I am catching up on my Sunday Morning news shows via podcast.  In the July 12th Meet The Press, I had one of those surreal moments that seem as if they can only happen in political discussions.  Former Bush advisor and Republican strategist, Karen Hughes, participated in the roundtable discussion.

When referring to Obama's G8 performance, she said, "They [the G8] kicked the can down the road with respect to global warming..."

Wow.  That takes solid steel cajones coming from a Bush advisor.  Kyoto ring a bell, Karen?

Sheesh.  No wonder folding laundry seems suddenly appealing.

Joan Didion says:

"I am not telling you to make the world better, because I don't believe progess is necessarily part of the package.  I'm just telling you to live in it, to look at it, to witness it.  Try and get it.  Take chances, make your own work, take pride in it.  Seize the moment."

Hence, the Sunday question:

Do you agree with Didion that "progress is not necessarily part of the package" and thus, our goal should be a fully engaged and present existence rather than a struggle to make the world better?

Having studied African American literature, part of which included reading the writings of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and American Research at Harvard, I was shocked to read headlines of his arrest earlier this week.

After reading the circumstances surrounding the arrest, I quickly jumped to the same conclusion Barack Obama professed at the end of his news conference on health care.  The police responded properly to a call from a concerned neighbor about "big, black men breaking into a house."  They questioned the suspect(s).

And then things got stupid.

According to the arresting police officer, Sgt. James Crowly, Gates was uncooperative about providing his identification and accused him of racism.
Words were exchanged.  Gates made reference to Crowly's mother saying, "I'll speak with your mama outside," when Crowly asked him to come onto the porch (where Crowly then arrested Gates for disorderly conduct).

If I know police officer behaviors in this type of situation (and I do), many officers would respond to belligerance with a show of authority and demonstration of force.  Crowly did so by arresting a middle-aged man who had proved that he was in his own house, essentially for pissing him off.

Then Obama jumped into the mix (click the link for the video) when asked a specific question by Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times:  "Recently," she said, "Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested at his home...What does this incident say to you and what does it say about race relations in America?"

Obama gave, as usual, a nuanced answer.  He stated two potential issues with his opinion up front: He is Gates's friend and he didn't know all the facts.  He then went into a summary of what he did know and said, while he didn't know what role race played in the incident, he had three opinions:

1. Any of us would be pretty angry if we treated as Gates was in his own home.
2.  The Cambridge police "acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."
3.  Apart from this incident, there is "a long hisotry of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportianally."  He called such incidents a sign that race remains a factor in this society.

My only quibble with Obama's statement, assigning all of the stupidity to the police, was remedied in his comments in a Nightline interview where he said "everybody should have settled down and cooler heads would have prevailed."

After that LONG intro, let me add my two bits.

First, I believe that the police officer did act in an inappropriate and uninformed manner...especially if his major "damage" was the comment about his mama.  White Americans do not understand such comments within their racial and historical context.  Verbal insults to family and person are a common form of teasing called "the dozens" among African Americans.  In charged situations, one often reaches for sarcastic humor.  And as one commentator put it, "This was the supreme humiliation for Henry Louis Gates, because he has achieved a rarefied status and the considerations that are usually afforded to him went right out the window when the officer arrested him. In a minute, that cop erased all that Gates has had to work through to get where he is."

Conversely, Gates acted in an inappropriate manner by assuming the police officer's motives were racial.  Despite his personal history as a black man in America (which undoubtedly includes instances of overt racism), Gates should have had a "cooler head" and discussed the issue more rationally.  Yes, he was tired.  Yes, he had just gotten back from a long overseas journey.  And still, it would have gone better if he'd bitten his tongue.  Because I believe his comments and challenging of Crowly's authority "erased" all of Crowly's hard work to be a good, middle-class cop.  The status that Crowly is used to as a police officer was challenged by an angry, privileged black man (which tells me class as well as race were likely in the emotional mix.)

Third, the media's narrow reporting of Obama's comment about stupidity, without giving the full context and disclaimers of his remarks, perpetuates the sound bite downfall of true news in our society.  Everyone has a point to make and they want to make it using a few, out of context, words and get on their way.

That's not news.  It's faux news.  And it's not fair to Gates, Crowly or Obama.  Nor is it fair to the people who swallow today's news pill and think they understand what happened.

The solution?  Reading.  Watching full responses to questions. Studying our history and what informs our opinions and reactions.  Looking at both sides and trying to grasp the views from each pair of shoes involved.  Not accepting a sound bite or headline as telling the broader story.

I had a dream a few years back that I was among a community of Muslim women.  I was dressed for winter and had a thick, knitted scarf around my neck.  When the time came for evening prayers, the women in the cliffside city took off their headscarves (beautiful, white, flowing) and waved them in the air as they made praise to Allah through ululating calls.

I was so moved by this in the dream that I took off my knitted scarf and attempted to use it in the same way.  It waved, but not as beautifully as the scarves of the other women.  Still, in some way, I felt a part of their community.

There's more to the dream, but the point of sharing this particular portion of one of my more transformative dreams is to introduce a thought-provoking piece about Muslim women, written by a Muslim woman.  The author, Fatemeh Fakhraie, wrote in the website, Altmuslimah--Exploring Both Sides of the Gender Gap--that forming opinions about the relative liberation of Muslim women based on dress or external examinations of life experience is as oppressive to a Muslim woman as any form of paternalism.

As a moderate feminist, I found her article challenging and humbling.  I must admit that nearly every time I have seen a woman wearing a head scarf, burka or other type of conservative Muslim dress--especially if that woman was walking with a man in western dress--I felt pangs of anger, pity and an urge to challenge the couple's choices.

These reactions began a slow change in recent months when I read an article and viewed a video about a young Muslim woman in London who is trying to capture both the spirit of honoring faith with conservative dress and the spirit of honoring youth with design details that cross cultural lines. After viewing the video, I started to realize that there are many Muslim women who dress as they do not because they are bullied or inculturated to do so (or at least, not merely so) but because they are expressing an outward allegiance to the God they love and serve.

So, to my western eyes, what looks unfair (she has to dress conservatively and in a "foreign" manner while he doesn't) may be something else entirely.  I am overlaying my own struggles in our western patriarchy onto a stranger about whom I know very, very little.

The most powerful part of Fakhraie's argument comes from her plea to allow Muslim women agency in their individual paths to "liberation."  She points out that liberation looks different from woman to woman (and man to man, one supposes).  To define freedom for other people, without recognition of cultural norms and the slow path that change naturally travels, is to deny those individuals their own voice and their own choice.

While I do think that there are suitable times where we need to be a "voice for the voiceless"--times of apartheid or genocide--I agree that for the most part, the most effective changes come from within. 

In the case of women wearing scarves, I will make the choice to remember my dream of the beautiful praises the dream women sang using their headscarves to express joy and set aside my assumptions about paternalism and helplessness.  In this way, I will affirm my community with both the women of my dream and the women of our shared world.

Okay, the Blog Blockers are not really a thwartation (newly coined word indicating something contrary to my will).  But I have been having such a nice visit with friends and family over the past several days that I am afraid my blogging has been blocked by fun.

I'd rather blame the guests than take responsibility...so let's just say that it's Erik's, Ken's, Cindy's, Doug & Katie's, Jeff's, and Michael's fault.  And not just that I haven't been blogging faithfully but also that I've read almost nothing about which I wish to blog of a political or philosophical nature,

I will say that Jeff makes excellent blueberry boy-bait.  And Ken and Mike agreed with my take on Public Enemies (or I agreed with their take, depending on your point of view).

The other thwartations to which I refer are:

1.  I had planned to spend my first skipped non-chemo week in five months in the following manner--golf, rest, food, golf, golf, rest, food, golf. 

Instead, I find that I have a strained or inflamed tendon in my right shoulder.  The cure for which, I am informed, is rest.  <sigh>

2.  I had hoped to have a date scheduled for my late July/early August liver resection by the end of last week.  However, due to illness in the surgeon's staff, I have only a tentative date as of this moment.  Since the tentative date is 7/30...I feel hard pressed to get in relaxation, let alone rest, (or golf) before the surgery.  <double sigh>

On the other hand, I've got great friends and family to take my mind off my worries...so, once again, I reach the conclusion that despite the best efforts of the universe, I am not thwarted in significant ways at all.

But I am still bummed about the golf.

There's a common saying I've been pondering: "God never give you more than you can handle."

It seems to me, that we are often given more than we can handle and that such a "gift" makes us grow.  So I would restate the axiom as:

"God never gives you more than you can handle, but he sometimes gives you more than you can handle in your current state."

Would you agree?  Do you have observations that support or refute either statement?

Those readers who are female will know just what I'm referring to when I say that there is often additional, hand-written or computer generated signage in a womens' restroom.

In my youth, I was quite amused by the one at the church I attended (and where Dan and I later married) that read: "Do not throw tampons in the toilet."  In the grammatically correct sense, the sign instructed people not to throw tampons while in the toilet.  What the individual meant to say was "Do not throw tampons into the toilet."

So today, while out to breakfast at Crystal Cove with Ken, Cindy, Erik and Dan, I heeded the call of nature.  I laughed out loud when I read the sign in the public restrooms there.  "Do not put anything other than toilet paper into the toilet, especially sand."

I pictured myself making an offering of toilet paper to the toilet and silently hoping that the toilet's acceptance of the toilet paper would somehow relieve my need to pee.

Happily, I went with what I believe the writer intended to say...which was, "Please do not put anything in the toilet other than bodily waste and toilet paper."

And, since I hadn't been in the water, I didn't need to worry about the inadvertant sin of some sand falling out of my bathing suit and into the bowl.

What's the funniest sign you've ever seen (in a grammatically incorrect way)?

Hi all!

I'm a great aunt again!  Little (and I do mean little) Brooklyn Grace was born to a weary but happy Mom (Deanna) and a happy Dad (Tim).  She's adorable from the photos I've seen and I can't wait to hold her.

Instead of posting today on my own blog, let me refer you to the guest blog I did on the Beyond Breast Cancer website, run by a delightful woman named Marie.

There's lots of interesting posts on her blog, so take some time to explore, if you've got the time to spare.  (Tim and Deanna are exempt...new parents and all.)

An op-ed in today's LA Times really got me going...so much so that I wrote a letter to the editor.  The op-ed, titled "When I'm really old, put me on that ice floe" by Ira Rosofsky is generally about the rationing of health care that happens "naturally" within our current system to folks who can't afford insurance or are underinsured.

He goes on to talk about Medicare as being the ice floe for elderly folks who account for 1/4 of all medical expenditures.  And then have the temerity to require nearly 30% of all Medicare expenditures for end of life care.  (Thoughtless bastards, these old folks.)

From there, he goes on to refererence an article about the relative cost/benefit equation of cetuximab (a chemo drug) for people with non-small cell lung cancers.  He notes that the average life extension for such patients is 1.2 months at a cost of $80,000.

"That means it would cost $800,000 to prolong the life of a patient for one year," he says.

Unfortunately, Rosofsky doesn't realize (or found it inconvenient) to address the definition of "average."  Some patients no doubt have much more benefit from the drug...others have none.  So his $800,000 for an extra year doesn't work.

More irritatingly, he trots out the cultural paradigm of what such life extension is like by saying, "...not to mention the pain and suffering and the reduced quality of life from a treatmehnt that marginally prolongs life."

As someone who has expensive chemo drugs every other week, I would like to point out to Mr. Rosofsky (and to all and sundry) that our cultural trope about cancer treatments being "hell" are not so for many, if not the majority, of people living with cancer.

I like my life on chemo quite well, thank you.  Don't be shoving me onto your ice floe.