On life — at Café des Artistes
– How’re you doing?
– Well, my mom died, but other than that, everything’s okay.
On outrage — via texting
– I’m incensed and I don’t even know how to spell it!
– Well, you smell aromatic and you can spell.
On gays in Fallbrook — outside Caffé Primo
An Exaltation of Larks, by James Lipton, has long been a Gressitt family favorite. The collection of traditional terms of venery, or collective nouns — a pride of lions, a damning of jurors — has led to countless hours well spent on inventing our own. It doesn’t pay the mortgage, but it does delight the soul.
In December 1992, my father inscribed a copy of Lipton’s latest, An Exaltation of Larks, the Ultimate Edition: “To Kit-Bacon, artist with words. May there be some inspiration in these pages. Love, Father.”
If you are so inspired and want to join the Gressitt game, send me your very own terms of venery. We’ll start posting a collection — and perhaps we’ll inspire Mr. Lipton to update his fabulous book.
To start, here are a few of my own:
A starburst of generals
An orgy of envy
A mass of bishops
An ecstasy of miracles
A scandal of penises
A ____ of ____ Fill in the blanks and post your term(s) in comments, below, or send it in an email to kb@kbgressitt.com.
I was preparing for my little ritual last week, the one I practice every August 26, Women’s Equality Day, to celebrate our right to vote. … Well, not really to celebrate, but to at least recognize the Constitution’s 19th Amendment, declaring women’s suffrage. Hmmm, nope, not even to recognize it, no, more like to contemplate the 1920 passage of the amendment, because— . Well, I suppose, actually, to rant about it would be more accurate. In fact, to complain bitterly is what I mean. Yep, bitterly — because it took so damn long, and in the end, we had won the vote but we still didn’t have equal rights, and we still don’t have equal rights today.
Instead, we now have the likes of Sarah Palin, with the wit of a nit, pretending to be feminists yet advocating for our male-dominated Congress to make personal decisions for us; and young women, the likes of my own kiddo, bobbing to iPods in the wake of the women’s civil rights movement as those rights are rippling away; and senatorial wannabes, the likes of Carly Fiorina, sniping at her opponent’s hair among other targets — her hair, not economic recovery or Pacific Rim business alliances or the state of California’s schools, but sniping at Senator Barbara Boxer’s hair, her hair! Ye gods!
I had to stop and take a deep breath.
Yeah, so, I was gearing up for my little ritual last week, my deep, dark mourning for our failure to perpetuate the women’s civil rights movement and achieve true equality — you know, the enjoyment of equal rights and access to all the goodies Sarah Palin’s great nation of ours has to offer those willing to work harder then men for it — when I stumbled upon a story that exemplified our failure in the most putrid of terms, a story about an ad in Woman’s Day magazine.
Now, it is important to consider the context. Woman’s Day, launched in 1931, has evolved from a grocery store publication for housewives to a magazine for women who might work outside of the house but still spend a lot of time in it — parenting, cleaning, cooking, boinking and trying to lose their saddlebags. The magazine’s folks write that each issue “captivates 21 million readers by inspiring them to Live Well Every Day. Woman’s Day is designed for how we live now — with a strong voice that serves up simple, but sound ideas about health, food, family, relationships, home and style. A streamlined look and integrated media capabilities reflect both the sensibility of our readers and our editorial commitment to fresh thinking. Woman’s Day is truly an indispensable guide to living the best day possible.”
And on the day honoring the enfranchisement of women, what showed up in the new Woman’s Day? An advertisement explaining “Confidence at Work: How to Ask for a Raise.”
Sounds good, right? Eight “simple steps” to “asking a boss for the money we deserve.” It seems a nice complement to Women’s Equality Day.
Except it’s not. And it’s not a compliment to women at all. Take a look at the ad:
In essence, this Summer’s Eve ad is telling Woman’s Day readers that if they want to get a raise, they need to deodorize their vaginas.
That’s the best Fleet Laboratories’ Summer’s Eve and Woman’s Day have to offer us? That’s their idea of “fresh thinking,” of “indispensable guidance,” because “staying fresh isn’t always simple”; because, oh no, you have to skulk over to the feminine hygiene products aisle and hide your Summer’s Eve Feminine Wash and Cleansing Cloths between the bananas and the rutabagas so you can kill all the naturally occurring bacteria in your crotch before you ask for the raise that still won’t bring you up to pay equity with the man who has the same job you have, but who has always been paid more, and who has never been told to scrub his scrotum before he asks for a raise?
Do you see? Do you see why I mourn when we should be celebrating?
What were they thinking?
Maybe it’s just a big rightwing ploy to screw with us. It’s plausible. Fleet Labs is based in Lynchburg, Virginia, home to Jerry Falwell’s bastion of misogynistic academagoguery, Liberty University, where you receive six reprimands and a $25 fine for attending a dance or wearing a two-piece bathing suit; twelve reprimands and a $50 fine for watching an R-rated film; thirty reprimands, a $500 fine, thirty hours of disciplinary community service and possible administrative withdrawal for having an abortion — which, by the way, would not be necessary if the students dumped the purity pledges they don’t honor and tried birth control instead, a method more effective than withdrawal.
Anyway, when I trotted to Major Market to buy Woman’s Day and opened it to the offending page, lo and behold, there was actually a two-page spread: confidence via crotch cleansing on the left and “nurturing” your courage “with a little extra care down there” on the right (emphasis, mine):
So, come on, get it? If you didn’t get it before, do you get it now? Do you see? Do you understand why suffrage is just not enough? Fleet Laboratories paid somewhere in the range of $519,920 for two full-page, four-color ads telling women they stink.
Happy Women’s Equality Day? Pshaw!
I’ll stop demanding equal rights the day Fleet Laboratories stops telling women their crotches smell bad, the day breasts are no longer a marketing strategy, the day we are paid the same as male executives and they stop sharing twat jokes on their Blackberries at board meetings. And, oh, the day Fleet dumps their idiotic ad campaigns and puts the money into a scholarship fund for young women who embrace every bit of themselves, including their vaginas. Yep, that’ll be the day.
Love,
K-B
©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt
Crossposted at The Progressive Post.
– We had a shop teacher named Mr. Smallwood
– And nobody likes small wood.
I don’t eat food. It gets in the way of my alcoholism.
– Want some salami?
– Not yet. I’m not ready for mushed-together meat.
On writing
You should start a new genre and call it “neurotica.” You can just write about our family.
Newt Gingrich, on a campaign in search of a presidency, put his foot in his mouth recently, comparing the proposed Muslim community center in New York to Nazis putting a sign next to the Holocaust Museum; meanwhile, he was being stomped by his second wife in an Esquire magazine article in which she described asking Newt how he could give a speech on family values while having an affair. She recalled his response was, “It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”
It all reminded me of my disappointing date with Newt. Oh, not a romantic date. No, to paraphrase him, I wasn’t young enough or pretty enough to be any of his wives, much less a president’s. Rather, it was a date to meet him, ask him a clever question and capture a stellar sound bite or two. And this is how it came about.
In August 1995, Maury Stans called me. You might not know the name — and that proved to be his biggest disappointment. You see, Maury had grown old. Old and sorrowful and frustrated and blind, which made writing another quest for vindication of his purported involvement in the Watergate scandal so damnably difficult. So difficult, in fact, that in his desperation to demand his innocence of any shenanigans as President Richard Nixon’s treasurer of the Committee to Re-elect the President, he had resorted to hiring an unknown writer, an unknown leftwing feminist writer who would be me, to help him write his memoir. It was, actually, his second book, the one he hoped would definitively grant him the exoneration for which he had lusted lo the many years since the Watergate Hotel break-in splattered careers across the spit-shined political patina of the nation’s capitol. If only he could entice folks to read it. If only they would remember who he was. If only.
With hope in his voice, Maury called me because Newt was coming to town. Maury wanted to provide his seasoned counsel to the younger man, and he thought it would do me good to meet the darling of the Republican Party. With a flick of his wrist, Newt had launched the Contract with America, toppled the Democrat’s House majority, catapulted himself into the Speaker of the House throne, and was then on tour to parlay his new book, Restoring the Dream, into future votes.
Although his dance card was more than full, the Nixon Library was his next do-si-do and, while there, he would be privately receiving a select few, those who could be described as conservative white boys with big bucks. Maury was on the list because of his service to the party and the nation. He was deputy postmaster general and Bureau of the Budget director for President Dwight D. Eisenhower and secretary of commerce for both Eisenhower and Nixon. He was also on the list because, despite Nixon’s abandoning Maury to the Watergate wolves, he could raise money like nobody else. In fact, he had raised the bulk of the money to build the Nixon edifice.
Maury’s offer of an opportunity to chew the fat with Newt, to get a feel for the human behind the elephant tie, was enticing, so I pounced on it, donned a suit, and tried to achieve a Republican coif — admittedly a lost cause. Then I schlepped through the heat and smog to Yorba Linda, California, in my not so conservative pickup with the prochoice bumper sticker, and parked among the Cadillacs that had been made mostly on foreign soil.
I approached the library half expecting screeching alarms to go off, jackbooted guards to pin me against the wall and search me for liberal contraband. But no: I wended my way innocuously through the hordes of Gingrich groupies, waiting for him to lay hands on their copies of his book, skated through security, and joined Maury in an intimate little sitting room where a selection of the finest local Republican donors awaited the Newt’s arrival.
Maury wrung his hands with the anxiety of a man once scorned then ignored by the masses. A media honcho positioned his wife for the pending encounter, pulling her skirt hem down to her kneecaps. Carl Karcher, the burger mogul who paid a $664,000 SEC fine to settle insider trading charges, handed out religious tracts with the fervor of a neophyte. I struggled to pick the winning question to pose to the guest of honor. And so we all waited among whispers for the man who wanted to remake the government in his own image.
Then the Secret Service fellows showed up, with their funny posture that made me squirm for them and those little earpieces that begged to be blown in. But still no Newt, and I could no longer wait: I raised one finger and was granted a potty break.
• • •
On the way out of the women’s room, as I adjusted the suit and turned a corner, I looked up into the pretty orbs of none other than the Newt himself.
He smiled faintly and said, “Hi,” wiping perspiration from his brow.
Newt looked hot and rushed and tired — and oddly vulnerable. In the flush of a Southern California August, his articulate arrogance had melted away leaving dark streaks mumbling down the front of his pale blue shirt. He looked as though, having returned from the political wars, he would prefer nothing more than to climb into his latest wife’s lap and suckle his way to the presidency. If only he could.
I dumped the many erudite queries I had contemplated putting to him, the questions of great import that would have made him take pause and proffer a choice, albeit pompous, profundity. Instead, I said, “Hot day out there, eh?”
“Sure is,” he replied and scurried into the men’s room to do his thing.
Those are the only words we ever exchanged. His reception with the VIPs proved nothing more than a swift photo opportunity for the major donors who had already cleared space on their study walls. Maury’s moment in the Newt’s sun was only that, devoid of sage counsel and dismissed with a slap of brevity.
And it occurred to me then — as it occurs to me now — that one day Newt Gingrich will blindly shuffle behind his much younger wife into an intimate little sitting room, where he will eagerly await an audience with the latest Republican star, who will take three seconds to pose with the man who would be king but never made it.
Love,
K-B
©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt
On writing endings: Sometimes life is like the movies. The End! – Elise
Daughter: I found Jesus, Mom. I found him. He was lost, or perhaps misplaced, but I found him!
Mother: Where?
Daughter: I found him underneath the passenger seat of my car. Can you believe he was there this whole time!!!
Mother: Heaven’s under the seat of your car?! Who knew?
Daughter: Right!?
Mother: I need a pic of Jesus under your car seat asap for a blog announcement
– Many thanks to Kate Gressitt-Diaz for this bit of flash fiction
Daughter: It’s not fiction! He’s really there — under the passenger seat!
It all started with our wedding: the be-medaled uniforms on one side, the prochoice buttons on the other. … Nope, nope, it started with the intervention, the dinner at which my friends planned to confront the self-delusional rationalization that I, the leftwing columnist, had surely contrived for accepting the proposal of a Marine. A Marine colonel, no less. Problem was, it turned out they liked him.
And he met my political litmus tests: He’s prochoice, figures sexual orientation is irrelevant in battle, and actually gives thought to California’s unbridled ballot measures. Our marriage proceeded, and we’ve been playing house ever since, despite occasionally cancelling out each other’s votes.
Then, in 2008, Prop. 8 passed 52 to 48 percent, resulting in a state constitutional amendment that restricted marriage to opposite-sex couples, effectively prohibiting any new same-sex marriages in California and denying recognition of those from other states and nations.
My response was to staple a sign to our front gate above the Marine Corps welcome mat — “I DO Support the Freedom to Marry” — with heavy-duty staples, every other inch. Having lost a car window to someone peeved with the bumper sticker in it, I was determined that my next opponent would have to work a lot harder to remove my message.
My husband came home, and the conversation went something like this:
“See the sign?”
“Yep.”
“I’m keeping it up until same-sex marriage is secured for California.
“Yep.”
“Maybe all fifty states.”
“Yep. Want to go for sushi?”
As our collective social circle now says, he’s not bad for a Marine and I’m not bad for a liberal. We’re both pretty tolerant. Oh, he might wince when he brings Marines home to dinner, but he’d never ask me to take the sign down, and I always discretely seat our conservative guests with their backs to the liberal artwork on the dining room wall. Wouldn’t want to give them agita.
Then, a couple weeks ago, when Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Prop. 8 as unconstitutional, I contemplated what my next gate message might be. And when he announced last week that his temporary stay on the decision would be lifted August 18 (barring any interim action by the Appeals Court), I was vacillating between saving the 14th Amendment right to citizenship for children of immigrants and protecting Afghan women from Taliban brutality.
But an email from Brian Brown of National Organization for Marriage hit my inbox and squelched my hopeful ruminations.
He claimed “the American people are furious” — furious! — with Walker, that his decisions have “ignited a firestorm.”
I did a quick check outside, because I live in Southern California and fires are not to be taken lightly here. Turns out Brown was misstating the situation. There wasn’t even a whiff of smoke in the air. However, he also reiterated NOM’s message that the purpose of marriage is procreation.
Now, this made me wonder, because my husband and I had both been to the Yankee Clipper prior to our marriage, which means we don’t meet NOM’s procreation criteria.
I mentioned this to my husband, and the conversation went something like this:
“Honey, according to NOM, you and I should not have been allowed to marry in California because we can’t procreate.”
“According to who?”
“National Organization for Marriage, NOM. They say the primary purpose of marriage is procreation.”
“They some kind of commies or something?”
“I love you, Honey.”
“Yep.”
In the end, I figure it’s like this: A Republican Marine and a Democratic feminist can agree that marriage is a civil right, to be enjoyed by everyone, and we’re just not that unusual. Remove the angry rhetoric from the debate, the fearful propaganda, and most folks will eventually join us.
Yep.
Love,
K-B
©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt
Crossposted at the Progressive Post and Soulforce.
Have you ever wondered just what happened to Great Aunt Sadie’s spleen after she donated her body to science, or how a long-gone loved one’s ectoplasm diffuses through a spiritualist, or who first championed the clitoris? Then Mary Roach is the popular science author for you, and many others.
Roach’s first book, “Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,” became a New York Times bestseller. Her second, “Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife,” also became a bestseller. As did her third book, “Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.” And now, “Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void,” the most recent of Roach’s study of science through humor, is well on its way.
Her success might be because reading about science is a madly popular pastime in the United States. Or it could be because Roach is a really funny gal. Laugh out loud, “Honey, you’ve got to hear this” hilarious. Indeed, her sense of humor is what makes Roach such a gift to the science-disinclined, -impaired or otherwise -disinterested — her sense of humor, along with an apparent inclination to obsess on the research inherent in her pursuits. Roach digs in and wallows through scientific esoterica to bring us the cold, hard facts of her subjects in the most entertaining ways.
For example, contrary to popular belief, barfing in one’s helmet during a spacewalk is not likely to asphyxiate you, due to the “air channels directing flow down over the face at 6 cubic feet per minute, so the vomit would be blown down away from the face and into the body of the suit. Disgusting, yes. Fatal, no.” Spacewalkers just have to contend with the “vision-obstructing visor splatter.”
An important bit of space travel trivia!
The enthusiasm that Roach brings to her subjects makes you wonder what actually draws her to them: the many uses of dead human bodies, the sometimes daffy sometimes dastardly research of human sexuality, the availability of Internet access in the afterlife. Just what drew her to space exploration? Was it the beauty of natural space, the “sun-illuminated flurry of flash-frozen waste-water droplets”?
As Roach writes, it “was not the heroics and adventure stories, but the very human and sometimes absurd struggles behind them. … Space doesn’t just encompass the sublime and the ridiculous. It erases the line between.” As her eagerness to test a zero-gravity toilet attests — if only her colon would have performed on NASA’s minute-by-minute schedule.
In “Packing for Mars,” Roach showers us with riches of spacey information. She busts the moon-landing hoax myth, explains how origami helps weed out unacceptable Japanese astronaut wannabes, and answers the ever-nagging question of meteoroid, meteorite or meteor:
“A meteoroid is a bit of debris, usually planetary, hurdling through the solar system. If it’s bigger than a boulder, then it’s an asteroid. If any part of a meteoroid makes it to Earth intact … then it’s a meteorite. A meteoroid’s visible path through the atmosphere is a meteor. An astronaut struck by a meteoroid is a goner. A meteoroid the size of a tomato seed can pierce a spacesuit.”
Obviously, Roach’s work does not have the sense of profound wonderment of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” or the brilliance of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time.” What her work does have is an exceptionally accessible voice that invites you to partake of science you would not likely have the time, the wherewithal or the persistence — or the stomach — to dig up on your own. (Check out the “popcorning feces” discussion in Chapter 14, although you’ll find scatological minutia popping up throughout the book!)
What Mary Roach does is perceptively and cleverly deliver the science of experts to the common folk — the taxpayers who are, in most cases, funding it. And this makes her work well worth reading. “Packing for Mars,” like her first three books, is a wonderfully entertaining, wildly vicarious exploration of places and things you otherwise would never get to see.
Crossposted at the North County Times.
On Wednesday 04 August 2010, California Federal Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. He determined that the ballot measure, which defines marriage as only between a man and a woman, violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Leaders of the anti-same-sex marriage lobby were crushed, but as time passed, they reformed their mission, proving themselves resolute and resilient — and one was recently found doggedly pursuing his cause along the streets of Fallbrook. …
One hot Wednesday afternoon, in a burst of unprecedented rejection, Brian H. Brown, president of National Organization of Marriage (NOM), struck down the request of a senior citizen who was seeking assistance to cross Elder Street in Fallbrook, California.
“I only needed an arm to lean on, to step down from the curb,” said Rose Kaminski to the chubby Eagle Scout who came to her rescue. The petite octogenarian wore a mint-green polyester pantsuit and sneaks, the balls of her Peds, a perfectly matching hue. She knew she looked just lovely. “It’s a special day for me, so I’m trying to look my best. But my, oh my, that young man nearly jumped out of his skin when I asked for his help. The little nebbish, I guess he’s not used to folks being friendly. Between us, Bubbula — shush, now, you didn’t hear this from me — he favors the Pillsbury Dough Boy, don’t you know.” She chuckled as she tucked a Macy’s shopping bag under one green arm and with the other hand clasped the Eagle Scout’s elbow. The poor boychick, she noticed, was devastated by pronounced acne. A little chicken soup, maybe? she wondered, as together they toddled across the street.
Meanwhile, pedestrians waylaid by the scene bore witness to a growing crowd that Brian’s unthinkable behavior did in fact happen, as wrong and outrageous as it was: an openly Christian man, throwing a little old lady’s harmless request into a dustbin like so much dirty paper, declaring his imperial will should trump her plea. Although, as the people chatted among themselves, no one was quite sure what that will was.
“Why would he do it?” they murmured to one another. “How could he?” And then, “Brian, Brian!” they called to him. “You must explain yourself, Brian!”
Brian considered turning tail and running like hell to his Summer for Marriage 2010: One Man, One Woman month-long, nationwide tour bus, but he took so long to consider his exit that he was surrounded before his legs got pumping. And by then, the group was rapidly expanding, thanks to the residents of Shady Oaks Rest Home who had hit the street for their daily power walk.
Brian eyed the fomenting mass, whispered a prayer, rolled up his sleeves and said, “I’ll take your questions now.”
“How could you refuse such a benign request, Brian?” asked Cecil Adams, who could have passed for the late, great Dennis Hopper, but was, actually, an adjunct professor of philosophy at Palomar Community College. Although at the moment, he was moonlighting as a skateboarding pizza delivery person, a pragmatic move he would soon abandon with relief, given the increased autumn enrolment at the school. “All that sweet old gal wanted was a hand down the curb, Brian. Where’s your soul? Don’t you aspire to a higher plain? What gives, man?”
Brian put his right hand to his heart, NOM’s polling having indicated that 67 percent of respondents interpreted the gesture as strongly positive.
“Now, let me just preface this with my absolute assurance that I bear no ill will toward senior citizens,” Brian intoned. “I harbor no prejudice in my heart. I have senior citizens who are friends and family! Nonetheless, that woman is headed to meet her partner at Town Hall and apply for a marriage license, and that jeopardizes the definition of marriage across this great nation of ours. Senior-citizen marriage is threatening to strip millions of Americans of our core definition of marriage — of our right to traditional marriage!”
“Oh, yeah?” the philosophic pizza person asked as he passed out slices to the agitated crowd. “How so?”
“Senior-citizen marriage will undermine the institution of marriage as we’ve known it for millennia. That’s why we’re on this bus tour — to make it clear that the people of this country will not be silenced and that activist judges who try to defend senior-citizen marriage do not have the right to impose their views on the people of this country. We need to make it clear to the Supreme Court and we need to make it clear to the out-of-control Congress. Senior-citizen marriage conflicts with marriage’s central purpose — of procreation!”
“Well, yep, she looked a bit old to have a bun in the oven.” Cecil twirled an empty pizza box on one finger and the audience politely applauded. “But you haven’t answered my question: How is senior-citizen marriage threatening to strip millions of Americans of our right to traditional marriage? That smacks of a non sequitur, man.”
“They are threatening the definition of marriage as we know it. The sheer audacity of senior citizens, wanting to redefine marriage for everyone else, as though it’s their civil right to do so. The sheer ego mania of it is startling to the core, the ah, the very definition of marriage that is the basis of our nation, the procreational purpose that marriage is intended for, one husband, one wife, ah — procreating. You know what I mean.”
“Brian, are you speaking in tongues, man? You’re not making one iota of sense!” Cecil sucked some pizza sauce from the COEXIST tie his former wife had given him for Co-parents Day.
“I know, but our polling indicates that 79 percent of respondents have a very strong positive reaction to statements about protecting their right to traditional marriage, so I’m supposed to say it whenever I get a chance — because you, too, have the right to traditional marriage and your right deserves to be protected from special interests who are trying to redefine it.”
“You take direction well, Brian. Gotta give you credit where credit is due, man. But I’m divorced, and you know senior-citizen marriages don’t hurt anyone else’s. How can you justify all this effort to oppose a problem that doesn’t exist? How can you try to stop seniors from being married? Come on now, guy! They might be a little shriveled, and there is that oldster smell, but they’re still human beings. Don’t they deserve the same rights as the rest of us?”
“Yeah, that!” the crowd chimed in.
Brian eyed the riled folks and his sweat glands gushed. “We’re not trying to ban senior-citizen marriage, but we are against redefining marriage. And those people have civil unions at their disposal. Traditional marriage is the exclusive right of a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation. It’s what’s best for children, for families, for the nation!” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and stopped the salty flow at his chin. “It is an abomination to redefine marriage as anything else. It’s just wrong. Very wrong. And we will fight back! And we will win! Because senior citizens don’t have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us. And, and they are too old for, you know, procreation!”
The assembly, comprising a goodly number of senior citizens, drew a collective gasp and stepped back from Brian — that he was imagining them in flagrante was grossing them out. “Damn voyeur,” they whispered, while exchanging winks.
“Brian, Brian, Brian!” Cecil said. “Get your mind out of the gutter, man! Don’t you pay attention to the stats? We are an aging population. The Baby Boomers, man, they’ve crested and they’re cruising into their golden years. Don’t mess with the dominant demographic’s sexuality, man!”
Brian shuddered. “Eeuwwww! It’s unthinkable — senior citizens — the death knell of traditional marriage — how can they — marriage is for procreation — procreation! — unthinkable — but when I do think — Sweet, Baby Jesus! — Grams and Granny going at — you know — gyuhhcchhh! — God almighty, it’s — disgusting!!”
A low rumble burbled from the depths of the throng, and Cecil, an intuitive man, leapt back from its center just as the people swarmed Brian, who disappeared amid blazing knock-off purses, rolled newspapers and Shady Oaks water bottles.
Cecil thought about stepping into the fray to intervene, but decided to let natural law run its course. Besides, he had to get back to Pizza Hut and explain the disappearance of four extra larges.
As he skated out of sight, the mob quickly thinned, and Rose returned with a hefty man on her arm. “Did we miss something?” she asked the stragglers.
“Not much,” said Rod “The Rod” Robertson, a retired professional wrestler and occasional birthday party clown. “Just took care of some pipsqueak senior citizenphobe.”
“Oh, that nebbish who wouldn’t help me across the street? I told you about him, Bruno. His poor mother, what a disappointment he must’ve been, what a heartache.” She patted her fiancé’s arm. “Not like my Bruno.”
“Yes, Sweetie.” Bruno gave her a reciprocal pat.
“You look just lovely today, Rose,” The Rod said, silently mourning Bruno’s success.
“Thank you, Rod. Aren’t you a mensch. See you at lunch!” Rose waved as they strolled up the walk to Shady Oaks. “Well, it takes all kinds, don’t you know, but between us, Bubbula — shush, now, you didn’t hear this from me — that young man favored the Pillsbury Dough Boy.”
“Yes, Sweetie, I’d wager he did.” Bruno had heard the story twice before, but he knew how to make an old gal feel good. He gave her a little pinch and said, “Rosie, would you like to take a nap, Sweetie?”
Love,
K-B
CREDIT IS DUE: My thanks to Brian S. Brown and the National Organization for Marriage for providing the majority of Brian H. Brown’s dialogue and a significant amount of the narrative.
©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt
◊
A stats student: I would have gotten that problem right, if I hadn’t screwed it up.
His step-daughter: I’ve seen his penis. … It’s big
Her mother: Yes, I’m a lucky woman.
His step-daughter: Yeah, but gross.
An apolitical gal: They’re such fans, they’d eat Sarah Palin’s excrement.
A writing workshop student on endings: You mean “dot, dot, dot” doesn’t count?
An anti-snob snob: They liked that?! I thought they were from Newport?
“What the hell is that?” I asked indelicately.
I slowed the car, and my daughter and I rolled past a plump gal, in cheerful hospital scrubs, folding up a hand-lettered sandwich board that read, “Do you think you’re pregnant? Free 
ultrasound.” She stood on the side of the road, under the awning of an RV that, according to its signage, hosted a mobile ultrasound unit.
“OK, that’s weird,” said my wonderfully astute Katie.
Indeed, Fallbrook is weird, in ways good and bad. Having had a recent adventure in ultrasound land, however, we were temporarily inclined to suspect more of the bad.
Just a week or so before, beset with a common medical problem, we had dutifully reported to the Fallbrook ob-gyn recommended by Katie’s general practitioner. That the specialist was male was nearly inevitable in our town; that he proceeded to lecture us in the exam room was astounding.
“Now, if you’re pregnant,” he began, “you need to know that I don’t perform abortions and Fallbrook Hospital doesn’t allow them, and there are long-term complications associated with abortion. I’ve—.”
“She’s not pregnant,” I interrupted, “that’s not why we’re here, and you need to know that we are 180 degrees from you on the abortion issue. Ours is not the right family for your message.”
And wouldn’t you know it, he persisted!
“As a physician, I have a responsibility to explain the risks of the procedure, including the psychological risks. I’ve had women in here break down in tears years later when asked how many pregnancies they’ve—.”
I wanted to tell him to keep his focus on crotches and leave the psychology to those qualified in that specialty, but I opted for, “Perhaps I wasn’t clear: We’re not interested in discussing abortion with you, Katie’s not pregnant, and we are quite well informed about the issue. For example, the long-term effects of abortion are wildly misrepresented by anti-abortion groups, and if you actually need to address an unwanted pregnancy with a patient, you should provide accurate, unbiased information.”
Katie, sitting forlornly on the exam table, let loose a groan — one of disgust, not pain. I shut up. The doctor stomped out. And for this, we’d had the costly ultrasound.
Yeah, so, the hand-lettered sign on the side of the road touting free ultrasounds smacked of questionable intent to us. I googled it.
Lo and behold, the mobile ultrasound unit was a gift from the San Diego County taxpayers to the Vista Pregnancy Resource Center. Funny, I don’t recall being asked to sign the card. Indeed, I’m sure I wasn’t, because I wouldn’t have given tax dollars to an organization that indoctrinates its clients.
But County Supervisor Bill Horn would. He gave $50,000 of discretionary tax dollars to the Vista Center for the mobile ultrasound. And now the center makes the RV available to the Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center twice a month.
Ah, there was our explanation. But it still felt weird.
Perhaps it would have been wiser if Horn and the religious organization had relied on private contributors, rather than taxpayers, to fund their religious agendas. In fact, it kind of seemed as though that might be a little bit more legal, given our separation of church and state, so I googled a little bit more.
Turns out that Horn also gave 10,000 in taxpayer dollars to the Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center to help fund its 2009 fund raiser.
How did he get around the law like that?
Well, in a recent San Diego CityBeat article about Life Perspectives (another religious recipient of Horn’s generous tossing of tax dollars), John Sansone from the County Counsel’s office explained it all. In the last three years, Life Perspectives has received $80,000 in grants from Horn for the group’s annual fund raiser “Life Walk.” Because the grants were for the events, not for the religious anti-abortion curriculum materials that Life Perspectives sells, Sansone said the grants “may fall into a legal gray area.”
“In his ass,” said my wonderfully astute and equally indelicate Katie. And she has a point. Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to promote religious doctrine, so just how stupid do we have to be to buy the line that Bill Horn can, instead, fund fund-raisers that fund religious doctrine?
Implausibly stupid. Or, put another way, as stupid as Bill Horn thinks we are. This is the same Candidate Horn who was overheard in 1995 saying it didn’t matter what he promised on the campaign trail, because the voters wouldn’t remember once he was in office.
Oops.
Apparently it also doesn’t matter that Horn gave 34,000 in taxpayer dollars to a Pregnancy Resource Center (the County website didn’t indicate which one) for computers and a photocopier. Now, do you suppose it copies in gray or color?
And in 2009, Horn gave 35,000 in taxpayer dollars to a Pregnancy Resource Center for moving expenses. Maybe the moving van was gray?
And in 2004, Horn earmarked a $100,000 matching grant for a Pregnancy Resource Center to acquire a “maternity home.” Maybe they were planning to paint the home gray?
And there was the $50,000 for the RV, which was, frankly, more earth tones than gray.
And those examples are just what was available with a quick search of the County website and local news reports.*
Now, to cut Horn some slack, it is possible that the religious groups he has funded with taxpayer dollars are not actually promoting religion. This thought sent me back to Google, which produced the following reality checks:
From the Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center:
Volunteer staff is the heartbeat of this ministry. … Qualifications: a love relationship with Jesus Christ.
What you can do as a volunteer:
Pray.
Serve as a volunteer counselor, receptionist, or office volunteer.
Host a baby shower at your church.
Speak at your church or civic group about the sanctity of life and the work of Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center.
Serve as a church liaison for our baby bottle fundraiser or walk for life.
Organize the Sanctity of Life Sunday activities in your church.
Ask your pastor to preach on the sanctity of life and other related topics. …
Interestingly, the Fallbrook Center also promotes renewed virginity for those who repent being sexually active outside of marriage and ask God to make them whole in their hearts — and down there, I suppose.
I really hope none of my tax dollars is being used to teach that nifty bit of doctrine.
Another interesting note is that the Fallbrook Center claims they “recieve[sic] no local, state or government funding. We are completely dependent on our community to supply our annual operating needs.”
That would be another “oops” I guess.
Life Perspectives’ curriculum website provides an equally enlightening reality check. This excerpt is from the Teachers Notes for a teen pregnancy module:
[I]t’s clear that even students who are involved in churches continue to be sexually active and may experience unplanned pregnancies. In 2003, research at Northern Kentucky University showed that 61 percent of students who signed sexual-abstinence commitment cards broke their pledges. Three surveys of single Christian adults in the 1990s determined that only one-third were virgins. Studies also show that there is little difference in the abortion rate between women who go to church and women who do not. We need to work together to find ways to be more effective in helping our students make difficult choices that are in line with God’s direction for their lives.
OK, let’s all be honest: Bill Horn is giving tax dollars to religious organizations that — along with any services they might provide — are promoting religious doctrine. If anyone dares deny this, I suggest we all get down on our knees and pray that God might guide him or her to renewed honesty.
Of course, we can also vote for Bill Horn’s opponent in November, Steve Gronke.
In the meantime, Katie and I are casting our votes against doctors who indoctrinate women in the exam room — by finding a new ob-gyn.
Love,
K-B
* In a separate vein, there were a couple other grants worth noting: Horn gave $5,000 to the Santa Margarita Gun Club in 2009 for “ammunition, food, and travel costs including accommodations for the Gun Club’s trip to a national tournament in Camp Petty, Ohio”; and Horn gave $15,000 to the Fairbanks Ranch Association’s teen scholarships for drivers ed. Yep, Fairbanks Ranch (a “gated community of exclusive estates”) — the ritzy part of Rancho Santa Fe. Wouldn’t want all those Bimmers and Jags dinged in the school parking lot.
UPDATE: Hmm, according to the Association’s website, “Fairbanks Ranch is the distinctive home for select families.” Families that cannot afford to pay for their kids’ drivers ed?
This column is crossposted at The Progressive Post.
©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt
Note: ICU RV photo from the ICU website; Life Perspectives’ Life Walk photo from the Life Walk website.
And then she said, “Goddamn it, Fred!”
Hey, Brett, you smell like an adult!
Who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?
Cuckoo’s Nest? I was in it.
You’re still in it, Bob.
At Major Market
Most Californians live without a budget. The only reason they’re upset about the legislature’s failure to pass a budget is because someone told them to be upset.
At a writers workshop
My mother used to say, “Don’t laugh too much. You’ll cry in the morning.
