the hell in.
I was here that day. I remember looking down Lexington, Park, Madison, Fifth and Sixth Avenues and seeing the billowing smoke. My husband (who I hadn't met yet) was trapped underground on the subway. I know many others who saw one or both of the towers fall and/or saw people jump from the towers.
We were attacked. By
terrorists. Now these terrorists,
happened to be Muslim. Not all Muslims are extremist or terrorists. Some of them are in our military. Many are community leaders. Our government does business with Muslims (Saudi Arabia, etc) and we are actually fighting a war not just against them but FOR them-yes, FOR two countries full of innocent Muslims. We are helping everyday Muslims to fight extremist Muslims. Just a reminder...
Also, even though it should not matter, the Cordoba center is a) not being built at Ground Zero, but rather two blocks away, and b) is not a mosque. It is a community center that has a prayer room. And a pool. oooooo...they'll be
swimming...
There are strip clubs, churches and tacky shops and somehow they are all allowed in the neighborhood, but not this community center. (which has actually been there since December 2009, they are just expanding.)
I understand how people are hurting. We, sadly, remain at war and extremists are still out there. But we have to remember that just because a community center is being built, it does not mean that it is going to be populated with extreme Muslims. If ever there was a time for tolerance, it would be now. There is enough division and fear out there, why must various politicians and pundits encourage it?
Just boggles my mind that people would rather listen to the fearmongerers than look into this themselves, show some tolerance and actually try to eradicate the hate and bigotry rather than bolstering it.
KEEP PAYING ATTENTION!!!
Peace --Alex
If only they knew....
While nearly everyone that I know is applauding the overturning of Prop 8 in California (and hoping that if it does get to the Supreme Court that the court realizes that opponents of gay marriage are making only a religious argument, not a legal one), there are those who are not. And I am not just talking about folks on the religious right who believe that homosexuality is a perversion and all that nonsense, but those who are perhaps merely anti-big government and don't want the government forcing yet another new idea down their throats. Well, I've got things to say to both these groups.
To the anti-government people: The Defense of Marriage Act was the government forcing the idea of marriage as one man and one woman down our collective throats. The people who voted for Prop 8 and are fighting to keep it, were also forcing an idea of marriage down our collective throats. I understand states rights and understand that Prop 8 was voted in, but in this case, it still does not make it right. It took government intervention for segregation to fall, and for mixed race couples to be able to marry, thus it appears that it will take government intervention to knock down this last fear-built wall - the one keeping gay people from moving forward with their families.
To the people opposed to "the gays" getting married: I grew up in Massachusetts - the home of the Kennedy's, the American Revolution and the first state to allow gay marriage - and then I moved to New York City - the capital of Liberalelitistan (or perhaps just a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah), thus I have never lived in a place or just with people who really thought homosexuality was something that immediately condemned one to hell and a life of perversion. Not to say that the word "faggot" wasn't thrown around my high school, but as things changed in the late 80's and early 90's, gay students felt more free to come out and suffered much less (that I know of). The year after I graduated, a Gay/Straight Alliance was started at my high school and one of the teachers came out. Thus, I just can't comprehend people who think gay people are perverts, pedophiles and believe that they are "recruiting" children and adults into their lifestyle.
I just wish you all - those opposed to gay marriage - could meet couples like my friends
Doug and Shawn, who are generous, warm, loving people. Doug is an actor who, between gigs, finds time to coach actors how market themselves better, recommends people for work and sends everybody he has ever worked with or heck had contact with a birthday card every year. His husband Shawn is a financial planner who helps everyone from high end clients who have hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest to those of us who can barely put aside $10 a week for a savings account and are trying to get of debt. (They have been together for six years, married for four.) Paul is the music director at the
church I sing at and not only has he been extremely patient with my vocal inconsistencies and sight reading issues for over two years, but he and his husband Edd take in "orphans"- those of us who can't get home for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas-every year. (They have been together for 29 years and married for 2 and 1/2.) My high school friend Lynn and her wife Allison have a company called
Glitter and Razz, that holds camps and classes for children and grown-ups, getting them involved in the arts, and Lynn is also a co-founder of a theatre company which recently did a show sharing the voices of the older generation of gays and lesbians. (They have been married for four years.) Paul is co-founder and director at one of the top theatres in Boston and was also a teacher for years before taking on his company full time. His husband Jeff is a social worker and, several years ago, they adopted an Ecuadorean orphan. (They have been together for over twenty years.) AND I can't forget the student minister, Leslie, at MABC who not only can PREACH, but served his country in the Navy and has been with his partner for several years as well.
To me, and people in their communities, they are all lovely people in committed relationships with families and who do nothing more than spread more love in the world, yet, depending on where they are, they may not be allowed to take advantage of the legal benefits of marriage, simply because they are gay. I do not get this. I truly just do. not. get this.
And honestly, I would
like to believe that if all these people from
NOM met my friends, or heck just observed their day-to-day lives, and other such couples in their own communities, perhaps they would get over their hate-filled hoo ha themselves. But sadly, that just may not be the case. It took a LONG time for desegregation to be accepted, a long time for mixed-race marriages to be gradually accepted and we all know it took looooong time for a black/mixed-race man to become President (don't even get me started on how race is still affecting his presidency). It took government intervention for two of the former to happen and it will take government intervention to legalize gay marriage and bring its acceptance gradually into the fore.
As much as I would like to just say "Suck it up, people, change is here" I can't. Just as I can't comprehend the world they live in, they can't - and don't want - to comprehend mine, at present. Instead, I would just like to remind these bitter, angry folk that God - and marriage, at least the way I was taught - is about love, and the LGBT community does indeed know all about love, faith and family. I would also like to remind them, that we do have a separation of church and state in this country, and that this case is about the civil legal rights of gay people, not a moral religious issue. Legally, gay people have a right to be married. Iceland, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, Belgium, Argentina, and SOUTH AFRICA even (they've come a long way in 16 years) have accepted gay marriage as entire nations, not just in part. And three of those nations have Catholic majorities. These nations have not suddenly sunk or crumbled into the ocean, had a mass rash of heterosexual divorce, or burst into flame. They are alive and well and moving along just fine...as will we, when gay marriage gets accepted, we have a big party and then clean up and get back to living our lives...and look for jobs. Don't you think that's the bigger issue at hand?
KEEP PAYING ATTENTION!!!
Peace --Alex
Immigration AND Ethnic education...
So Arizona didn't want to recognize Martin Luther King Day, but they got over that (after a boycott) .
And then they decided that the only way to deal with illegal immigration in their state was to pass a law (influenced by a white supremicist group) basically giving police and other officials in authority the power to stop anyone they "suspect" is an illegal immigrant, pull them aside and ask for their "papers". If they do not have them, they can be arrested and deported which means that if I was in Arizona, walking around with my nieces and nephew (all of them very blond), looked remotely suspicious, and didn't have my wallet on me, I could get pulled aside and arrested. (but I bet that even if I had my wallet on me and showed them my Massachusetts driver's license they would STILL try to kick me out)
Just sayin'...
Now, this is bad.
But what makes it all even worse is how they are banning "
ethnic education" in schools. Ethnic children apparently learning about themselves can allegedly lead to separatist behavior, makes the kids believe they are "different" and is just well, un-American.
Soooo...kids are allowed to learn about all the things white people have done but they can't take a Mexican or Black or Native-American history class...which means white kids can't take these classes either...and no one gets to learn about the history and culture of other people who helped create the United States, kids can't learn to take pride in their history and heritage, and perhaps they will take a page from the Texas curriculum and start changing all the books to take out people like Ted Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, and many others.
Oh Arizona...
I don't like your law about people having to show their papers, but as there is 59% of your folk in support of this and I have not lived in Arizona. But the idea that you would take away on opportunity for students to learn about their culture as well as the culture of others in a separate class can't do anything but make the divide deeper in your state. And do you really want that? I know your governor does, but, the rest of you?
Just don't think this is very American, frankly...but perhaps that's just me...and the 41% of folks who do not dig what is happening in AZ.
KEEP PAYING ATTENTION!!!
Peace --Alex
'Ladies, you have even more power than you thought!"
so posted my friend
Brad on Facebook when he linked to this article from the
BBC.
Apparently, a Muslim cleric has decided to take a page out of Pat Robert's book-you know the one that includes blaming gays and feminists for 9/11 and such-and is blaming "promiscuous women" for the latest earthquakes in Iran-both political and natural.
And, of course, "promiscuous" can mean merely wearing fitted clothing and having some hair show from under your head scarf. Basically, we are left to understand-again-that men are ferociously weak and women are terrible temptresses...even when wearing a headscarf and robes. GUYS CAN'T TAKE IT! And therefore, because guys are weak, God gets upset and causes earthquakes...oh wait, it's not because men are weak, it's because women are evil, I forgot that part.
When I hear extremist talk like this, one of my first thoughts is, do these clerics/ministers/priests realize what they are saying? Do they not realize that this makes the GUYS look bad, not so much the women? Do they not realize that in a backwards way they are actually proving the theory of many a religious scholar that says because women were so prominent in the pagan era-as goddesses, soothsayers, wise women etc-men were led to "create" patriarchal faiths? I'm guessing that's a no.
I'm also guessing Pat Roberts, when he heard about this article was having a tough time with it as in he was caught in a quandary: do I call this guy and say "Right on, brother!" or am I confused because I agree with a Muslim?
KEEP PAYING ATTENTION!
Peace --Alex
P.S. As for my own quandary...why is it that if Catholics pray to the Virgin Mary, and Mary was impregnated by God him/herself, no help from man, the angel spoke directly to Mary Magdalene when Christ had risen (because the women were the ones who actually went to check on the body to clean it), AND women can become saints {having been given the divine power to perform miracles), women can't be priests? Yes, this still boggles my mind...
