BROAD CAST 19 FEBRUARY 2008: PICKING A CANDIDATE, RACISM IN AMERICA, ESSENTIALISM, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY, PARTHOGENESIS, KNEE REPLACEMENT, AND SWEAT

Well, the Big Dog called me yesterday. Got my voice mail because I was asleep. He urged me to vote for his wife. I appreciate the effort, Bill -- the history-making thrill of getting a call from a former President asking me to vote for his wife. Duly noted.

Also noted is that this week the television ads for Hillary changed. The one that had been running was a snoozer, especially when compared to Barack's, which showed him as a little round-head with his Mama, talking about health care costs consuming her thoughts in her last months. He ends with "I approve this message because in order to fix health care, we have to fix government." Fantastic delivery -- but for those of us who watched incredulous as Reagan delivered his infamous "Government isn't the solution, government is the problem" damnation that is a direct line to Katrina, the Minneapolis bridge collapse, and untold human suffering -- it was too calculated to play on Texas independent nostalgia for Ronnie Raygun. I really don't appreciate the K-Y approach, Barack.

Now Hillary's ads begin with a shot of Bobby Kennedy. If you think that doesn't make boomers sit up and howl, you don't know anything. It's followed by pictures of Cesar Chavez, then earnest endorsements of Bobby Jr. and Cesar Jr., before Hillary makes an appearance. Yellow-dog Democrat dancing on the border of outright liberal, that ad. What a fucking relief to see on the airwaves again. I have no idea how it will play, and honestly I don't think anyone else does, either. Until the votes are counted.



I took the Implicit Association Test for Presidential Candidates being touted on Bitch Ph.D., Pandagon, and other places to see if it would reveal my preference to me effortlessly. Except it didn't turn out to be effortless. It actually caused me internal dissonance, a form of pain, to click on the "good" buttons when pictures of Huckabee or McCain came up. I had such a hard time, my test was littered with red X's and, toward the end, exhaustion from confusion. It was ornery enough to make me seriously trust the results -- I was too resistant to "game" the test.

And the results didn't get me any further. Hillary and Barack came in dead even, in my preferences, and way "up there". Whereas sucking the bottom of the pond algae were Huckabee and McCain, again as equals. At least I'm consistent.


The excellent Black Agenda Report currently has an article on Holding Barack Obama Accountable which is an interesting read. Managing editor Bruce Dixon leads with:

'The presidential campaign of Barack Obama has become a media parade on its way to a coronation. Journalists and leading Democrats have done shockingly little to pin Obama down, to hold him specifically responsible for anything beyond his slogans of "yes we can" and "change we can believe in". Prominent Black Democrats, many ministers and the traditional Black leadership class are doing less than anybody to hold Obama accountable, peddling instead a supposed racial obligation among African Americans to support this second coming of Joshua and his campaign as "the movement" itself. What would holding Barack Obama accountable on war and peace, on social security, health care and other issues look like, and is it possible to hold a political "rock star" accountable at all? '

Even better is Dixon's extremely well-researched piece on 2008's Ten Worst Places to be Black in America. Dixon uses prison populations as his criteria, stating "America's prison system, the world's largest houses some 2.2 million people. Almost half its prisoners come from the one eighth of this country which is black. African American communities have been hard hit by the social, political and economic repercussions of the growth of America's prison state. Its presence and its reach into Black life is a useful index of the quality of life in Black America itself."

He goes on to state "Although our Black presidential candidate would have us believe that African Americans are, as he has said many times, '90% of the way' to freedom, justice and true equality, the facts seem to say otherwise. As recently as 1964, a majority of all US prisoners were white men. But since 1988, the year Vice President George H.W. Bush rode to the White House stoking white fears with an ad campaign featuring convicted Black killer and rapist Willie Horton, the black one-eighth of America's population has furnished the majority of new admissions to its prisons and jails. The fact is that while US prison populations have grown seven times since 1970, crime rates have increased only slightly over that time. According to Berkeley scholar Dr. Loic Wacquant the increase in America's prison population over that time has been achieved simply by locking up five times as many people per one thousand reported crimes as we did in 1980."

There is a kick-ass looking map heading this article which I was unable to get enlarged enough to read. (If anybody else can, please send me a copy.) In lieu of sharing that with you, I'll include a couple of the tables Dixon has created, but folks, DO go read this article and its comments, and credit/link to this man's if you pass on his information.

10 WORST STATES TO BE BLACK
Each line shows, in order:
STATE
BLACK PRISONERS AS % OF TOTAL BLACK POPULATION
RATIO OF BLACK TO WHITE IN PRISONS AND JAILS
BLACK % OF STATE POPULATION
Wisconsin 4.5% 10.64 6%
Iowa 4.2% 13.59 2%
Colorado 3.5% 6.65 4%
Arizona 3.3% 5.58 4%
Oklahoma 3.3% 4.39 8%
Texas 3.2% 4.74 12%
Kansas 3.1% 6.99 6%
California 3.0% 4.68 7%
Oregon 2.9% 5.84 2%
Kentucky 2.8% 4.98 8%

Excluded from this list are South Dakota, Vermont, Utah, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, where African Americans make up 1% or less of the population, but which do have extremely high rates of Black incarceration. Also excluded, until the data becomes available, are the nearly 200,000 prisoners under federal lock and key.

Introducing a second table, Dixon states "Most US prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders. Although federal statistics show the rates of illegal drug use for whites, Blacks and Latinos to be within a single percentage point of each other, African Americans are an absolute majority of the people serving time for drug offenses. The start and inescapable fact of double-digit disparity between Black and white incarceration rates is hard to miss, and harder to explain, except in terms of a consistently applied, if rarely acknowledged policy of racially selective policing, sentencing and imprisonment....The states with the fifteen highest disparity rates between black and white incarceration show some interesting characteristics. First, none of them are in the South. Secondly Blacks make up a negligible percentage, 6% or less in ten of these high disparity states. Thirdly, the other five high-disparity states either contain or are adjacent to three of the five largest concentrations of African American population in the US, namely the metro areas of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia."

BLACK AND WHITE DISPARITY IN SENTENCING AND INCARCERATION
Each line shows, in order
STATE
BLACK % OF STATE POPULATION
BLACK IMPRISONMENT AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL BLACK POPULATION
BLACK-WHITE IMPRISONMENT DISPARITY
Mississippi 37% 1.74% 3.46
Louisiana 32% 2.45% 4.69
Georgia 30% 2.06% 3.32
Maryland 29% 1.58% 5.48
South Carolina 29% 1.86% 4.47
Alabama 26% 1.91% 3.54
North Carolina 22% 1.72% 5.40
Delaware 21% 2.51% 6.36
Virginia 20% 2.33% 5.89
Tennessee 17% 2.0% 4.12
Florida 16% 2.61% 4.45
Arkansas 16% 1.84% 3.86
Texas 12% 3.12% 4.74

(Unnamed performers, photo by Charles "Teenie" Harris in Pittsburgh, PA, circa 1940s)

For those of us (besides me) feeling a jolt at The End of Polaroid As We Know It, as reported by Liza at See Saw, here's an article by Brian Haynes for American Scientist on Computational Photography, which states:

"Imaging laboratories are experimenting with cameras that don't merely digitize an image but also perform extensive computations on the image data. Some of the experiments seek to improve or augment current photographic practices, for example by boosting the dynamic range of an image (preserving detail in both the brightest and dimmest areas) or by increasing the depth of field (so that both near and far objects remain in focus). Other innovations would give the photographer control over factors such as motion blur. And the wildest ideas challenge the very notion of the photograph as a realistic representation. Future cameras might allow a photographer to record a scene and then alter the lighting or shift the point of view, or even insert fictitious objects. Or a camera might have a setting that would cause it to render images in the style of watercolors or pen-and-ink drawings."

Zelig meets the Purple Rose of Cairo.

(Image by Maira Kalman)

For those of us who have never believed the road to democracy lies in going shopping, and who say "Can what?" when we hear "Yes we can", consider this lovely essay from JSpot (Jewish perspectives on contemporary issues of social and economic justice), Rabbi Danny Nevins speaks to Parshat Terumah: Sanctity in Sweat:

"Humility is appropriate in situations of physical labor and also in our efforts at social change. Frequently it seems that we work at tasks that can never be completed. We identify ideals such as justice and peace that seem always beyond our grasp. This situation can be demoralizing. What’s the point of trying when the world seems always to veer back in the direction of oppression and war? Parshat Terumah is encouraging—identify worthy tasks and use every resource you can muster to complete them. But do not be discouraged when success eludes you. Build the sanctuary in the wilderness—wherever there is human need, build a home for God. And in that effort God will join you, dwelling in your very midst."

(Ant With Acorn, woodcut by Tugboat Printshop)

Here are updates and new angles on various posts in the past (some of them quite some time ago, but my above-average readers keep sending things my way, bless you):

From this week's New York Times, via Martha, an article entitled Women More Likely to Postpone New Knees could have been lifted from my own experience. It begins:

"Women appear to delay knee replacement surgery longer than men, and often show up far more disabled by the time they undergo the procedure.

"The gender differences among knee replacement candidates is cause for concern because far more women than men suffer from osteoarthritis, which can wear down the cartilage in knees and leave sufferers with bone-on-bone rubbing and agonizing pain. Patients are typically advised to delay knee replacement as long as possible because titanium knee parts eventually wear out too. By delaying the treatment, the patient ideally will die a natural death before replaced knees wear out again.

"But doctors now say they may need to rethink that advice because women appear to take it to the extreme."

Yeah, tell me about it.

In a related note, a recent study reported on in the Journal of Neuroscience states "chronic pain seems to alter the way people process information that is unrelated to pain". An article on the study quotes the researchers as stating "These findings suggest that the brain of a chronic pain patient is not simply a healthy brain processing pain information but rather it is altered by the persistent pain in a manner reminiscent of other neurological conditions associated with cognitive impairments."


For those of you who read Skene or are familiar with past references to the 70's dyke pursuit of parthenogenesis, here's riveting news:

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor for the Telegraph in the U.K., written on January 31, 2008, Sperm cells created from female embryo, it reads:

"Sperm cells have been created from a female human embryo in a remarkable breakthrough that suggests it may be possible for lesbian couples to have their own biological children.

"British scientists who had already coaxed male bone marrow cells to develop into primitive sperm cells have now repeated the feat with female embryonic stem cells.

"The University of Newcastle team that has achieved the feat is now applying for permission to turn the bone marrow of a woman into sperm which, if successful, would make the method more practical than with embryonic cells.

"It raises the possibility of lesbian couples one day having children who share both their genes as sperm created from the bone marrow of one woman could be used to fertilise an egg from her partner.

"Men and women differ because of what are called sex chromosomes. Both have an X chromosome. But only men possess a Y chromosome that carries several genes thought to be essential to make sperm, so there has been scepticism that female stem cells could ever be used to make sperm.

"In April last year, Prof Karim Nayernia, Professor of Stem Cell Biology at Newcastle University, made headlines by taking stem cells from adult men and making them develop into primitive sperm.

"He has now managed to repeat the feat of creating the primitive sperm cells with female embryonic stem cells in unpublished work.

"The next step is to make these primitive sperm undergo meiosis, so they have the right amount of genetic material for fertilisation.

"Prof Nayernia showed the potential of the method in 2006, when he used sperm derived from male embryonic stem cells to fertilise mice to produce seven pups, six of which lived to adulthood, though the survivors did suffer
problems.

"He is now optimistic about the prospect of lab-grown sperm from women.

“I think, in principle, it will be scientifically possible,” Prof Nayernia told New Scientist.

"He said that he has applied for ethical approval from the university to use bone marrow stem cells from women to start experiments to derive female sperm.

“We are now writing the application form,” he said, adding that experiments will begin in Newcastle if and when they get approval.

"However, Dr Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell and sex determination expert at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London, doubts it will work: “The presence of two X chromosomes is incompatible with this.
Moreover they need genes from the Y chromosome to go through meiosis. So they are at least double-damned.”

"In Brazil, a team led by Dr Irina Kerkis of the Butantan Institute in Saõ Paulo claims to have made both sperm and eggs from cultures of male mouse embryonic stem cells in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells.

"The researchers have not yet shown that their male eggs can be fertilised to produce viable offspring, but they are thinking about possibilities for same-sex human reproduction.

"If all these experiments pan out, then the stage would also be set for a gay man to donate skin cells that could be used to make eggs, which could then be fertilised by his partner’s sperm and placed into the uterus of a
surrogate mother.

“I think it is possible,” says Kerkis, “but I don’t know how people will look at this ethically.”

"The UK parliament is now debating changes to the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, and the government is under pressure to include an amendment that would allow the future use of eggs and sperm grown in the lab from stem cells.

"However, a clause added to this amendment would restrict this to sperm from genetic males and eggs from genetic females."

Yet another reason to up funding for science in this country.

And, to illustrate what kind of legislation ignorance about basic biology leads to (especially in Missouri), check out this post at Bitch Ph.D., Next Up, We'll Repeal the Law of Gravity! which explains in clear, useful terminology how fertilization does NOT equal conception, and illustrates how the not-so-secret goal of the Right is to outlaw contraception, not just abortion. If we don't remain their breed cows, they have no hope of keeping human progress from continuing joyfully onward.


Regarding the dead-end nature of essentialism, both culturally and as a political strategy, there's a series of articles in the latest issue (Jan-Feb) of The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide tackling "The science of homo-sex". Not all of the pieces are available online, but one that is features an interview with Joan Roughgarden, Nature Abhors a Category. To quote their introduction:

'JOAN ROUGHGARDEN threw down the gauntlet at the feet of the evolutionary biology establishment a few years ago when she published Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People (UC Press, 2004). The book challenged the widely held Darwinian dogma that some traits—especially those that appear maladaptive for survival, such as the peacock’s feathers—come into existence through competitive “sexual selection” rather than a cooperative form of classical natural selection. Such traits were thought to survive because they’re favored by the opposite sex—with females doing most of the selecting—which interprets them as an indicator of genetic fitness. One of Roughgarden’s main examples is the prevalence of homosexual behavior among animals—she documented some 300 such cases—which cannot be explained with recourse to sexual selection, which envisions a competitive struggle among members of the same sex. Instead, homosexual behavior among both males and females suggests a larger survival strategy based on group cooperation and teamwork, which in turn are promoted by physical intimacy.
Dr. Roughgarden is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford. Her latest book is Evolution and Christian Faith (Island Press, 2006).'

Two other pieces worth mentioning (available in print only) are
"Genes, Hormones, and Sexuality" by Neena B. Schwartz -- Why the rush to explain behavior patterns in biological terms?

and
"Can Biology Vanquish Bigotry?" by Sean McShee -- Now that we’ve hitched our wagon to a genetic model...


In a post this year on Judy Grahn, I showed the photograph above by Cathy Cade of Gail Grassi and Kate Kaufman repairing a car, East Bay, 1970s. I was browsing a website of Maoist Chinese propaganda posters online and discovered, lo, the very poster that is on the wall of this women-run garage -- first printed in 1971. I remember this poster being in lesbian households. Now I know the caption in Chinese reads: "Struggle to quicken the implementation of agricultural mechanization" (Wei jiasu shixian nongye jixiehua er fendou)


Here's something I especially love about my quirky cat Dinah: If I pull my shirt up so my head and face are covered, then growl ferociously, when I look at her again her pupils are dilated, her tail is frizzed and her ears are laid back. As if I had transformed into a monster. I honestly don't think she's taken in by the cheap transformation, I think she's just playing along -- either as a kindness to me or because life with a crippled obsessive writer is so boring, she maximizes any stimulation that comes along.

I have a canister of Whisker Lickin's Chicken and Liver treats on my computer desk. There is no way I can lift it and get the lid off without her hearing, no matter where she is in the apartment or how asleep she might be. She comes at a desperate gallop, and the last foot or so she makes a breathy little chirrup. Kitty crack, I guess.

Here, I'll try again right now, because I can hear her snoring on the top of my red shelves in the open box of envelopes.

Nope. She heard me. She is now doing her James Bond impression: Once is not enough.

And, in her honor, some LOLCats (etc) from little gator:

Read More...

Summary only...

THE ANNOTATED GINNY BATES: CHAPTER ONE

(Value Pack by Robert J. Bolesta)

My novel-in-progress, Ginny Bates, is crammed to the gills with references to lesbian-feminism and other subcultures that will not be noticed or make sense to a reader who "wasn't there, then". We existed in a world within your world, which you knew about only dimly, if at all, but which was extraordinarily rich and interconnected to us (as well as to Myra, Ginny and friends). Below I offer explanations of all such possible asides that occur in Chapter One, listed more or less in the order they appear in the text. I'll offer more of these for other chapters in future posts.



Mom's Apple Pie was the newsletter put out by the Lesbian Mother's National Defense Fund, a Seattle-based organization founded in the early 1970s as a resource for mothers whose children were being legally removed from their care based solely on the fact that they were lesbians. There is now an excellent documentary on this herstory available from Frameline.


Myra's memory about hearing the child of lesbians "Sierra" talking about her notion that lesbianism had to do with what you ate is based on actually hearing a girl raised in the Portland lesbian community make this speech at a women's gathering there in around 1981/82. The child is now playwright Stormy Gale.


Breatharianism is a "concept, in which believers claim food and possibly water are not necessary, and that humans can be sustained solely by prana (the vital life force in Hinduism), or according to some, by the energy in sunlight." During the mid to late 1970s, when lesbian communities nationwide were working on inducing parthogenesis by various means including fruitarian diets, breatharianism was seriously attempted here and there -- I documented it in the Austin dyke community.

(Lesbians Against Police Violence in Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day Parade, San Francisco, 1979)

"Stop the Cops" is a fictional Seattle version of the San Francisco based Lesbians Against Police Violence, of which I was a member and have written about in other posts, Dianne Feinstein, Opportunist and Tania: 33 Years Later.


RC stands for Reevaluation Counseling, a peer counseling mixed with liberation theory movement which began in Seattle but eventually spread world-wide in limited venues. RC attracted large numbers of lesbian practitioners until their anti-gay stance, claiming everybody would be heterosexual if their "distress" was sufficiently "discharged", in the mid 1980s sent gays and lesbians who were solid in their identity/orientation looking elsewhere for community and therapy.

(Alix Dobkin from Paid My Dues, Winter 1978 issue, photo by Toni Armstrong Jr.)

"For they won't defend / a woman who's indifferent to men" is a line from the song View from Gay Head, written and sung by Alix Dobkin on her first album, Lavender Jane Loves Women, in 1973. Lavender Jane Loves Women was the first woman-produced, women's music album in herstory. Here's what Ladyslipper Music has to say about it (and, to my mind, there's honestly no hyperbole here, it really was that Big a Deal):

"Lavender Jane Loves Women, within weeks of its 1973 release, swept women off fences and out of closets. With delight and disbelief, they passed the records from hand to hand, or sent them speeding across oceans and continents. Everywhere women listened, amazed, to songs which actually verbalized the previously unthinkable joy and pride of Lesbian consciousness and identity. Alix's equally wonderful Living With Lesbians soon followed. This appearance of women-centered culture signalled the end of women's historical isolation and silence, and provided structures to voice the exuberant spirit and outlaw perspective of an idea long overdue."

VIEW FROM GAY HEAD (to hear a brief excerpt of this cheerful, rousing world-changer, go to Ladyslipper music here)

I heard Cheryl and Mary say
There are two kinds of people in the world today
One or the other a person must be
The men are them, the women are we
And they agree it's a pleasure to be
A lesbian, lesbian
Let's be in no man's land
Lesbian, lesbian
Any woman can be a lesbian

Carol is tired of being nice
A sweet smile, a pretty face, submissive device
To pacify the people for they won't defend
A woman who's indifferent to men
She's my friend, she's a lesbian

And Liza wishes the library
Had men and women placed separately
Ah, but theirs is the kingdom
She knows who she'll find
In the HIStory of MANkind
But then she's inclined to be ahead of her time
She's a lesbian, lesbian
Let's be in no man's land
Lesbian, lesbian
Any woman can be a lesbian

And women's anger Louise explains
On a million second places in the master's games
It's real as a mountain, it's strong as the sea
Besides, an angry woman is a beauty
She's chosen to be a dyke like me
She's a lesbian, lesbian
Let's be in no man's land
Lesbian, lesbian
Any woman can be a lesbian

So the sexes do battle, they batter about
The men's are the sexes I will do without
I'll return to the bosom where my journey ends
Where there's no penis between us friends
Will I see you again
When you're a lesbian, lesbian
Let's be in no man's land
Lesbian, lesbian
Any woman can be lesbian
Every woman can be a lesbian


At the time this album came out, Alix was lovers with Liza Cowan (the Liza in these lyrics, as well as lyrics elsewhere). Liza appears several times in Ginny Bates, both as an herstorical figure to lesbian-feminism as well as an eventual artist colleague and friend to Ginny and Myra. In my life, Liza has been both. She was kind enough to "parse" View From Gay Head for me as follows (copyright to these memoirs are hers):

'Alix used to talk on stage about the word Lesbian having the power to kill. What if you walked into the Trilateral Commission and just said, "Lesbian" and they all dropped dead.

'VFGH was about Lesbians we knew, and about working through ideas of separatism. The name, View From Gay Head worked on two levels. Gay, because of Gay. Gay Head is a town, or section of Martha's Vineyard where we were staying the summer she wrote it. The actual view from Gay Head is an island called Nomans/No Man's Land. I can't remember if you can actually see No Man's Land from Gay Head, but it is off of the Vineyard, so it's kind of funny and a very deep reference that I'd forgotten until this minute. It may be on the liner notes of the album.

'Cheryl and Mary were the Lesbians who we moved to the farm with. [Note: See Alix Dobkin's second album, Living with Lesbians.] We spent a lot of time talking politics with them and they were both Jewish and Separatists.

'Carol was the woman we started our neighborhood women's group with. We tried to start a women's center but it didn't happen. We did have events, and Carol and I edited and published Cowrie Magazine. The group was called Community Of Women, COW hence Cowrie. (and Cowan, but that's just me)

'Liza is me, duh. At some point soon after Alix and I moved in together I separated all the books in our bookcase into women's and men's sections. I found this to be a great mental and social exercise. From then on for a few years I only bought or read books by women. But you should also know that I've separated books by color, which is how my books are arranged now. It's more visually pleasing, and since I have a very visual memory, it's easier for me to find books.

(Angry Louise by Louise Fishman, 1973)
'Louise is Louise Fishman. Louise was a college - art school - friend of Alix's. She was a dyke in college and a big inspiration for Alix. In 1973 she did a series of "angry" paintings, including "Angry Alix". She went on to become a very well respected and successful abstract expressionist painter. Still going strong. She was lovers with Bertha Harris at the time Alix wrote VFGH.'

Also on this album are two other references in Chapter One. The "Balkan yells" that Alix performs were taught to her by Ethel Raim, and indeed lesbians imitated them across the nation as a powerful expression of voice.
(Ethel Raim of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, New York)

Bearsis -- Allie's cat is named after a word from the song "Little House" which was written by Joseph Berger and Nick Klonaris but was made famous among lesbians when it was sung by Alix Dobkin (and friends, including her daughter Adrian and other children of lesbians) on Lavender Jane Loves Women. You can hear a brief excerpt at Ladyslipper Music here. The lyrics go:

Theirs is a little house, theirs is,
In a pear tree full of pearses.
They’re birds, you see, and they live in a tree,
Where they don’t need ladders or stairses.

They’re happy and free of careses.
They never have to run from bearses.
And pears are free to birds, you see,
‘Round the world or any other whereses.

Theirs is a little house, theirs is,
With little bird beds and chairses.
Did you ever hear of any house near,
As nice a little house as theirs is?

(Audre Lorde)

"Use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house" refers to the line "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change." by African-American lesbian poet, essayist and activist Audre Lorde in her essay "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984, The Crossing Press). This essay and its complicated ideas was profoundly instrumental in shaping feminist and especially lesbian-feminist ideology. It is increasingly misquoted (as Myra does) and incompletely understood now. For that reason, I am copying the essay in below:

THE MASTER'S TOOLS WILL NEVER DISMANTLE THE MASTER'S HOUSE

'I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for the Humanities conference a year ago, with the understanding that I would be commenting upon papers dealing with the role of difference within the lives of American women: difference of race, sexuality, class, and age. The absence of these considerations weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political.

'It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians. And yet, I stand here as Black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of Black feminists and lesbians is represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism, and homophobia are inseparable. To read this program is to assume that lesbian and Black women have nothing to say about existentialism, the erotic, women's culture and silence, developing feminist theory, or heterosexuality and power. And what does it mean in personal and political terms when even the two Black women who did present here were literally found at the last hour? What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable.

'The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of Third World women leaves a serious gap within this conference and within the papers presented here. For example, in a paper on material relationships between women, I was conscious of an either/or model of nurturing which totally dismissed my knowlesge as a Black lesbian. In this paper there was no examination of mutuality between women, no systems of shared support, no interdependence as exists between lesbians and women-identified women. Yet it is only in the patriarchal model of nurturance that women "who attempt to emancipate themselves pay perhaps too high a price for the results," as this paper states.

'For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection which is so feared by a patriarchal world. Only within a partriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women.

'Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between passive be and the active being.

'Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.

'Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.

'As women, we have been taught either to ignore our differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.

'Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference—those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older—know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.

'Poor women and women of Color know there is it difference between the daily manifestations of marital slavery and prostitution because it is our daughters who line 42nd Street. If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?

'In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action. The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.

'Why weren't other women of Color found to participate in this conference? Why were two phone calls to me considered a consultation? Am I the only possible source of names of Black feminists? And although the Black panelist's paper ends on an important and powerful connection of love between women, what about interracial cooperation between feminists who don't love each other?

'In academic feminist circles, the answer to these questions is often, "We did not know who to ask.” But that is the same evasion of responsibility, the same cop-out, that keeps Black women's art out of women's exhibitions, Black women's work out of most feminist publications except for the occasional "Special Third World Issue,” and Black women's texts off your reading lists. But as Adrienne Rich pointed out in a recent talk, white feminists have educated themselves about such an enormous amount over the past ten years, how come you haven't also educated yourselves about Black women and the differences between us—white and Black—when it is key to our survival as a movement?

'Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of women of Color to educate white women—in the face of tremendous resistance—as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is it diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought.

'Simone de Beauvoir once said: "It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting."

'Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.'


Red and Black refers to the Red and Black Books Collective, Seattle's feminist bookstore on 15th Avenue in Capital Hill, which "began on May 1, 1973 as an outgrowth of the Id, an early leftist bookstore in Seattle that was involved in the social upheaval of the 1960’s. The Red and Black name came from the membership of the collective, anarchists and socialists, but early on the anarchists left to form Left Bank Books. Because the collective believed that access to information was critical for empowerment the bookstore focused on politics and providing the community with ideas and information not readily available elsewhere. The store was a vehicle for social change, promotion of progressive perspectives on issues such as feminism, respect for the environment, and alternative lifestyles and families....Faced with mounting debt, the inability to find a buyer, and the emergence of chain bookstores, Red and Black, the oldest feminist independent bookstore in the United States, closed on March 17, 1999."

(Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes -- U.S. Federal Budget, 2009 Fiscal Year -- Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,650 billion; MILITARY: 54% and $1,449 billion; NON-MILITARY: 46% and $1,210 billion; pie chart from War Resisters League)

War Resisters League has a mission statement which reads "Believing war to be a crime against humanity, the War Resisters League, founded in 1923, advocates Gandhian nonviolence as the method for creating a democratic society free of war, racism, sexism, and human exploitation." It has long drawn a high degree of lesbian participation, but especially during the 1970s and during the Reagan years because of its advocacy of war tax resistance, refusing to pay some or all of those federal taxes that contribute to military spending.

(Bernice Johnson Reagon)
Bernice Johnson Reagon is a is a singer, composer, scholar, a specialist in African-American oral history, performance and protest traditions, a major cultural voice for freedom and justice for over four decades, who founded Sweet Honey in the Rock, an internationally acclaimed, Grammy-winning African-American women's a capella ensemble which is a national treasure but was originally embraced whole-heartedly by the women's music community after its inception in 1973. Their album Believe I'll Run On, See What The End's Gonna Be, released in 1993 by Redwood Records (a women's/lesbian music label), contains the song "Fannie Lou Hamer". To hear an excerpt from this (or other Sweet Honey songs), go to Ladyslipper Music here. These are albums worth having.
(Fannie Lou Hamer singing at Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party boardwalk rally. From left — Emory Harris, Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture] in hat, Sam Block, Eleanor Holmes, Ella Baker)

Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist and Civil Rights leader. Her quote that she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired" was eventually used as her epitaph. For her bio, read the Wikipedia entry, her Fem Bio entry, or listen to her oral history at the Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive

(Fannie Lou Hamer)


Copyright on notes 2008 Maggie Jochild.

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GINNY BATES: APOCHANKO

(Waterfall in front of cave, Sipsey Wilderness, Bankhead National Forest, Winston County, Alabama)

Another excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Ginny Bates. If you are already a familiar reader, begin below. The action in the story resumes immediately after my post yesterday. If you need background, check the links in the sidebar on the right, fifth item down, to get caught up.

Beginning of September 2004

The next morning, Allie was was up before Myra, sitting at the table looking through their folder of paper. Myra sat down dopily with her and said "Still trying to make sense of it?"

"Sleeping on it helped" said Allie. "Sure wish I could ask her some questions, though." Myra knew which "her" she meant.

"I guess this isn't quite what you mean when you said you wanted to find out about your people" said Myra. It wasn't really a joke, though Allie smiled tightly in response.

"Makes me glad to be as dark as I am" said Allie.


They were at breakfast at the Bluetick when Myra's cell rang. It was Edwina, asking to be connected to Allie. Allie turned over a sheet of paper and took notes during the call. When she hung up, she glanced at her watch and said "She's up awful early."

"Hard to sleep without you, I bet" said Myra. "What's she dug up?"

"She say there's a few Choctaw words could be a place name. I tried to write 'em as she spelled 'em out, but they's diacritical marks and what-all that, well, I haven't picked up yet from her" said Allie, handing the paper to Myra. "I went phonetic. Anyhow, one or two of them may give us geographic clues."

Myra read:

"Opa = owl; chinto = to be the biggest; chiinika = to be carried. Biggest owl or carried by an owl?
Paspokchakko = blue cornbread dumplings
Paachanahki = backbone, spinal column
Pataaka = to be flat, be laid out, be spread out"

She looked up at Allie and said "I like the blue cornbread dumplings one." As the waitress brought them their plates, she said "Do ya'll have cornbread or corn muffins on the side?"

"Yes ma'am" said the still unfriendly woman.

"Will you bring us a basket of them? And a glass of milk" said Myra. The woman didn't utter a word in reply.

"I'm taking the extra in the car, for good luck" said Myra after the waitress left.

Allie said "To me, the backbone or spread out one seems more likely to be a place name."

"Bless her heart. It's killing her to not be here with you" said Myra.

"I'm gonna come back and bring her with me" said Allie. Myra was experiencing a sensory rush from her red-eye gravy and only nodded in reply.

At the funeral home, they were allowed into the back office to do their own copying from the cemetery books. Myra was insisting that any version of the three surnames they knew about -- Billups, Rasco/e, and Allie's grandmother's maiden name Davis -- be copied, because of the possibility of transcription error. At the last minute, she added Moffatt to the list. Allie's lips tightened into a narrow line but she didn't argue.

They stopped at a convenience store to fill up with gas, buying a cooler, ice, and an assortment of drinks and snacks, as well as yet another map for the region. Myra bought sunglasses and bug spray, too. When they returned to the car, Allie said "I'll drive" and slid behind the wheel. Myra felt a rush of pride.

"Don't take off yet, but turn over the engine, I need the AC. Okay, here's the county land map we got, and here's the plots I know some of your great-grandparents' siblings worked as sharecroppers. Ellick Rascoe, he didn't show up in the deeds enough to make a living as a farmer, what did he do?"

Allie laughed ironically. "He carved headstones. They famous for their limestone here, and he'd learned stonecarving from his daddy. Nana said having a trade made him a more valuable slave, that's why Ellick's parents didn't get split up. They was together before freedom, got legally married soon as they could after. Ellick was the first child born after they was married."

"So did that mean Ellick had a steady income through the Depression?"

"Mostly. Nana said he got paid in scrip for several years, which they could only cash in for groceries. Which meant they got cheated, I'm sure, just like miners at the company store. But Nedrick told me it explained how come they didn't leave Franklin County, having a job and a trade like that. He say before emancipation, Franklin County was almost half black. Less than 5% black now."

"Damn, Allie, that's one hell of an exodus. I mean, I know about the Great Migration, but that's way more than usual."

"Tells you something about what it mean to be black here" said Allie grimly.

"Is that why your Nana hauled you two to Birmingham?"

Allie sighed. "Well, now I got to wonder if they wasn't personal stuff going on, too. But what she always said was the schools was way better there, and Linda's family was already living there. Not that they had a lot to do with us." Allie trailed off into thinking about the reasons for that for a minute. "Anyhow, we moved right before I started school. I remember we had to check with in the child welfare department about it; I had to get interviewed by a busybody white lady. Nana told me she had to swear she wasn't going to let Mama have me back, or see me without supervision."

There was a long silence, with only the fluttering of the map edges in the fan from the AC. Myra, looking straight at Allie, said "I've never asked you...do you remember it? Before you came to live with Nana, I mean."

Allie's face was expressionless. "Some. Mostly it's -- a sense memory, you know? Not words and not, like, a connected story."

"I know what you mean" said Myra. They kept looking at each other: Over 25 years of friendship, and some details had never been shared.

Allie said "I slept with Nana until I was 12. I had nightmares. Wet the bed until I was 10."

"Do you...hell, Allie, you can just tell me to shut up whenever you want, you know that, right? Well, now I'm wondering if your mama -- if she got messed with. If that's why she didn't have any will to protect you. If..."

"You mean that old white man who was her daddy, was he diddlin' her, too? I got the same doubts now. I mean, Nana didn't live with him until Papa died, which was after Mama left home, so that argues against it. But, in this town, how folks are and what they likely knew, Mama feeling like shit and trapped to boot, then getting pregnant at 15 and Alvin running out on her as fast as he found out -- I've always thought I must have looked like part of what was keeping her down, to her. Aside from the drugs and alcohol, which, as you know, don't lead to coherent thought."

"Your Nana never drank?"

"Not a drop. Not even egg nog. And the only time I thought she might actually pick up something and hit me with it was when she found the whiskey in my dresser drawer. I'd been in line to be valedictorian, you know, until my senior year. It would have meant a scholarship, even here, even then: A good black college would have paid my way. But my grades went to shit, and she searched my room after I went to school. When I got home, she told me I either quit or she was throwing me out."

"So you went undercover" said Myra. She knew this part.

"Till I graduated. Anyhow, let's get on the road and see what we can find. What's your point about the map?"

"Well, families tended to settle near each other and to migrate from the same direction. So let's head toward where we know Ellick's aunts and uncles lived; it's down here in the southeast corner of Franklin County, and a few miles away is Winston. Plus, look at the line of hills and the creeks. Geographically it looks better than trying to suss out a complete county right off."

Allie put the Buick in gear. "You tell me when to turn."

Once they got off the main road, it was astonishing to Myra how rural it felt. There really weren't many places left in the country with so few signs of human development. Where there was a house or farm buildings, they were in bad shape. Twice they passed houses where a person was visible, on the porch or in a field. Myra waved, her Texan impulses coming to the fore, but nobody waved back.

They found fields which, if Myra's map-reading was accurate, had once been worked by Allie's collateral ancestors. Allie took a photo of one, full of late-season cotton. Right outside the almost non-existent small town of Dime, they saw a barbecue joint with a walk-up window. Allie pulled into the gravel lot without asking. They got chopped beef sandwiches with a pickle-filled potato salad put directly into the sandwich, between the buns -- "How they do it here" said Allie. It was so good, they got seconds. Myra also bought two of the peach fried pies to eat later, out of sight of Allie.

From here they headed east and south on a dirt road, searching for a cemetery marked on a topo map but not named. They never did find it, but eventually the road turned into a two-lane blacktop and a sign informed them they were in a national forest. The terrain became increasingly hilly and the forest thickened. Myra was flipping between the topo map and the crude map which had Apochanko marked on it, trying to interpret terrain. Finally she asked Allie to pull over and confer with her.

They decided the next main creek they crossed would be the Sipsey Fork, and if that was right, then about five miles beyond would be a long valley rimmed by bluffs which, if the shape matched the old map, might be Apochanko. Myra could hear her pulse in her ears as Allie got back on the road.

The creek was marked, and it was Sipsey. Allie checked the mileage indicator, and Myra used her inhaler. Three and a half miles later, they crested a hill and below them, running from the northwest to the southeast, was a bluff-rimmed valley.

"It's flat down in there" breathed Myra. "Flat enough to grow things, and you wouldn't be observed unless someone rode through these hills."

"Look at the line of rocks on that outcropping to the right" said Allie. "What that look like to you?"

Myra met her eyes. "The vertebra of a spine" she whispered.

But there was no road down into the valley, not in sight and not on the maps.

Finally they found a place to park and left the car to seek a better vantage point. As soon as they stepped out into the still heat, mosquitoes swarmed them. Myra grabbed the bug spray and they fogged themselves. Allie said "I'm nervous about trespassing."

"Then we won't. We'll just get to where we can see clear."

They found a vantage point atop a bluff a few hundred yards from the road. Myra felt apprehensive in a way she couldn't define. She wasn't particularly afraid of snakes, or of most wild animals, so she didn't think it was that. She was glad to get out in the clear again.

Allie said "Damn, I wish I had binoculars."

"Let's sit down and let our eyes adjust" said Myra. "Anything made of logs will have crumpled by now, will be an overgrown mound a little too square in shape."

Slowly, they were able to pick out a number of overhangs that looked like shallow caves. They argued about whether the forest growth on the flats was appreciably younger than that on the slopes, or if the difference was an optical illusion. Myra wanted proof, she wanted this to be the place. Allie was more wary.

"What are you feeling here? In your gut?" asked Myra.

"Honestly? I feel a sense of desolation. But..."

"Here, give me the camera. I'll photograph it from one end to the other, and maybe we can blow them up and look at them with a magnifying glass back at home." Allie sat, her hands on her knees, while Myra used up the roll of film.

"Let's go, Myra" said Allie in a bleak voice.

"Okay. You want to go to the county seat here and see if we can find another Nedrick at their library?"

"No. I want to go home."

Myra was caught off guard. "Really?"

"Yeah. I do want to know more, I'm not calling off the hunt. But I want to see Edwina, I want to remind myself how far I've come. Can you do more research online?"

"Yes. And at big libraries, interlibrary loan and such. If you want me to keep digging, I -- we can find out tons, Allie."

"I do want it. Just -- let's get out of here."

They walked back to the car, Myra wanting to check behind her and refusing to let herself look. Once in the car, with the engine running, Allie wiped her forehead and said "Grab me some juice, will you?"

After a couple of miles, Myra said "The way you wrote about Podinqo, as a small community of several families, that's how your grandmother told it?"

"As I remembered it. Through the filter of a kid's mind."

"Which must be how she heard it. No sense of threat or impending doom?"

"None. So either she edited that out for me, or it was edited out for her" said Allie. "I'm starting to realize how much she edited out. Not just the obvious, you know, growing up with Jim Crow and all."

"Did she keep her promise, about not letting your mother have access to you?"

Allie's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "She was invited for my birthday and for Christmas. If she was sober. But she only came a handful of times. I always had presents that were supposedly from her, wrapped in the same paper Nana used. My father did send Christmas presents, ones that really were from him. When I was 11, it was a watercolor set. That was the best."

"You wanna research his line, too?"

Allie glanced at Myra. "Yeah. His name's Pride. His parents were E.B. and Amanda. I don't know what E.B. stood for." Myra pulled out a pen and added notes to the folder.

"Allie...you went back to Franklin County every year, after ya'll moved?"

"Yeah, two or three times a year. We didn't stay with -- Moffatt. Nana had a cousin and we'd sleep in her living room, Nana on the couch, me on the floor. We visited him, though. Except after I turned 12, I didn't have to go with her if I didn't want to. She let me stay home, and Aunt Linda would check in on me every day. I kept the doors and windows locked, but during the daytime, it was really fun to have the house to myself."

Myra was wondering if there was a reason why Allie's grandmother kept her away from Russellville once she entered puberty. Nothing felt safe here. She realized one thing that had been bothering her: This was the Deep South, yet except for Ruthann and Nedrick -- and the old man at the grocery store -- they'd seen almost no black people. Fewer than in Seattle. She suddenly wished she still carried a gun.

Allie continued, "We didn't have a car, so we always took the bus on a Friday after school. Nana packed pimento cheese sandwiches as a snack, and a bottle of water. I got to sit by the window, and I had to be completely quiet, more than usual. So I drew. I had an extra Big Chief tablet, and before we left I sharpened all my pencils at school -- I had two each of a #1, a #2 and a #3. My version of charcoals. I had an old metal pencil box that had belonged to one of my aunts or uncles, and I could keep the point on my pencils in that. Nana carried our lunch and travel stuff in a pasteboard box, heavy construction with a strap that buckled down, and once we were on the highway, she'd pull it out from other the seat so I could balance it on my lap and use it as a flat surface for my tablet. I drew the whole time, except for the one stop in that town I pointed out, where we could get out and use the restroom if we had to."

"Do you still have those tablets?"

"A couple, yeah. I'll show 'em to you some time."

The fact that Allie had never offered before was not lost on Myra. Their relationship, close as it had been, had taken a new turn. She thought about the vulnerability of an old black woman and a small girl, riding a bus across Bull Connors' Alabama in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and how Allie helped enforce her own silence with a pencil and paper.

They didn't say anything for a while. They passed the barbecue joint, but neither of them were hungry.

Allie cleared her throat and said "I'm a little embarrassed to quote Oprah, but one thing she said that I like is 'Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.' It's a variation on your 'Proceed as the way opens'. And for me it sums up how we, my people, have accomplished anything at all, beginning as we did with jack shit. Not even our own names and memories. When I first heard that quote, I realized it was how Nana had lived."

"A good way to live" said Myra.

"I went to church, I liked the community and the way wimmins ran things, and the singing, but I didn't get the -- it didn't help me emotionally. Didn't take with me. Not like art did, or drinking. I didn't cry until I began drinking. I was a weepy drunk -- "

"I remember" said Myra. She and Allie smiled ruefully.

"And thank god once I gave up the sauce, I kept being able to cry. But that was one more way I didn't fit in my family. None of us cried, except at church. Or funerals. We was sitting on such a backlog, I guess..." Allie trailed off for a while. They turned onto a county road with shoulders and a few other cars in sight.

"I know we're conditioned as women, Myra, to not acknowledge our own power, to not take credit for what we actually do. And there's a similar kind of conditioning for po' folks, to not get fancy pants, as I heard it, to not think you're better than everyone else because we all gotta huddle together. That's there in being raised colored, but it's something else, too, something that black power tapped into, why it swept the country. Something about how if you take actual pride, with it comes the rage and grief that you maybe can't handle. I don't know if this is making sense -- "

"It is" said Myra.

"Anyhow, whatever Podinqo was, I'm living a life they could never have imagined. Never ever. And when I think about how that happened, I don't give myself, or Nana, all the credit for it. I think it luck. A lot of it luck. Your luck included in that."

"I agree, Allie. 'Course, I got some of the same conditioning you did, so I could be deluded, too."

"I don't think it's wrong to notice luck and be glad for it" said Allie. "I think maybe it helps ground you in what Colbert makes fun of as the reality-based community."

They laughed together. Myra asked slowly "Al, do you know that my luck in having you is ever bit as great as your luck in having me?"

Allie grinned sideways and said "Actually, I do. You lucky beyond words to have me keeping you on the road to glory."

Myra threw back her head to laugh, and began singing "I got a home in glory land that outshines the sun..." Allie joined her, and they came into Russellville still singing.

As they passed the car dealership where they'd rented the Buick, Allie said "I just realized, this car, we can't drive it to Birmingham to catch our plane there. No way for them to get it back."

"There's no real car rental place here in town" said Myra. "Shit, what will we do?"

"They's buses" said Allie. "At least, used to be."

They went to the motel and checked into bus lines. The nearest point to catch one was too far away. Stumped, Myra stared out the window for a minute.

"Well, this is where being rich comes in handy" she said suddenly. She opened the phone book again and found the local airfield. After half an hour, she'd secured passage for two on a small plane to Birmingham leaving at 6:00 that evening. They'd be in time to connect with an 8:30 flight to Seattle.

When she got off the phone, Allie said "I don't want to know how much that cost."

Myra grinned at her. "Pack. We have to clean the car before turning it back in. I'm calling Ginny, you want to use the land line to tell Edwina?"

It was Edwina who picked them up at SeaTac. Their flight had been delayed, so it was past midnight. On the drive to Capital Hill, Allie couldn't keep her hands off Edwina behind the wheel, her arm around her shoulder, touching her hair, watching her avidly. Myra remembered years before, coming back home with Chris after her book tour, how wild she'd been to see Ginny and the babies. Maybe she hadn't been gone long enough this time, or maybe she was older and more settled. She was glad to be home, really glad to be out of Russellville, but for her the search was still pending.

The house was dark. She scrambled to punch the alarm buttons before it went off, dropping her keys on the floor. It woke up Ginny, asleep on the couch. They embraced gratefully, Ginny kissing her half-asleep. She was at that stage of night when it was hardest for her to wake up. Myra told her to go on to bed, she'd be in soon.

Myra walked back to her study to put away her folder of papers. She hadn't meant to walk off with them -- Allie would want to show it all to Edwina. She looked in the new refrigerator and saw leftover salad from dinner. She made herself a plate: She was constipated from all her Bluetick meals. She sat down at the table to only the light from the kitchen, and when she bit into one of Ginny's perfect tomatoes, finally she was able to weep.

She got up the next morning to have breakfast with the kids. She gave them each a peach fried pie from the day before she'd never gotten around to eating. As Gillam wolfed his down, Margie asked "How is Allie? What did you find out?"

"She's okay. I -- I think I should leave the story of our journey to her, let her tell you."

"But did you find Podinqo?"

"I think so. Except it's not what we thought it was. Really, that's all I can say."

Margie said, "Just tell me, is what you found out good or bad?"

Myra hesitated, long enough for Margie to say "Bad, then."

Ginny looked at her as inquiringly as Margie was. Margie said "We're supposed to leave for Olympia tomorrow after school, so will you please ask Allie to come over tonight, so we can talk with her before we go?"

"Yeah" said Myra. After the kids left, Myra said "I'm going back to bed, I'm behind on rest."

"I'm going with you" said Ginny. "Daddy, I don't mean to abandon you -- "

"That's all right" he said. "I'll be painting, I'm happy."

Ginny pulled off her clothes and closed the blind, in that order. Myra said "I really do have to sleep. But I'd like to make love, and, equally urgently, I need to talk with you."

"Same here" said Ginny, sliding in next to Myra with a happy sigh.

Myra fell asleep after an extra-long, extra-sweet bout of lovemaking. When she woke up, Ginny was pressed against her back and sleeping as well. Myra rolled over gently and Ginny woke, too.

"I have genuinely shitty nights without you here" said Ginny. "I'm way dependent on you."

"Well, don't tell the 12-step posse, but I like that kind of dependency." They kissed and readjusted themselves in a close wrap.

"David's looking good. What's up with him and Helen?"

"She's not seeing her 'boyfriend' any more, and he's going to Al Anon meetings plus sessions with his therapist at least once a week. She won't agree to quit drinking or see a therapist herself, but she has gone once to talk with their rabbi, so Daddy's put the divorce on hold."

"Damn. Wonder what she told the rabbi?"

"Some self-serving load of crap" said Ginny bitterly. "Still, at least he's getting more of what he needs."

"What else should I caught up on?" asked Myra.

"Nothing big. I want to hear about Allie" said Ginny.

Myra told her everything she could remember, jumping around between episodes, frequently interrupted by Ginny's reactions. Eventually she and Ginny were both sitting up, facing each other, hands interlaced in a web of emotion. Ginny said, "Oh GOD, Myra. This means Allie is, what, one-fourth white?"

"At least. I mean, most African-Americans know there's white in their background. Just usually there's not a name and face attached."

"And here she is raising white kids."

"I know." Myra was relieved to hear Ginny give voice to this. "It keeps crossing my mind that maybe Allie's options are not completely open, either. I mean, her Nana made some choices that -- we can't judge. Allie and I saved each other. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her, and I know the reverse is true. But it's not completely equal, is it? Thank god she insisted we make family, not go to bed together, at least she was smart enough to keep us from that lie. Still..."

"That thing you say about how there's no real consent, you can't say yes if you can't say no without repercussions? Which throws most of heterosexuality into the tank, you know."

"Yeah, that's what I'm driving at, Ginny. We don't actually own black people any more, but we own their labor, still. Capitalism is built on ownership of labor, because you can't underpay people enough to make a profit if you don't own their labor, and when serfs were finally liberated from the gentry and land, it was only because they were bringing in slaves to take their place. To take a collapsed historical view of it."

"But Myra, all throughout, women stayed property, too. Women and children."

"I'm not arguing which is the bedrock oppression upon which all others are built, Gin. I don't care about that any more, because the only way out is for all of us to get free together. ALL of us."

"There goes your separatist membership card, up in smoke" grinned Ginny.

Myra grinned back, even as her brain tried to sort out a maelstrom of ideas and feelings. "I just -- I have this horrible fear that her connection with me is across as great a chasm as I see women having with men, how women lower their emotional standards in order to have intimacy with them because male conditioning is so toxic and most men are hopeless about even seeing it."

"Not all men, Myra. And not all women lower their standards. Some women are fighting the good fight, and have men doing their share."

"So is that what's going on with me and Allie? I don't think it's coincidence that she was finally able to start looking at her past in a new way now that she has Edwina."

"Of course Edwina makes the critical difference. But Allie got to Edwina by making a commitment with you, and eventually with us. It's not an either/or. And -- I know you want me to reassure you, but here's the best I can offer: If there's a rotten piece of how you and Allie are connecting, one of you will figure it out. If it's her first, she'll tell you, and you'll have your heart broken, then you'll get over it and change. That's how you two work. It's why you work."

Myra dropped back onto the bed, throwing her arms out in a mixture of apprehension and release. "Ahhh! Whoever said 'the unexamined life is not worth living' forgot to add that it's back-breaking work, all the same."

"They didn't have to add it. We all know it, which is why most people say 'No thanks, what's on American Idol?'" Ginny lay down beside Myra, pulling Myra's head onto her shoulder. "The place where my mind keeps going is 'How did they bear it?' Allie's people, I mean. How did they face raising children in those circumstances, how did they bear losing children to being sold, knowing they'd never see them again? I don't think I could live through that."

Myra leaned on her elbow to face Ginny, almost aggressively. "But you have to understand it, you have to find a way. Because what I hear, when you say you couldn't bear it, is that they must be some other kind of person because they did bear it. And in our culture, another kind of person translates into not quite human, not human like us. It's the same as all the folks who wonder how come Jews could let the Germans just come for them and haul them off to camps." Myra tempered her words by cupping Ginny's cheek lightly in her palm.

Ginny's eyes were wide. She closed them after a minute, and swallowed. When she opened them again, she said "Margie is asking for full disclosure, you know."

"I know. So is Gillam, in his silent way. We have to decide, are they old enough?"

"With all the upheaval of this year, all they are already dealing with..." said Ginny.

"They're dealing with this, too. Subterranean racism is no less real" said Myra.

"Maybe we can follow Allie's lead? Help them deal with what they hear, take that load off her shoulders?"

"I guess we all learn to bear the unbearable together" said Myra. They kissed again, and Ginny said "When we have to go into a nursing home, they'll have to let us have locked-door time so we can keep processing to the bitter end."

"Nursing home, hell. One of our kids is going to give up their lives to take care of us" grinned Myra. "They owe us, after the adolescence we're only just beginning to suffer through."

"You ready to face the day now?"

Myra got up and began pulling on clothes. In the kitchen, David was standing at the stove stirring a pot.

"I used some of your tomato puree to make bisque" he said, "but something's wrong, it doesn't taste right."

Myra grabbed the spoon and licked it. "It's all right, has to simmer another 15 minutes or so. While we're waiting, shall I make bean and cheese taquitos to go with it?"

"Yum" said Ginny, opening the fridge.

"I started a salad, too" said David.

"You get homemaker points for the day" said Myra, discreetly adding salt, pepper and garlic oil to the soup.

"And I steamed three ears of corn in the microwave, the way you showed me" said David, with growing pride.

"Excellent. We could strip off the kernels and add them to the taquito mix" suggested Myra.

"We'll do that" said Ginny, handing a cutting board and the corn to David. "You call Allie."

Myra walked around the breakfast bar and dialed. When Allie answered, Myra said "You up yet?"

"Hell yes" said Allie. "I been up since Edwina began getting ready for work. Listen, you've got my folder of papers."

"I know, I'm sorry about that. You can come get them and have lunch with us, or I can drop them off after lunch, or -- we're leaving town Friday, Margie and Gillam want you to come for dinner tonight and spill all. What do you think about that?"

Allie considered for a minute. "Yeah, I'm ready. We'll come over when Edwina gets done. But I have a request: After dinner, will you show me, well, both of us, how to start doing family research on your computer?"

"Sure thing. I've got paid access to census and other records, I'll give you my passwords and get you launched."

"That'll be our weekend, then."

"Allie, should I ask Chris and Sima to come tonight, too?"

Allie didn't hesitate. "Absolutely. They helped me and you get to here. I'll call Chris myself."

After she hung up, she mixed a can of vegetarian refried pintos with the peppers Ginny had chopped, while Ginny began grating queso fresco. David said "Ah, about tonight -- would you like me to make myself scarce? I mean, will Allie want me there?"

Myra looked at him, an old white man. Ginny said "Of course she'll want you there." Myra said "I -- I think if she doesn't, she'll say so. Especially right now. But if she doesn't object, I want you to be there. Only...I think it would be better if you didn't ask any questions. Not from her or Edwina. Save them for me later. Can you hang with that?"

Ginny looked upset. David, however, smiled and said "I'm honored to be included at all."

"I believe you, David. Just as I've been honored to be included in the Jewish part of your family's life."

"I think of my time at your table as my dine essen teg. I'm the Yeshiva student, getting fed in several ways at once" said David. Ginny's face relaxed. Myra said "In that case, boychik, what would be your first choice for the main course tonight?"

"Your fried chicken" said David without hesitation. Ginny began laughing wildly.


Copyright 2008 Maggie Jochild.

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GINNY BATES: MEETING MARA

Almost all, if not entirely all, of the cultural and artistic references in my novel Ginny Bates are real. Most are drawn from lesbian-feminism. At some point, I'll write a post filling in those of you not "in the know" on references already published here. Right now, I want to mention one: Mara Smith. Mara is a nationally-famous sculptor in brick, one of only a few folks in the country who can do what she can do. She lives in Seattle, so I inserted her into the book: Her friezes, murals, columns, etc. are dotted throughout urban areas in the Pacific Northwest as well as nationally, and Ginny would certainly notice them, one highly skilled artist picking up on the unique work of another.

Which Ginny first did in the book on 13 April 1996, in the excerpt already posted as More Life With Two Bright Children. She refers to some of Mara's work around Seattle and indicates she's going to try to find out who the artist is.

I'm going to do a post soon on Mara, showing you some of her work over the decades. She is my oldest friend, has known me since I was 19 and we both lived in Denton, Texas. In the meantime, I'll publish (after the fold) the story of when Ginny finally locates Mara and they all meet for the first time.

If you are not yet a reader of Ginny Bates and need background, check the links in the sidebar on the right, fifth item down, to get caught up.


July 1996 -- Margie is seven, Gillam is five

Ginny heard the Tukwila Farmer's Market had a bonanza of hazelnuts, so on Saturday after breakfast, the whole family piled into the Volvo and headed south. As they were about to enter Tukwila, Myra got off the freeway to ask directions to the Farmer's Market. Back on the frontage road, she was repeating the instructions she'd just been given to herself when Ginny suddenly shouted "Stop! Pull over, Myra!"

Fortunately, there was no car immediately behind them. After hitting the brakes hard, Myra pulled onto the grass and said "What's wrong, are you okay?"

Ginny had turned and was looking behind them. A couple of people were between the frontage road and the highway putting up something made of brick, like a low wall. Ginny said "That's the same artist!"

"What artist? Where?" said Myra, trying to see what Ginny saw. But Ginny had unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the car door. Myra said swiftly to Margie, on the driver's side, "Don't you dare open your door, not yet". Ginny shut her door and walked around the back of the car. Myra put on her hazard lights and rolled down her window, yelling "GINNY!"

Ginny finally stopped and looked at Myra. "The artist who does all those brick carvings in Seattle. They're erecting something else by her right over there." Ginny turned her gaze back on the two men with the brick wall and scurried across the frontage road in a gap between cars.

Myra sighed and said to Gillam "You can get out on your side, but stay next to the car over there until I tell you different." She checked her rear-view mirror, found it was safe to open her door because no cars were near on her side, and got out quickly. She opened Margie's door and said "Come on, go stand at the back of the car." She took each of her children by a hand and waited until the road was very clear in both directions, then marched them across quickly.

Once in the middle of the grassy zone, she unclenched her shoulders and they walked more slowly to where Ginny was already in conversation with what turned out to be a woman in worn jeans and a multicolored jacket. The other worker was a man, mixing mortar the color of dried blood and talking to himself as he did so.

The woman turned to stare at them as they approached, a wild crooked grin on her face. Ginny said "Myra, this is Mara Smith. She's the sculptor! Mara, this is my partner Myra and our children, Margie and Gillam."

Mara was several years older than Myra, with hand-rumpled short blonde hair and crinkly blue eyes that were deeply intelligent. Her face was lined with decades of outdoor exposure, and her hands were an artist's dream, powerful, square, and coated with brick dust.

Myra let go of Margie's hand to shake the hand Mara extended to her, but quickly said "Margie, don't touch a thing. I mean it." Gillam didn't pull away from her. His gaze was fixed on the otters and raccoons who seemed about to crawl out of the brick wall.

Ginny said "So who exactly hires you to do these murals?"

Mara, still grinning, said "Do you work for the city or something?"

"No, I'm a painter, I've just been noticing your art for years" said Ginny. Myra could imagine Mara's confusion. She spoke up "This is Ginny Josong-Bates, we live in Seattle."

Mara's face registered recognition at the full name. "Well, hell, I've seen some of your work" she said to Ginny, relaxing a little.

Ginny said "You do this before they're fired, right? Has to be." She was running her fingers along the bottom half of what appeared to be an entry gate. A rondel with three hazelnuts sat to the side of a partially-completed sculpture of a heron, along with raccoons and otters. The upper half still lay on plastic sheeting on the ground, including Tukwila carved in bold letters, all incised deeply into umber bricks.

But Mara's brain was working another line. Her face showed a second jolt of recognition, this one widening her grin, and she said to Myra "Are you the Myra Josong whatever it is who wrote the Skene book?"

Gillam said proudly "She sure is. She's my mama. They are both my mamas."

Mara took him in, her face softening even more. But Myra interrupted everyone by yelling "Marjorie Rose, what did I tell you?"

Margie had five fingers stuck palm-deep into the trough of rusty mortar. "He said I could" she argued.

"Here, I got a rag" said Mara, picking up a cloth from the ground and heading toward Margie. She deftly wiped Margie's hand and said "Wash up good before you eat anything or put your hand in your mouth, okay?"

Myra, joining them, said to Mara "You gotta be from Texas, the way you talk."

Mara grinned crookedly at her again and said "Grew up in Houston, but my people are from Carthage. You?"

"South of Santone" said Myra.

This was not going according to Ginny's expectations. She came up next to Myra and said "Can we invite you for dinner some night, so you and I can talk art? You and anybody you want to bring -- " she looked at the mortar guy.

"This here is Bob, he's my mason" said Mara. Bob nodded at them but didn't offer to shake -- his hands were as red as Margie's fingers. "I could bring Kris, my partner" continued Mara, "She loves your book, too."

Myra reached in her pocket and pulled out her wallet, extracting a card and handing it to Mara. Mara slid it into her back pocket, saying "I don't have one to give ya in return, I didn't expect to be networking out here today".

"Myra, put her phone number in your notebook" commanded Ginny. Mara gave a little snort of laughter, and Myra joined her but did as Ginny directed. Mara shook their hands again, gravely shaking Gillam's hand, too. "We'll call you tomorrow" said Ginny firmly, and Mara said "Well, allrightee, then." Ginny picked up Gillam and Myra took Margie's gory-appearing hand in hers to head back toward their car. "Nice to meetcha!" Myra called back over her shoulder.

"Same here" said Mara, hilarity in her voice.

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