Innocently

innocently, I am being killed

hands wrap around me like prayer

the stretch of my arms losing all hope

happily it is done and gone

in intervals of rain, fallen breath

whirling fantastic, flying into release 

a comet's fragment of track

this hand across my heart saving me 

an empty room to understand everything

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No Good, Very Bad Day

It's only March, but it feels like May. Warm and toasty. Earth's heating up. Global Warming.

And you can thank me (or kick me). I parked the car in the university parking lot at 9 (running late because Cousin N forgot that she'd promised to take Baby A to school), and returned to it at 10:45 (after several surprise student conferences). To FIND THE ENGINE STILL RUNNING.

The hybrid engine (yes, we have some half-assed intention of conserving fuel) is so quiet (and I had turned the radio down to ask for a visitor parking pass, because my parking permit was in the other car, which had to be TOWED to Columbus yesterday because it broke down) that I hadn't realized that the engine was on.

Home now with two kids sick with snot (and feeling like I deserve this).

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The Gift of the Police

The local police chief has grandkids similar in age to my kids--I rolled along in his wake this morning as he dropped off the older child at the middle school, and then turned around to drop off the younger one at the hippie alternative school Baby A goes to. Since he was driving under the 20 mph speed limit, I had plenty of time to notice that his license plates were the first three letters of Li'l A's name.

I told him in the parking lot that he has interesting license plates.

And... it turns out that the car is going to be auctioned.

So... if Li'l A wants, he can have the license plates.

And the best part is that they're undercover license plates.

I know at least one geeky tween who's going to be so happy on the ride back home!

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Phony 2012

At the behest of the student newspaper, my thoughts on the Invisible Children documentary, Kony 2012: (I didn't use swear words and fist shaking since I didn't want to scare the young 'uns.)

I would like to believe Kony 2012 is a well-intentioned exercise, but in execution it comes off as sensationalist and exploitative posturing. It's also jarringly narcissistic—and repetitively circles around the filmmaker, Jason Russell, instead of the eponymous subjects of his organization, Invisible Children (IC). Overall, it is yet another unfortunate example of the trope of the third-world child manipulated to become a justification for Western interventions. What makes this campaign particularly dangerous is that it calls for a neo-imperialistic military intervention. 

As a viewer, I would protest the condescending and paternalistic presentation of facts in Kony 2012. The explanation that Russell's toddler gets is, literally, what viewers get too. According to experts in the field (see International Crisis Group’s November 2011 publication in the UNHCR, for example), the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is no longer a significant threat in Uganda, so the information presented in Kony 2012 is misguided at its best, and willfully misleading at its worst.  Also paternalistic is the presentation of Ugandans solely as victims—the many successful efforts of Ugandan GOs and NGOs on the ground are completely ignored. One of the glaring examples of the ways in which it would appear the film is out of touch with basic ground realities is the way Ugandans are repeatedly referred to as "Africans." (Obviously, Africa is not a country; it is a continent with a myriad non-interchangeable nations!)

As a global citizen, I'm mystified by the focus on a manhunt instead of on relief and reconciliation issues. If 30,000 plus children are hurt and suffering, and the warlord who executed this is in powerless exile, shouldn't the immediate focus of this outreach be about the rehabilitation of these children? The Charity Navigator profile for Invisible Children suggests that as a charity, IC contributes 32% or less of its revenues to operations on the ground that actually protect and educate children. This is unacceptable. The Kony 2012 video urges its viewers to donate $30 to buy bracelets and stickers, donations that fund expensive air travel and other administrative costs for people from San Diego. A far more responsible and utilitarian donation would be to donate to local organizations based and staffed in Uganda such as GUSCO (Gulu Support the Children Organization), in Northern Uganda. 

A few questions:

·      Is Kony 2012 misguided? Yes.

·      Is it banal and sloppy in its presentation? Yes.

·      Is Kony 2012 evil? No. To many, especially young people, this video has brought an awareness and consciousness of realities in other parts of the world. This is welcome, and an example of what Maria Lugones has called “world traveling” or engaging with different ways of living.

·      But can we crowdsource our way to justice? Perhaps. The successes of the Arab Spring are rife with citizen documentaries. But as that example shows, there needs to be committed activism on the ground—being willing to show up to protest while being threatened with guns, for instance.

·      Can so-called slacktivism (the slacker activism of clicking "like," "share," or "retweet" via social media) and shoptivism (buying stuff to signal activist engagement) enable justice? It’s a beginning, but cannot substitute for engaged activism or genuine support. Clicking/Buying a button will never be enough.

Me, Michigan

I've been abruptly announcing to everyone that we're moving to Michigan. Mostly, I don't believe it myself, so saying it aloud and experiencing hearing it is an exercise in extreme dislocation.

Speaking of which--holy selling-house, packing-up, finding-place-to-live, enrolling-everyone-in-new schools!  Lag Liv has been doing this with the kind of aplomb that should be inspiring or frightening, but we're not there yet.

Also, at last parent discussion (that's me and Big A) we decided that we should probably rent for a year before we build our own house. Everything that's out there is either small and dingy with wall-to-wall or huge and ostentatious with wall-to-wall. (Little A has the kind of asthma that's terrified of wall-to-wall.) One house I've been looking at repeatedly, is a not-so-charming trifecta of vinyl siding, beige carpet, and ranch rambling everywhere. It bears little connection to my dream house on Pinterest. But it sits on a lake and one of the online pictures captures the rising sun dead center through the huge windows. I could live with that view for the rest of my life.

But as Big A pointed out, it's inside a gated community and sits on a private lake, and has an obnoxious number of rooms. Where we live now--we live on the edge of a small lake, but it's a semi-public lake and we have neighbors who walk across our yard to visit friends in the nursing home on the other side. That's who we should continue to be. (See, he's not always about fart jokes!) In any case,  Big A is interviewing in Michigan again at the end of the month, so we'll have a better idea of where we could live then...

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Mindful Embodiment

Spent yesterday in a wonderful workshop on embodied pedagogy with Jen McWeeny, learning and brainstorming ideas on how to enable students to allow experience to count as learning. I want to use more of her work in class, especially the witness circle as a way of getting everyone in class to speak (feel invited to speak).

Today, wished my parents a happy wedding anniversary and brought out the old joke about how I was born a full six days before it. Mindful embodiment, indeed.

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Happy International Women's Day

Oh. I love Linda Wolf's "Full Woman."

Yet another reminder of how many different kinds of living there are in our world.