clare
Friday, June 27, 2003
 
here's where i will be in just a few short hours: the Downtown Crossing T stop, interviewing at The Steppingstone Foundation.

and here's where i will be leaving forever: bobo's Educational Technology Center.

here's where i left yesterday: IDEXX, or, as mel likes to say in the most menacing voice possible, IIIIDEXXX!


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Wednesday, June 25, 2003
 
HUH? of the day: Veil of Secrecy Around Village Hit in U.S. Raid

and according to a little online quiz submitted by Adam, the following terms describe me:
pleasant shape
tasteful clothes
modest demands
tends to not forgive mistakes
cheerful
likes to lead but not to obey
honest and faithful partner
tends to a know-all-attitude and making decisions for others
noble-minded
generous
good sense of humor
practical.

"tends to a know-all-attitude"... ok, sure. but "pleasant shape?" ?! "tasteful clothes?" i think mel would disagree on that one...
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Monday, June 23, 2003
 
i'd like to start publishing a zine. i have an overarching concept but not so much the time or the talent. the time will come for me, but the talent won't. which leaves me thinking that i'd like to solicit ideas from other folks. i'd like it to be a truly collaborative process, but how do i go about doing that whilst avoiding the ego-trip that is producing one's own zine (not unlike producing one's own website or weblog)?

it needs to be politicized and highly charged. it needs to combat heterosexism, racism, classism, sexism, able-ism, and more. it needs to cross media--electronic to print and back again. it needs to be artistic. it needs to be fun. it needs to be active, engaging, participatory. it needs to be funny. it needs to be sustainable. it needs to have some kind of measurable impact on the world--in other words, it needs to somehow make the world a better place, as broad and idealistic as that all sounds. i don't know if i have the commitment or the connections to achieve all of these lofty goals. perhaps, at this point, it would be best for me to simply put out feelers. what do you think?

i need to have a more solid conceptual base beneath it all. i need to be able to make at least a two-year commitment. i need to have better access to resources (including people) and a more complex understanding of what it means for me to put out a publication. and i need a better publishing tool. hmm. i'm putting this pot to boil on the burner for a month or so. once i actually have a job, i'll return.

the tide of low self-esteem rises: what do i know about publishing, aside from my high-school newspaper and my work with my school's radical rag? what ideas could i possibly contribute to the world that's already overflowing with paper and pixels? cough, cough. splutter, splutter. choke, choke

maybe i should just hunker down and get something out, even if it's not perfect. at least it'll be... something. another fist raised. another stab at achieving some kind of democracy in this place where purported "freedom" reigns... rains in acidic, stinging images of impossible people, one on top of another, making us all wet to be better! stronger! thinner! taller! perfect! perfect! perfect! and then, it will all be ok. we'll finally be fine. i need to make some kind of pinprick in the balloon of lies that's being pumped daily, the inflatable elephant in a room of folks distracted by just trying to survive. survive needs to be meaning different things, and i'd like to contribute to its re-visioning. revisionist history? that's damn right. because the history books are wrong, wrong, wrong, and they have been for so achingly long that it's time to right them. time for me to write them.

i'm not making very much sense. but perhaps it's a taste of things to come. it's time for me to point my privilege toward the horizon of a better world. never perfect, of course, but better.
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Friday, June 20, 2003
 
an interesting diversion: a webpage on the 50th anniversary of the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott, obtained via the National Public Radio website.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2003
 
i wonder when i'll get to writing again as much as i've been able in the past few months. we're heading into rocky waters, friends. i'm hoping i don't get seasick.

Katha Pollitt wrote an article for the Nation about Martha and Hilary. worth a look.

and i recently received my very own copy of Rahne's Tranzilla in the mail. w00t! it's making the rounds in my house, as we speak. even my cats are interested.

and i was thinking things--brilliant things!--yesterday as i was driving to and from work in my little vehicle (note: i chose that particular review of my car mainly because it had the prettiest picture i could find... although my version of the car is a little less... red...), but none of the amazing and insightful things i was thinking have stuck in my brain.

so, where are we?

we (meaning me) are at work, surreptitiously typing and worrying, worrying and typing, about my upcoming move.

when i think about it, the development of the weblog makes perfect sense in contemporary american culture--what my mom likes to call the "ME generation." there's something voyeuristic about peeking into the innermost workings of folks' minds, although there is certainly an element of consent in blogging--no one would be able to see the works if i didn't type them up in here. there's something self-centered about it all--here's a little crumb of the information superhighway dedicated to ME, ME, and more of ME, and ME alone--my thoughts, my perspectives... "a little place i can call my own" but "for all the world to see." never before in the history of "things" has one person's little voice had the potential to reach so many people so quickly. not that it does... but the potential is there, and maybe that's what keeps people blogging. we all (and i don't think i'm wrong about this, but i could be) are hoping for a wider readership. we want more people to know about us, our ideas, our beliefs, our experiences... to what end? i'm asking myself this question. maybe i can use it to better guide my own blogging.

i caught the tail end of a commentary by a fellow named Paul Ford on npr the other day... about how language and expression are constrained, limited by computer publishing tools like Word we all are taught to understand as creativity-inspiring. i had a bit of an epiphany (i really did hear angels in chorus... but maybe it was just the bass thumping from the car behind me...), since most of my days are spent within the happyland of Microsoft Word and Excel... i consider myself among the administrative elite inasmuch as i can navigate around these fairly obscure programs better than most, i would say. that's not ego--that's socioeconomic class, ladies and gents. i was raised around word processing (what does that mean, anyway--word "processing?" what's the process part?), and my brain was trained to learn and learn in a particular interface. anyhow, it's a neat article, and it made me think about the ways in which other "invisible" hardware and software simultaneously constrain and make possible my daily communications...

like blogger, for example...

more thinking to be done here...

"and if i die before i learn to speak
can money pay for all the days
i lived awake but half asleep?
doot doo n doot doo n doo.
doot doo n doot doo n doo."
--"Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in my Hand," primitive radio gods, via ann getting it stuck in my head.

p.s. i know i keep saying that i'll return to things and write more about them--and i swear i will! it's a time issue and it's a laziness issue. more about why i have no time and i'm lazy later...

p.p.s. heh. i amuse myself.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2003
 
there's something intriguing about the recent media attention being paid to two particular wealthy, white, and politically savvy women--i'm referring, of course, to Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart.

perhaps it's the way that the media seems (predictably) to focus on their appearances in a way that is simultaneously demeaning and dismissive of their political (and economic) prowess. and by "political" i mean small-p political, by and large, although Hillary's big-p Political are certainly relevant...

so, all of this media attention leave us with much information about looks and fashion and--dare i say--gender but not much in the way of real news. perhaps this is obvious. but these two wealthy and powerful white women seem to point toward larger issues that bear a brief mention.

the gender thing, for example. it's silly--no, beyond silly--it's insane the amount of ink that has been spent in the service of maintaining the gender system in which we all live. in other words, all the chatter (i'm hearing Music Man tunes in my head... "pick-a-little talk-a-little pick-a-little talk-a-little cheep cheep cheep! talk-a-lot-pick-a-little-more...) about Hillary's hair and Martha's domesticity serves to contribute toward policing the gender hegemony. in other words: SO, you wanna be a woman in the public sphere? well, then suffer the wrath of media scrutiny, down to the individual hairs on your head. here's what it means to be a woman in this culture: being white is taken for granted as the standard--how would the scrutiny be different for a powerful and wealthy Latina woman, for example? and being independently wealthy is certainly a necessity. poor women rarely make it into positions of power these days, much less receive this much media attention except in ways that induce shame, guilt, finger-wagging, and more policing...

what does all of this mean?

i seem to remember a friend of mine in my early high school years commenting on why she hated Hillary Clinton. her reasoning at the time had something to do with a speech Hillary had made, saying that she was no Martha Stewart, didn't "bake cookies" and stay at home and, thus, represented a new generation of women... i don't know the exact speech from which my friend was quoting, and i don't even know how accurate her reference was, but it made me wonder: what do folks love to hate or love Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart?

For my part, i disagree with my old friend--certainly, fewer women these days fit the 1950's housewife stereotype (indeed, few women in the 1950's even fit the stereotype--interesting how our collective american memories of the 50's spring largely from television and not from reality... but that's another rant), but that fact is due to a number of factors, and it's neither an indicator of the progress nor of the degeneration of the moral fiber of this country, in my view. plenty of women would choose to stay home with their children and bake cookies--if they could afford to be technically "unemployed" (although engaged in some damn important labor, i'd say). and plenty of women who stay home would love to be more financially and physically independent. we still haven't reached a stage where women can truly choose what they want to do with their lives--and the same is true, albeit to different degrees in different ways--of men.

more soon...
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Wednesday, June 04, 2003
 
phrase of the day: "a goulash of inaccuracies"
--Douglas Feith's, a senior Pentagon official, response to allegations that he and other Defense Dept. folk had messed with intelligence data to justify the war on Iraq (see this NYTimes article.
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i've had a nervous belly for the past few weeks. it's the job thing. it's the apartment thing. it's the changing thing. we're looking for jobs, the two of us, in two different places. we're having trouble finding what we need, never mind what we want.

i haven't had much time or will to sleep, breathe, or think these days. apologies for the lack of critical analysis in this entry. but my brain is so quickly skipping from one thought to the next. i don't even know what's going on in the world any more.

i guess the best i can do for the moment is offer some amusement.

check out my dad's website, orchestrated by the brilliant and talented ann.

and if you enjoy cats and cat-related things, this is an enormously amusing site... i particularly like the sheep and the duck outfits.

ah, the old standby for politically-oriented amusement, This Modern World.

*******

i have this visual of myself as this rickety old airplane, perpetually coming in for a rocky landing. this image feels particularly salient during difficult, changing times like these. somehow, i always make it to the ground, and i know that gravity will inevitably get the best of me. but it's the descent before the landing that makes me feel a bit queasy.

******

i've applied for more than 40 jobs over the past two months (since April first)--about 30 of them for which i expected to be reasonably qualified. i've interviewed for a grand total of one of them thusfar, and i'm scheduled for a first interview with another in just over a week. what does this mean?

sure, there are the general facts these days: the economy, as it were, sucks. perhaps i'm not as qualified as i think i am (in other words, it's me who sucks). i'm not as well-connected as i thought i was. but, aside from the guilt and inadequacy i feel amid all of this crap i've been hearing from my co-workers about how fabulous and employee i am, it's hard to keep in mind the larger picture.

a larger percentage of folks are out of a job in this country than has been the case in years--even if you're not on the job hunt, you're feeling it, be it through family or friends who are searching or through me (complaining left and right, alternately about my lack of qualifications and the lack of jobs). what's going on? statistics we see or hear in the news usually don't include the so-called "working poor," either--folks who have jobs that pay, say, $6/hr. no one person can live on that.

the fact remains that the econonmy, the way it's currently structured, does not support people. it supports money and its accumulation in a few hands. if the jobless rate doesn't convince you, try looking at the gini coefficient for the US.

and here are some interesting thoughts and quotes on income inequality in the US.

more fun later...
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