Grand of Words

ELECTION DAY

8:40 AM: Drove to polling place. The neighborhood next to mine, just down the street from the junior high and the Boys and Girls Club. When I was 11 I delivered newspapers to this neighborhood. At the end of a cul-de-sac there is a small building that functions as a community center, a community pool in the back. Normally on election day there are 3-4 cars parked in front, today there are about a dozen. Inside a small room, about 15x15, there are flimsy tall tables ringed with a small cardboard divider that serve as voting booths. Usually there are eight such stands, today there are about 14. There is also one electronic machine for disabled voters, and one optical scanning machine.

8:45 AM There are four poll workers: two women in their 70s who are probably the same women I see every couple of years. There is also a young Latina about 20, standing off to the side quietly. The women are sitting behind a desk and look up my name before asking me to sign and write down my address. They hand me two ballots, one for offices, one for propositions. The fourth worker is a man nearing 80 who helps one voter put her ballots in the scanner. "She's our 100^th voter!" he says to no one in particular, and the woman gives a little squeal of delight. "Have you been busy?" I ask. "Ohhhhh, yeah!" says one of the older ladies. I find an empty "booth" where there is a regular black ball point pen waiting.

8:47 PM I put a mark next to the name of Barack Obama for president. I fill out the other bubbles in a bit of a daze. I fill out the "No" box for Proposition 8, taking a brief second to remember mentors of mine who died of AIDS, alone because their companions were not allowed to visit.

8:52 PM The machine scans my ballots. I notice a paper ribbon coming from the machine like a receipt. "Over-vote" reads one section, "Double vote" reads another – an indication of previous users who had filled out their ballot. The machine had caught their errors and they had been permitted to receive a new ballot to fill out properly. No guarantee, of course, but I feel a bit more assured. "Do you want a sticker?" says the Latina. "YES!" I say loudly. "That's the best part!"

8:53 PM As I walk to my car four more cars are parking, and three more people walking towards the polling place. One Latino asks me "Is it crowded in there?" "Yes," I say, "there's a lot of people, but you get right in." "Thanks," he says.

8:58 AM I'm home in bed with my cat. I've got reading to do. Just another election.

Why your vote matters – a lot!

For those of you in the U.S.:

Here is why your vote is important.

Why every available vote is important.

For you. For us. For them. For the world. For our lives.

First, the numbers – bear with me, I'll only do the relevant math:

Year	Popular vote
1948	48,793,535
1952	61,751,942
1956	62,021,328
1960	68,832,482
1964	70,639,284
1968	73,199,998
1972	77,744,027
1976	81,531,584
1980	86,509,678
1984	92,653,233
1988	91,5946,86
1992	104,423,923
1996	96,275,401
2000	105,417,475
2004	122,293,548

 

(Statistics courtesy of Dave Leip's Atlas of Presidential Elections at http://uselectionatlas.org, an easy to use and endlessly fascinating website of all things electoral. It is a non-partisan, purely historical site).

The difference between 1948 and 1952 was 12,958,407, an incredible increase of 26.56%. (The population had increased by about 7.6% -- remember that for later). From there, the total rises fairly steadily from the fifties through 1984, growing at a rate of roughly 5% per year.

Only twice in the past forty years has the U.S. experienced a dip in the total popular vote from one presidential election to the next. The 1988 total was 1,058,547 less than the total in 1984, a drop of about 1.14%. Four years later was the first election to break the 100 million mark, but the '96 election (famously waged between Kang and Kodos on television) saw another dip. This time, the decline was 8,148,522, a tiny bit above 7.8% (7.8033 to be exact), almost 7 times worse than the previous dip. There were just under a million votes more cast in 2000 than 1992.

And then, between 2000 and 2004, we saw the most dramatic increase in the American presidential election in the past 40 years. 16,876,073 more votes were cast in Bush v. Kerry than Bush v. Gore, an increase of almost 16%. We don't have official census figures for 2000 and 2004 yet, but one website (sited below) has projections that put the increase in population between 2.4% and 4.3%. That means that even the percentage increase from 2000 to 2004 is smaller than the landmark 1948-1952 comparison (16 to 26 percent), it's about equal when you compare that increase to the increase one would expect from the increase in population as a whole.

You can see from the following chart numbers that the population has generally been growing a bit faster than the number of voters in presidential elections.

(Source: http://www.mnforsustain.org/united_states_population_growth_graph.htm: the 2004 and 2008 numbers for population are projected).

Year	Popular vote	Population
1948	48793535	146,631,000
1952	61751942	157,773,000
1956	62021328	168,903,000
1960	68832482	180,671,000
1964	70639284	191,889,000
1968	73199998	200,706,000
1972	77744027	209,896,000
1976	81531584	218,035,000
1980	86509678	227,225,000
1984	92653233	235,825,000
1988	91594686	244,499,000
1992	104423923	254,995,000
1996	96275401	265,190,000
2000	105417475	281,422,000
2004	122293548	285,266,000
2008	??	295,009,000

 

I include the total population (as opposed to number of registered voters) because I'm trying to make a point about how truly "democratic" our voting system is in terms of enfranchisement. We exclude children and felons from being eligible, but they are still considered part of our country and it is our responsibility as voting citizens to care for them and be sure they are guaranteed other rights that are guaranteed by our laws. There are those who do not care to vote or unable to register for other reasons, but they are citizens of this country who retain the right to not vote.

What will the number be in 2008 where our population is hovering right around the 300 million mark?

Will we, as a nation, be able to cast more votes than any other nation in history? Might this November 4 not be the greatest exercise in representative democracy ever achieved by human civilization just in terms of pure numbers?

Might we not also prove to ourselves as a nation and to the world that it is even possible that we could get HALF of our ENTIRE population to vote? 150 million people? That would require an increase of about 22.5%, but as we've seen in the past, such an increase is not impossible. It's a mistake to assume that early voting patterns are any solid indication of overall popular vote increase (since early voting has never been as available as during this election), but in many states early voting is up WELL above 22.5% from last election.

Now, here are some more stats courtesy of Dave Leip.

Top ten vote-getters in U.S. Presidential history:

Candidate        Year    Votes        

George W. Bush    2004    62,040,610

John Kerry        2004    59,028,439

Ronald Reagan        1984    54,455,472

Al Gore            2000    51,003,926

George W. Bush    2000    50,460,110

George H.W. Bush    1988    48,886,597

Bill Clinton        1996    47,400,125

Richard Nixon        1972    47,168,170

Bill Clinton        1992    44,909,806

Ronald Reagan        1980    43,903,230

If the election population rises at the SAME RATE as it did from 2000 to 2004, that will mean an increase of 19,566,968, bringing the total number of votes to 141,860,515.

Being generous to McCain (who is almost surely going to lose the popular vote) and splitting that number 51-48 (granting 1% to "others," as has happened in the last two elections), means that the popular vote might look something like this:

Obama 72,348,863

McCain 69,511,652

So, that's my challenge: can we do it?

Can these two men earn more votes than any two men in the history of our country?

Will Barack Obama earn more votes than any person ever? A person of African descent raised by a single mother and white grandparents? Will John McCain, a former prisoner-of-war, son and grandson of military heroes, earn more votes than any Republican in history?

We decide.

Don't you want to be a part of the biggest election in history?

Don't you want to show the world that in spite of our flaws and disagreements, Americans can exercise their right to vote in greater numbers than ever before?

I do.

So vote.

And tell everyone you know to vote.

You have many options. Be part of it. Join us.

Your vote matters because OUR vote matters. Let's show the world what it looks like to care about our country enough to vote.

Why I haven't been able to post as much.

Hello to my few readers.

When I began this blog I intended to write mostly about the imaginary lives of animals.  There's part of me that still wants to do that, but I've been pushed in some different directions for a variety of reasons.  Protocol probably says I should scrap this blog and start another one but I don't want to do that, I've always liked what I do here.  So I'm going to make the effort to write more.  Please understand that some of it may get political or personal.  I try to choose my words carefully when I sign my name to something, so I promise I will try to be respectful of other's feelings and not speak out of hate or fear, and I reserve the right to delete comments yada yada yada if anyone starts getting silly.

So, I'll be writing more.  But for now, I want to put up two re-posts from my facebook page that sum up where I've been space-wise and head-wise the last few months.   Some of it repeats a little bit of my post below about my stepfather, John, from the perspective of a couple of months later.  Some of it might be difficult to read or understand, but it's the truth as I see it, or at least as I saw it when I was writing. 

Thanks.
I'm not really this scary.

From July 24:

I'm not pretending that everyone who is a facebook friend should care about this, but there's been a lot going on with me that I want to tell everyone about.

In many ways this has been a very good year for me, because I've learned a lot about myself, maybe more than I ever have about myself in such a short time. As someone who is going to be 39 years old in a few months (to some of you that must seem like a long way away), that's kind of an odd thing to say. One of the lies they tell you when you are a kid is that when you are a "grown up" you will stop growing and changing. Whether it's staying in one job, with one partner, in one place, the idea of stability is somehow equated with maturity.

Well, I've moved around a lot, with great pleasure, through a couple of different careers, a few different schools and states, a lot of wonderful experiences, a lot of good friends, and a healthy dose of disappointment as well. I'm no stranger to transition and looking for something new, I've never been one to settle.

So what makes this change so different, so drastic? It probably has to do with the fact that it came out of what is truly the most horrifying and terrible experience of my life, something that even three months removed is completely raw, unpredictable, and torturous. I've shared a lot of details about this with many of you, but for those of you who don't know, my stepfather died in a particularly horrible way on April 13. Rather than recount the details, you can read about them in a post I did for dailykos.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/6/145612/2342/388/510148

The follow-up to this is that I have a new and more complicated relationship with my mother. I've often felt a bit ashamed about being that grad student who still lives with his mom, but obviously it's a blessing for her that I am here right now to help us get through this time. I'm happy to say that beginning next week she is starting a new job -- her old job was a key source of what contributed to my stepfather's actions -- and that she's started to find new and wonderful directions in her life, reconnecting with old friends, doing things she hasn't done before (Like innertubing in Texas, which was a bad idea since she wiped out and lost her glasses and banged up her knee, but at least she was being alive). But it's also meant that we've had to carry this darkness between us. It's something I'd do for any friend, anyone in my family, and obviously, most of us would do it for our mothers. But it's been difficult: it's not easy to come home and find my mother, a woman who I consider an emotional giant and an inspiration, crying, broken down. The Shakespeare word is "bereft." For whatever joy we may have in our lives, ours is still a home bereft of life.

Another result is that immediately after this event my body started acting up on me. I admit that I am not in the greatest physical shape, but I have always lead a fairly robust life, eat reasonably well most of the time, and like being a bigger person. I knew that one day I would have to change some habits, and when things just weren't working right, and I was getting weird sensations and digestive problems, something needed to change. As a result, I've radically changed the way I eat, more to control my body chemistry than lose weight (though I am likely to lose weight) and have for the first time in many years agreed to go on minor medication (I loathe pharmaceuticals) to control my blood pressure, which in the last two months has become dangerously high. (For the record, I had a full checkup less than two years ago and everything was fine).

At first, as I was going through all this, I kept reminding myself that I am not afraid of death. And I'm not. I never have been. I believe my soul will ascend to a better place (I call it heaven and imagine I will be with God and other souls who have passed, but you can believe otherwise if you choose), I know my troubles will be over, and I know that I will be well-remembered. But that thought wasn't getting me through the emotional trauma, it wasn't pushing me forward, it wasn't making me better. It was just keeping me from getting worse, reminding myself that if any of this killed me it wasn't the worst possible outcome.

What has changed is that I have learned that there is a slight difference between not being afraid of death and actually wanting to live.

I don't think I've avoided life, but there are times when I seem to take a step back from the way other people live. It's because I like watching, it's because I like to be a little different, it's because I trust myself being a bit on the alone/solitary side. I get so much out of my work teaching, so much enjoy my creative work acting and playing music, that it is easy to devote myself entirely to those two things and not have to worry too much about the rest of the world.

But now, seeking more meaning, seeking something that will help me make sense of my life in the wake of a horrendous 45 minute nightmare that has become a most unwanted center of gravity in my home, my family, and my ability to love, I realize I do care about the rest of the world. I actually want to live, and want to declare my preference for living, which does not negate my non-fear of dying.

I don't think I'm a different person than I ever have been: I have new experiences and new memories and new wisdom, but I love the same way and believe the same way that I always have. My process is mostly the same, my desires the same, my dreams the same.

But I feel like I am beginning to act differently, more in accordance with who I really am, asserting that side of myself to the world just a little bit more. It's important for you, all of you, to know how much I deeply care about and respect what you have done in my life. Even if you are an anonymous DA60 student, someone I had in DA5 four years ago, someone I knew from Hollywood, my mockumentary friends, someone I've never met from Cute Overload, or my best friends whom I have worked with and played with for the last several years at college. You have all helped give me the confidence to do what I do well, and have hopefully kept me humble enough that I keep learning new things every time we meet and play.

I hope that in however many years I have left (and I do stress "many years") I have the opportunity to not only work hard doing what I do best, but also to love in stronger and more obvious ways. This is not done "just because" it's a good thing to do as a human -- it's done because it is who I am and who I need to be.

So many good things have happened this year: a beautiful wedding that reminded me how appealing public celebrations of love are; the "last" Revolving Madness show, which reminded me how proud I can be of my friends; lots of time with my nieces, who actually think I'm a fun guy and like to cuddle up with me like kittens; and later this year, I will preside over my cousin's wedding on the beach in Ventura, a reason for our family to celebrate together again, after a very, very troubling time. I am as optimistic as I have ever been, even though death, violence, insanity and morality have become more obvious and terrifying to me than ever.

And best of all, I love you, with the love of the (Lord, Universe, Force, Goddesses, what have you).

"Believe it if you need it, if you don't - just pass it on."

"Fork" (2004) written and directed by Courtney Rundell.

Boy, You're Gonna Carry That Wait.

Thursday, August 21, 2008 

(Yes, I know it's spelled wrong. It's intentional. Read on.)

Contemplating the relationship between waiting and weight.

Due to recent lifestyle changes, my weight has gone down. This was not my intention, so congratulations are unnecessary (though I will accept golf claps for changing my body chemistry for the better). It's not even the icing on the cake, as my recent history of migraines has also seems to have abated. But the candles in the icing (or whatever) is that none of my pants fit me anymore and people routinely comment on my new physique. Don't get me wrong, I know I'm still, at best, "a lovable panda-bear shape," but the weight is definitely less. I have less weight, take up less space, carry less with me, eat less, eliminate less, sleep and laze around a little less. Weight that I had accumulated through experience and indulgence being lifted away. Where does the weight go?

This has coincided with perhaps the most intense periods of waiting I've had in many a year. Some of you have been tuned into my ongoing career drama: at the last moment, a job opened up in Missouri, one that would have required a rather rapid relocation to a place that is, though exciting, decidedly foreign to what I have grown accustomed to. For a week, I waited for a phone call or e-mail that would tell me to pack my things, or else just move on with my life. Plans made were put on hold. My car died three weeks ago and is still 70 miles away in Santa Barbara, because I didn't know if I was going to just let it rot or if I would need to get it fixed so I can function in California. I couldn't commit to other work. I couldn't commit to making dinner plans with my friends, or even appearing in the last two performances of Much Ado About Nothing (shows this Sat/Sun at 5:00 PM, www.shakes-sb.com for details).

That wait ended, but now it's being replaced with this 72 hour tease that Barack Obama is playing with the nation. I mean, he's supposed to text me when he announces his decision (well, me and millions of others, maybe you), and here I am, waiting, being sure my phone is charged and functioning. I mean, really, it's tremendously exciting. It's NEVER this exciting. If nothing else, the man is a master of playing his cards close to the vest. It's a week before McCain's announcement and already there are leaks in major magazines that he has picked Romney. Obama has a public date with his VP choice in less than 48 hours and no one has ANY freaking idea. (For the record, at the moment I'm thinking he's going with Clinton -- it's certainly the most dramatic, "game-changing" move.)

And I'm waiting for other things, too, while weight is leaving me. I'm waiting for a day when I don't meet a memory of my stepfather's last moments every half hour or so. I'm waiting for a day when I can come home and not have to worry about what emotional state I'll find my mother in. I'm waiting for a day when I can have friends over to my own house, when I can adopt another cat, grow green peppers in a garden, and do at least three good things for people I love.

I'm waiting for next month when I get to officiate over my cousin Tory's wedding ceremony. I'm waiting for the moment I get to see my nieces again. I'm waiting for a lot of people in my life to grow up just a little more, because I'm still just a little too old to be a really close friend. I'm waiting for the person I have always been inside to permeate my outer skin and show himself to the world without fear.

I'm waiting for this world to get a little bit older -- or younger -- through evolving. I'm waiting for the promise of the next world to reveal itself to more people I know and love. I'm waiting to live, and I'm waiting to die.

To wait is to experience the emptiness of now: the blessed, eternal present tense of life turned against itself, forced to see its own limitations. It is as much an exercise in futility as it is in faith, for whatever we yearn for, whatever we desire in the future, only has power through its absence in the here and now.

And to lose weight? To lose what has been gained? To undo yourself, physically, remove yourself (or at least layers of yourself) from the space you grew to occupy? To reduce your presence?

Another exercise in being out of time.

Which is probably exactly what I need.

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Signs That Cute Overload Owns Your Soul

I speak from experience.

You carry a digital camera with you on that job through the woods just in case you come across a family of squirrels.

You get mad at "Scrabulous" when it tells you that "tailio" isn't a word.

You refer to a grouchy colleague as "Winston" (or "McGrumpersons").

You have begun to use the word "bleen" in exchange for curse words.

You meet a guy named Mike, and you wonder if he's Not That Mike the Other Mike.

Every time you see a Japanese person, you bend over and say "Go ahead, I'm not asking, I'm telling," Artie Fufkin-style.

You consider the logic of mailing Berthaservant a marmie kitten.

To get someone's goat, you keep saying "Pa-sickie."

Your co-workers have begun to refer to you as "Squee."

You tell friends that while you can appreciate ICHC, ultimately you consider LOLcats brash and unsubtle.

You have considered forming a 527 political group to either promote or oppose the category of Cats-n-Racks.

You have a dream that you meet momof2kitties, and she it turns out that she actually did give birth to kittens.

When someone says something that confuses you, you tilt your head and say "Baroo?"

Instead of getting up and getting the remote control, you playfully stay put and reach for it saying "ehn!"

You name the spiders nesting in your balcony eaves "Meg" and "Teho."

 

Specifically Discussing the Strong Women in My Life

So today I got sucked into a flame war over on Cute Overload -- yeah, I should know better, but of course, I entered it trying to be civil, then got trolled and couldn't hold myself back.  But I did get to thinking that anyone who knows me knows that I am about as far from a sexist as a man can be.  Maybe that's not THAT far, but I doubt that any woman who knows me would call me sexist or anti-feminist.  Am I a guy?  Yes, pretty unabashedly, but I make a point of treating all women with respect and not tolerating others around me who do not.  I've specifically made a point, for example, of casting equal numbers of men and women in the improvisation groups I have created:  that's not the most radical thing ever and I was far from the first to do it, but it was something that I personally insisted on because I felt that women generally were not (and are not) given opportunities to improvise in equal numbers with men.  Amy Seham wrote a book about it  , and the groups I learned from also insisted on equal numbers of women (at a time when most groups had only one woman in the troupe, because conventional wisdom was women aren't and can't be funny and should only play wifes, secretaries and whores).  Does this one thing mean that I'm not sexist?  No, of course not, but it's just one example of a way in which I have deliberately chosen to NOT be sexist.

More importantly, after thinking about it, I realized that I have for most of my adult life happily and productively worked under the power of and with the guidance of women -- a few men, but mostly women.  Allow me to elaborate:

1)  My first "job" was working for a woman who bred Himalayan cats out of her home.  She was an independent businesswoman who loved animals and taught me about how cats behave around each other, how to take care of sick cats, and how to be responsive to an animal's needs.  I only worked for her for a few months (unpaid), but as I had no pet of my own at the time, I absorbed this time with her animals and consider it one of the most valuable experiences I have ever had (at a time in my life when I was not very happy otherwise).

2)  My primary mentor in high school was a woman, an English teacher I had for two years, plus one year of journalism and an independent study.  She challenged me to become a better writer and a better thinker, seeing (when most couldn't) that I was too content to get by on minimum effort.  I learned my academic drive from her, and her passion for great books, great ideas, and the complexity of language and the human soul nurtured the same impulses in me. 

3)  My aunt, whom I had the pleasure of studying with one semester in England, is one of the world's foremost scholars on contemporary American drama, has a Ph.D. from Harvard and has taught at a major public university for nearly twenty years (her husband is a former Jesuit priest with seven doctorate-level degrees and a longtime college Dean).  I learned about how to most effectively engage with students by being a student in her classroom, and still attempt to imitate her pedagogy, which is exciting, dynamic, improvisational, and thoroughly effective in helping learning minds grasp complex questions.  When I was working in show business (see below), she was always telling me I was wasting my talents and needed to get back into the classroom where I belong, and she has unfailingly been one of my biggest fans and supporters as I try to make a living in this very difficult profession.

4)  While an undergraduate at NYU, I had several teaching assistants, professors and adjunct professors in the classes that were most important to my development as a thinker and a person.  My Theory of Personality professor introduced me to the enlightening work of psychotherapist Karen Horney.  When I began therapy, it was the Horney clinic in New York where I was able to make progress and stabilize myself at a difficult time.  (By the way, for those of you who consider going to therapy some indication of weakness or insanity, you suck.)  Today, I use some of Horney's terminology (always giving her credit) when I teach advanced approaches to acting and improvisation.  Another female professor taught the first true "Women's Studies" class I ever took, where I began to learn the true critical history of feminism and appreciate the complex arguments of the feminist movement(s) of the time (1990).  This was in the middle of the "Act-Up"/gay activist revolution, and much of what I learned about feminism and identity politics was introduced to me by activist teaching assistants (male and female, gay and straight and bi) who taught me how to be vigilant about issues of power and representation.  The critical thought and discourse I was exposed to -- even that which I disagreed with -- spoke to my own growing understanding of the world.  I learned from women about Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault, and I learned from men about Kaja Silverman and Maya Deren.  (I had some wonderful male professors and mentors as well, most of them I would consider to be pretty good male feminists).

5)  When I graduated, my first real job was working in a publicity firm that was owned by a woman (who ran the New York office) and a gay man (who ran the LA office).  My immediate supervisor was a woman who barely graduated high school and was incredibly disorganized and unglamorous, but was one of the most successful and well-liked people in her profession.  I learned from her how to talk to the media, how to effectively play dumb to protect a client, how to win people's trust, and how to keep a positive attitude even if the world was a complicated place.  When I left her desk, my new supervisor was an office manager who was one of the best party organizers and event planners in New York City (she still is), a powerful woman who had no problem cursing out powerful magazine editors and TV personalities and fiercely defending those who showed her respect.  My third boss was a calm, efficient, incredibly intelligent woman who allowed me the freedom to develop my own clients and work and trusted me to give her honest and intelligent responses to serious and important questions.  From her, I learned how to be a good boss that can make the most out of someone's competence and challenge others to do their best through example and encouragement.

6)  When I moved to Los Angeles, my first boss was a peer - someone who graduated one year before me at NYU.  She had produced a student film -- directed by a woman and starring another woman -- that I had been production manager for.  Now she was employed by a major movie studio, and I worked for her at that studio for three years, two as a freelance consultant, and one as her full-time assistant.  From her, I learned about how to talk to colleagues in business and how to pick your fights wisely, and tons about communicating effectively with people you don't necessarily trust.  Her boss was a woman, frequently listed as one of the 20 most powerful women in Hollywood (much of the rest of the company was run by men, but my end of the job was definitely driven by those two women).

7)  My next job, I followed my boss (as her assistant) to work for a company that was run by two more powerful women in Hollywood, each of whom frequently made the top 50 most powerful women list (for whatever that is worth, I'm just saying these were real players).  As women who had worked very hard on behalf of and for men for their entire careers, this was their opportunity to call some of the shots, and they were part of a very powerful women's network in Hollywood.  Nearly every meeting we took was with a company run by a woman, and our home studio was presided over by a woman.  In most important meetings, I was the only male present, as most of these women had female assistants and executives.  To say that I learned any one thing from these women is impossible -- some of them were effective and intelligent, others were fearful and disempowered.  But they all outranked me significantly, and I had no problem shutting up and doing my job, only speaking when spoken to, and trusting their judgment and wisdom.

8)  When I returned to school, all three members of my master's thesis committee were women, all tenured professors at the University of California.  I don't know their exact ages, but I would guess that they had been professors of some sort for a combined 55-60 years.  Two of them are considered major scholars in their field and I also worked with both of them as teaching assistants (they consider themselves "feminists" as well and have published work related to feminism, though that is not their only area of specialty).  They made jokes during my orals about how rare it was to have three women on a committee for a male student (particularly when my thesis had little to do with gender issues).

9)  Only one of the members of my dissertation committee is a woman.  Sorry.

10)  I was also a teaching assistant for a well-known Asian-American playwright who was the best teacher of the creative arts I have ever seen.  She gave me the encouragement and opportunity to develop my own work and I am in awe of what she can accomplish with student artists.  I also hope to direct one of her plays someday because they speak so eloquently to the same notions of language, identity, and connectedness that I have learned from all of the other people mentioned here.

Finally, and I can't even put a number on this, is my mother.  My mother has two graduate degrees and has done more in her life to help those less fortunate (the mentally ill) than I can imagine.  She has suffered horrific personal tragedy and is still the most loving person I know.  She endures sexism and bias that makes me want to hurt people.  She has believed in me and supported me more than anyone (well, it's a tie with my dad).  She taught me how to be a better writer.  She has taught me the value of emotion.  She might be the bravest person I know.  She taught me about God.

I'm not saying that there aren't men who haven't influenced me -- of course there were.  And I'm not even mentioning the many, many women -- peers, friends, lovers, students, collaborators -- whom I have felt close to and whom I need.  Does it make me sexist that I trust women more than men?  That I respect the generic woman more than the generic man?  That I'm much more interested in how a casual female friend is reacting to a break-up than I am interested in how a male best friend is dealing with his?  That I'd much rather share the truth about myself with a woman than with a man?  That I dream of a day when women play major league baseball, dominate the US Congress, and control the pornography industry? 

I am as God made me.  And I'm not one to question Her methods.

Women from the Past I am in Love With

(A repost from my old myspace blog, but wanted to share it here.  It's still spring, you know).

I've been watching a LOT of movies from the 1930s and 40s.  And as is my wont, I have started to fall in love with a number of the actresses who appeared in these films.  There are a lot of other "classic" beauties that you may have heard of -- Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Lana Turner, etc.  But you may not have heard of these really beautiful talented actresses.

Luise Rainer is still alive -- she's in her 90s and living in her native Germany.  Quick -- who was the first performer to win TWO Oscars -- and back to back no less?   Yes, it was Luise Rainer.  She had emigrated from Germany (it was a bad time for Jews) after a brief career working with legendary director Max Reinhardt.  She never really cottoned to Hollywood, and would show up to parties wearing trousers (shocking) and no makeup.  In one of the more bizarre Oscar stories, Luise appeared in only a couple scenes of "The Great Ziegfeld" starring William Powell, as Ziegfeld's legendary star and paramour Anna Held.  There's a scene where she's on the phone to Ziegfeld that is an amazing piece of acting, and basically for that scene she won the Oscar in 1936.  That was the first year there were supporting player awards, but MGM decided to list Rainer in the lead category where, much to their apparent chagrin, she defeated fellow MGM nominee (and wife of the studio head) Norma Shearer.  At 25, still a relative unknown, she was Hollywood's greatest actress.  The following year, Thalberg -- who was to die within months -- cast her in "The Good Earth" opposite Paul Muni.  The couple played Chinese farmers, and Rainer's performance in the epic is almost wordless (Muni is quite talkative).  Stripped down with a mere suggstion of Asian makeup, it's one of the most brilliant performances of restraint and focus in an era better known for broadness of characterization.  She won the Oscar again, but within a few years had essentially retired and eventually returned to Europe after the war. Whatever she lacked in glamour and "natural" beauty she made up for in talent and dedication.

Mary Astor was a studio mainstay for a long time.  You may have seen her in "The Maltese Falcon," but she was also dynamite in comedies like "The Palm Beach Story."  She played a lot of leads in some lesser films -- she made over 40 films in the 1930s alone -- and then settled into character and supporting parts.  She was also known in the late 1920s as the author of one of Hollywood's most notorious diaries.  As a young beauty queen under contract to MGM she had caught the eye of John Barrymore, but that wasn't anything to write home about as Barrymore was a legendary lothario.  The story that got everyone chatting was that Astor's choice for her favorite lover -- a man she would "go over a cliff for" -- was writer George S. Kaufman, who was notoriously bizarre and not particularly attractive.  Astor claimed that Kaufman gave her twenty orgasms in one night.

Olivia de Havilland is also still alive, she's 90.  She was a kid at Mills College in Oakland when Max Reinhardt (again) spotted her in a production of "Midsummer" and cast her in his film version.  She initially played a number of young ingenue roles, but finally got a starring role and a Best Actress nomination for a film called "Hold Back the Dawn."  She lost to her sister, Joan Fontaine (for "Suspicion").  Imagine the awkward Thanksgiving.  Anyway, Olivia channeled her fury at the studios; she was sick of playing helpless young things and the studio suspended her, then told her that she "owed' them time on her contract for the time she missed.  She sued them and the result was a new regulation stating that actors could not be forced to "make up" time lost on a contract.  Good for you, Olivia. She ended up winning two Oscars.

I've been in love with Myrna Loy for years.  As a young actress, she was absolutely ravishing -- she's nude in a pool of flowers in the film "The Barbarian" with Ramon Navarro and it'll stop your heart.  She eventually became an awesome comedic actress in "The Thin Man" films with William Powell (he was a really lucky guy, he also married Carole Lombard), and played Billie Burke (who played Glinda, the Good Witch of the North), the other great love in the life of "The Great Ziegfeld" opposite Powell.  Here's something you didn't know:  a young Myrna Loy was the model for the statue of the Virgin Mary that is located outside Venice High School in Venice California -- which is seen in the film "Grease" as Rydell High.

Ella Raines didn't make that many movies, but in Preston Sturges' "Hail the Conquering Hero" she plays the love interest of "war hero" Eddie Bracken, and I think she's probably Sturges' most beautiful actress (and yes, I'm counting Barbara Stanwyck and Veronica Lake).  She was a discovery of Howard Hawks and got into a few decent films, but never really became a star. She's stunning.

Okay, I'm jumping ahead a few years, but Ava Gardner is simply one of the most beautiful women to ever work on film.  She wasn't a great actress (she had no training and very little confidence, though she fairly decent work later in her life).  She married three major celebrities -- Mickey Rooney (one of his eight wives), bandleader Artie Shaw (ditto) and Frank Sinatra (when his career was faltering), and never had any kids, later admitting she'd had an abortion when pregnant with Sinatra's child.  As she grew older, she got a reputation as being a good sport and apparently could swear like a drunken sailor.  In the really crappy disaster film "Earthquake," she did her own stunts. Perhaps the most impressive stunt was playing the part of Charlton Heston's mother -- even though she was only two years older than Heston himself.

I saw Lauren Bacall about a year ago at JFK Airport, she was waiting for the same plane that I was.  Unfortunately, the plane was delayed and she ended up on another flight.  But for about two hours, I got to sit about five seats away from her in the waiting area, my hands sweating because I actually had a book with her picture in it (from "To Have and Have Not") and I was sure that if I called her "Betty" and threw out her son Stephen's name she's talk to me (I don't know Stephen, of course, but I'd seen him at some events).  But I couldn't, I left her alone.  She had a dog with her, a VERY well manicured little thing (and well-mannered, too).  While her bumbling chauffeur/driver guy was trying to get her on a flight, Betty just sat there waiting.  People walking by would notice the dog first, and make little noises and bend down and pet the dog, saying "Who's so CUTE?" and then look up and realize that they were talking to Lauren Bacall's dog.  She seemed mildly amused that Sophie (the dog) was getting all the looks, although she was pissed off about the plane (we were getting no information on why the flight was postponed, and Betty had flown in from Paris and was just making a connection).  Well, take a look at her early films.  She was 19 when she made "To Have and Have Not" -- again, another Hawks discovery.  (Side note:  some men in Hollywood have exquisite taste. Hawks was apparently determined to seduce Bacall, but she fell head over heels for Bogart.  Hawks instead got together with Dolores Moran, one of Hollywood's bustiest starlets, who was in a minor role.  Pics of Moran here, she was also hot beyond belief).  She married Bogie when she was 20, and with him stood up to the HUAC (google it) even though it could have cost her her still-new career.  After Bogie's death, she married Jason Robards for a while (she's the mother of Robard's son Sam, who is a really good actor himself).   I don't think she's ever been considered a great actress -- she's more in the mold of drop-dead-gorgeous movie star.  But she's still working and has done some interesting stuff in the last few years, including an amazing bit of craft in Lars von Trier's "Dogville."  And she always held her own with Bogie in her early films -- no easy task. 

Beauty may be skin deep, and glamour may be bullshit.  But all of these women had talent and personality and balls and that's what makes them hot and worthy of my decades-removed admiration. 

Memoir of a Domestic(ated) Spy, Part I -- Introducing Bertha Kitt-Bumperhead

(As told to and transcribed by her faithful servant)

Finally, the world will know my story and the truth will emerge!  After a dozen years of training and waiting for my moment, it has arrived, and I am on the brink of saving the world!

What's that, you say?  A mere housecat?  Saving the world?  To be sure, I am not alone in this endeavor.  There are hundreds of secret agents like me, all around the world -- thousands, perhaps.  Each of us engaged in the cause of preserving the fate of the world for all of nature's living creatures.  Certainly, my bipedal friends, you must have noticed that you have done a particularly terrible job of caring for the earth, and despite the best efforts of some of the more enlightened members of your species, little progress has been made.  Well, the animal kingdom has been planning and plotting and working for generations, now:  we're here too, in case you have forgotten, and we've had more of an impact than you can know.

Let me start with my own story:  I am Bertha Kitt-Bumperhead, known to those in my line of work as Agent 11z-Felix.  I was trained by Her Majesty's Secret Service Companion Unit which, as I'm sure you know, was created during the second world war as a response to the Nazi Denkenheimlichhundprogramme (literally, "Thinking secret dog program").  The story is old by now, as much legend as fact, but the details are worth repeating.  In September of 1938, German Chancellor and all-around psychopath Adolf Hitler met with jelly spined British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.  Hitler assured Chamberlain that he had no desire to begin a war in Europe, and Chamberlain returned to England and proclaimed to the world that Hitler was not a threat.  Of course, less than a year later, the world would know that Hitler was a liar.  What the world DIDN'T know at the time was that in Munich, Chamberlain had been wavering in his support of Hitler.  He wrote in his diaries that he wasn't sure if the German madman could be trusted.  That all changed on the final day of the summit, when Hitler presented Chamberlain with a going-away gift -- two purebred German shepherds named Hans and Inga.   They were well-behaved and affectionate creatures, and Chamberlain figured any man who could raise two noble creatures such as this couldn't be all bad.

(Servants Note:  Bertha insists that this is Hans and Inga, but I don't think they had this kind of color photography in 1940).

Of course, Chamberlain was so proud of his new dogs that he bred them in England, where they produced three litters of pups whom Chamberlain gave to his advisers and friends in the military.  What Chamberlain didn't realize until too late is that Hans and Inga had been trained by the Germans to intercept British military codes and transmit them back to Berlin via German spies already planted in Britain.  Inga, for example, was fond of laying on Chamberlain's lap during high level meetings regarding the new RAF training procedures and procurement of new fighter planes from America.  After each meeting, she'd ask for walkies, and while on her rounds, would bark out a series of coded messages which were recorded by a German spy working as a gardener.  The tapes were sent to German for decoding.  Hans and Inga had also trained their offspring, so by 1941, there were no fewer than 37 trained companion animals spying for the Nazis.  Many of them began to recruit the other German dogs who served as companions to British citizens -- by the end of the war, it was hard to find a dachshund, rottweiler, schnauzer, or doberman who had not been approached by a "friend of Hans and Inga", and more than a few, I am sorry to say, ended up turning on their masters and revealing secrets to the enemy. 

By 1943, of course, the dastardly ruse had been discovered, and Hans and Inga and most of their brood were rounded up and sent to Iceland, where their progeny live today (they are good citizens and have done excellent service to their adopted country).  That's when Winston Churchill -- a cat lover who had once famously refused a bitch from Inga's first London-born litter -- decided that there could not be an animal companion intelligence gap.  He set his top veterinary scientist (who had been working futilely on perfecting the flying armored horse) to begin training animal spies under the auspices of HMSS.  I was, as you can tell from my code name, a product of the 26th (z-class) generation of companion espionage operatives, 11th in my class of 99 cats (the dog agents are designated as -canis). 

Of course, that training was long ago -- over twelve years.  And then I was assigned what was considered the dream job -- California, in America!  I imagined myself decoding information from the naval base near San Diego, or lounging in the desert son as I tracked the coming and going of planes near Edwards Air Force Base, or even lurking in the alleys of Chinatown in San Francisco, where nefarious deeds are always afoot.  One of my mentors, the great Lady Iris McFluffersons, used to tell us about her days as a shopcat in that cities North Beach district, and I imagined myself feasting on leftover sushi and chicken marsala.

But no.  Instead, I was assigned to suburbia, with a dim-witted servant who disappears for hours at a time, and who reacts to my demands for critical information with gentle laughter and what I can only assume is human baby talk.  (Servant's Note:  She likes the baby talk, or at least usually acts like she does).  I thought for sure I would be put into immediate action, but instead I find myself warring for dry food and the good sunbeam spots with two uncouth beasts who barely do justice to the name of cat.  One of them, Theodora, is a wild-haired monster of a local, who just screeches at me whenever I begin to discuss the important work we companion pets need to do.  The other, Coco, is an attractive but aging French native, and let's just say that the French don't call their cats "pussies" for nothing.  She's more interested in fine food and drawing compliments on her svelte figure and fashionable Russian blue features to be bothered with anything as important as the fate of the world.

(Theo, who is not very nice to us).

(Sweet, beautiful, vain Coco).

So that leaves me, here, with little to do except continue studying my decoding manuals, listen for communications from my nearby agents, and wait for my assignment.  But I feel that day is coming soon, for I recently received a notice that my status was being upgraded to "on alert."  (Servant's Note:  Where does she get a notice?  She doesn't even respond to the doorbell.)  My time is coming, I can feel it!  But for now, I must go.  A cat's work does involve excessive napping, after all, and I must remember to tell the servant that the new food is inadequate for my needs.  He usually only listens to me after a few rubs of my head on his hands and face ("You love me!," he squeals, the poor pathetic fool)....I do promise next installment, however, to tell you more about my training and also the story behind my hyphenated name.

Until then, be kind to your companions.  You can never be sure to whom they are reporting.

(Our heroine, in repose).

Dear Old Grandad von Possum

In his early years, Grandad fancied himself a bit of a falconer. When he returned from the wars as a young man, he brought with him an accipiter trivirgatus, a marvelous crested goshawk with black stripes on his belly.  He was given the English name of Windbreaker, a loose translation of original Hindi word which meant "the scent of dusk on the river Ganges." Windbreaker would fly for hours at a time, always returning to Grandad's outreached forelock. "Never needed no protection," Gramps would say, "that bird landed on me with the gentleness of a dove." 

Uncle Weddy always told me the story of when he was about nine years old, and Grandad got it in his head that Windbreaker should mate.  He sent away to India for another accipiter, only to have a male arrive by mistake.  The second bird was named Uncle Oscar (after Oscar Wilde) and became fast friends with Windbreaker, so much so that when an appropriate female was corralled from a breeder in Sussex, the two males attacked the poor queen mercilessly, plucking her to within an inch of her life.  "Couple of right tough poofter birds, those two were," Uncle Weddy always laughed.  "Never had no use for 'em in the Queen's army, of course, but as birds, well, nobody's business but their own, I suppose."  It was all short-lived, as Uncle Oscar ended up on the wrong end of a train tunnel while flying about one midwinter's eve.  "After that, Windbreaker, magnificent bugger that he was, became just a shell of himself."

Of course, Windbreaker passed long ago, and Grandad never felt like he could relate to another bird, and his interest in falconry waned as the textile business occupied more and more of his life. Still, since his retirement, he has begun talking more of his "old birds," and often he summons the nurse chickies around his bedside to "sit on me forearm" for a while, remembering the his might days as a warrior for the empire and proud companion of one of nature's greatest creatures of the air.

It's a shame they don't let grandad visit more often...he so gets a thrill out of running through the gardens, chasing the disapproving rabbits through the copse, calling "Onward, Windbreaker, you sick, smelly pipeswaggler, take down that glorified sneering rodent!"  Of course he never catches up with them, and ends up quarrelling with the help as they try to escort him back to the grounds for his nightly meal of kibble and a tumbler of spiced rum to put him to sleep.  Such are the vagaries of age.  Oh, sweet fortune forfend that I should be one to grow old alone, forgotten, dreaming of homosexual pets and living for the thrill of a meaningless chase. 

Invisible Zombie

Undead and unseen,

A spirit within and beneath me covers my house.

I'm sure you can see the remnants,
Dried and aged,
Fossils of last week,
You won't have to look hard.

And it's likely you'll remark on my softer edges,
Stronger heart,
Balance and grace

As my loved ones
Dance through aftershocks.

But you can't, and I won't let you,
Gaze too long at the shadow,
Changing shape faster than the sun.

At night it takes shape
In the dense trappings
Of pieces that fit together, all too well.

The invisible zombie is taller than me, thinner, with even less hair.

He walks slowly because he's not in a hurry.

He wears a t-shirt that reads:

"Alone, I can fix this."

And on the back:

"Asking for help defeats the purpose."

When alive, he was a lifeguard.

Now he just hides,
Dreaming of souls to carry
And brains to devour.