Category: Personal

This is an installment of an extremely irregular series that I write when I begin to remember people from my childhood.  I grew up, for the most part, in Hackett, Arkansas, just about nine miles south of Fort Smith, Arkansas, almost on the border with Oklahoma.  This was quite the “redneck” part of the nation.

Hackett, when I was little, still had a sunset law on the books.  Those of you not from the South may not be familiar with such a law, but they were real (and likely still are on many books, but obviously not enforceable any more).  Essentially, a sunset law dictated that any black person (NOT the term used at the time) could not remain in the town after sunset, to prevent black families from moving into the town.

The penalty was, at least in my town, that being black and there after sunset was not just an offense, but a shooting cause, both by citizens and law enforcement.  I report this not to titillate, but just to illustrate how many southern jurisdictions were run until recently, and some still are.

The question of budget deficits and the health of government programs has been the largest can frequently kicked down the road.  Though it’s become repetitive to warn or caution in this fashion, we need to make the appropriate steps and institute the proper reforms now.  This issue is not going to go away.  It is perhaps the least politically popular and most divisive.  As we have seen with Health Care Reform, it may even inspire a backlash that shows the door to many courageous legislators who dared to paddle upstream against a strong headwind.  There are some issues which can be dodged without much harm being done, but then there are others which must be confronted.  Some politicians could write whole books (and teach others) about their genius system of embracing political expediency, but what we need now is not an escape artist or a magician.  We need leaders.  

This diary is a re-publication of an essay from April, 2008.  It seems worth publishing again in honor of Dr. King.

I’m thinking about times almost forty years ago when I sang, “We Shall Overcome.” I’m remembering how I felt when I sang it, holding hands, swaying, anticipation in the air. I loved the idea of walking hand in hand, black and white together, and at the same time there was always a tension, a tightness in my jaw and in the pit of my stomach, the presence of fear. The song’s purpose was to get ready to do what had to be done. I’m committed to nonviolence, I recall thinking, but there are those who are not. They shot James Meredith, and lynched Emmitt Till, and burned Greyhound buses, and unlike me, they don’t want me to be safe. Uncertainty about what will happen tightens my jaw, while my heart commits me to the cause.

I woke up this morning with a profound sadness.

The worst part of yesterday’s shootings seems to me to be the death of the 9-year old girl.  She was apparently at the Congresswoman’s political event at the Safeway because she had been elected to an elementary school student council.  She might have been inspired to meet an actual Congresswoman.

All of the deaths and the many serious injuries lie like a heavy brick on my heart.

The many analyses of why these shootings happened began too soon for me.  They started immediately after the echo of the last bullet was drowned out by the agony of the victims and the Medevac helicopters.  They  continue today with renewed force.  And increased monotony.  They will ebb and flow for the next few days. It’s not necessary to enumerate these here.  There are many different ideas but the central idea seems to that there is something very wrong, and that’s what caused this to happen.

We have come to expect from these discussions the fixing of blame and righteous recrimination and finger pointing.  And also the scrubbing of web pages and the editing of previous statements and the making of pronouncements.  The reactions are all terribly predictable. I don’t expect anyone who did not actually pull the trigger to take any responsibility for these deaths and injuries.  And I expect that the actual shooter to have a defense as well.  This prepares a fertile ground for continued blame and justification.  And arguments.  And shouting.  And more of the same.  And more violence.

This brings me directly to the Shadow.  My Shadow.  Jung’s definition and explanation might be relevant, but what I am drawn to this morning is far less academic.  I’m drawn to how Loughner lives inside me.  My internal Loughner.  Or put another way, the aspects of my personhood that I dislike, that I am afraid of, that I have shunned and hidden, that I do not reveal, that I keep secret.  I am drawn to the aspects of myself that I consider horrid and ugly and deformed and despicable.  This morning I find that these weigh heavy on my chest. I think this is what today requires my attention.

For example, I ask, where in me does the deranged, incoherent, violent Loughner live?  Where in me is a person who writes such bizarre Youtubes?  Where in me is the person who carries and uses a concealed weapon so devastatingly?  So coldly?  Where is my seething but covert anger at apparent authority?  Where is my belief in illusory, mysterious, demented magical thinking nonsense?  And where does my persistent blaming of others for all of my pain reside?

These are hard questions.  It is very hard to look at this ugliness.  But my view is that this is what needs attention.  Today.  It needs to be looked at.  And it needs to be acknowledged.  And even harder, it needs to be honored for why it is there and what it has done for me.

I would like us to ask ourselves these tough questions and to begin to attend to them. Otherwise, I fear, embarking on an impersonal, academic analysis of yesterday’s tragedy might amount to our again disowning our ugliness, our pushing it into the darkness, and our unintentionally creating the conditions that will surely make it happen again.

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simulposted at The Dream Antilles    

Part of this will be personal, for those who may be interested in that, and part of this will concern some medical news in the transgender arena in general.

First up, my surgery, which was postponed on December 27 due to blizzard, was rescheduled for January 3, and apparently had no complications, since I was allowed to come home yesterday…although I am still on a clear liquid diet and am very hungry.  I have an appointment with the surgeon on Tuesday and will learn more about how things went…as well as possibly upgrading what I can eat.

Possible complications involved not having enough esophagus free to move my stomach back from my thorax into my abdomen, possible infection, and the possibility of developing pneumonia since my stomach has been sharing space with my left lung for over a year.  But I have a breathing “toy” to play with in order to expand my breathing capacity and I seem to be doing okay in that regard.

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  Empathy And Education; BeThink or  BeThink.org

Perchance, on this the twenty-second commemoration of a lesson learned, it is time to reflect on our first, foremost, and greatest Teachers.  More than a generation has passed.  In that time, I have acquired much knowledge. Yet, I am forever reminded that the more I know, the more certain I am.  I know nothing with certainty.  What I once thought was the greatest treasure, a tradition I could never part with, was other than it appeared.  I never imagined what would become my truth.  Today, I share the tale with you.

I often rail against the narcissistic side of our culture. We find it hard in this country to honor and enhance public space. We develop, economically, with little or no regard to our environment and little or no interest in anything resembling aesthetics. At one time, this was charming because Americans were, in much of the twentieth century, admired for pragmatism and simple virtues. In WWII American troops were much admired for the civilized way they acted–from what I heard in personal remembrances of Europeans when I lived there was that Americans were much nicer than, say, the Brits.

My father just died and his generation who fought WWII and then created a Pax Americana meant to create an order where the United States represented rule-of-law and pragmatism in international affairs. And, despite the emergence of a corrupt intel community, for much of the post-WWII period, his generation (he was a Foreign Service Officer) did a decent job at establishing what they set out to do. I’m not discounting the imperialists and martinets that were forcing America to the right and everywhere supported right-wing regimes throughout the world but there were plenty of decent men and women in the State Dept, CIA and the military that truly worked for positive change. The same could be said for Wall Street and other institutions–I have, for example, talked to old retired crusty Wall Street big-wheels who are truly dismayed at what has happened to the Street even by their piratical values this generation is beyond belief. These execs grew up with codes of honor, mind you, these codes did not include egalitarianism at all but there were things that one didn’t do. That’s all over now.

The last conversation with my father (he was involved in all kinds of progressive causes and made his views known more emphatically than I ever have) found him deeply discouraged and wondering what had he worked for all his life to see the United States come to this. And by this I mean this situation. He was always optimistic about this country and loved it passionately–his parents were immigrants and he was given the opportunity to do things they would hardly have imagined when they came to this country. Here we are, he said, and it’s hard to find hope anywhere. I’ve always been far more pessimistic than him and predicted, as he knew, a gradual descent into neo-feudalism which I thought 20 years ago was inevitable given the fact of the seeming death of public virtue and shared values that has occurred, really, since the 70’s.  

Folks, tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the United States.  I shall not go onto the history of it, since everyone has her or his own interpretation, and the pundits have theirs.  The Big Bloviator promised to repeat his distorted idea of it again today on his foul radio program.  I made it a point to miss it.

However, it is important to reflect back on the previous year and consider the things for which one gives thanks, and actually to give those thanks.  I do not care if your thanks goes to a deity, to other people, or to communities like these.  The important is that one thinks about the good things that have happened during the past year and thanks someone other than one’s self for them.

and no, it’s not what you might think. lol.

It’s this… ta dah!

The CD is available to pre-order now … this is my alternative life when I unglue myself from the blawgs… Musician’s Wife.