By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Heat roils across my hill as I step into the dog days of summer, plunge into the pool and surface into a shimmer of my youth. The hours barely passed then, as we sought the morning’s flickering shade, splayed under the swaying arms of weeping willows. The grass cooled and tickled, and when the breeze stilled, when dew abandoned the ground and bedecked our brows, when boredom prevailed, we scooted on elbow, heel and ass to peek up just past the edge of the willow, to spy pictures in the sky, to find fancy piled upon fancy in shades of white and blue and wonder. Drifty, dreamy images fluttered by on tendrils of hot air and moisture, visions of summers to come. Now, they are visions of summers past. Vague recollections entice others, memories evoke memories, and I succumb to the warm wave of reminiscence. …

At Tydings-on-the-Bay, the family seeks respite from Baltimore’s stinking markets and steamy Southern Baptist socials. The season’s heaven is as hot as hell, so my father’s mother swims in the early morning sun, the rising light, the silence of sleeping progeny. Her ears fill with the water of two hundred fifty years of fishermen’s traps, floating battles of wits and finance, sunken souls. Framed by dusty lace and handprints, she returns from the edge of land, ankle-deep in the pine needles of last season’s hopes and sighs. She pulls back moth-wing coverlets to wake us for breakfast and draws us from bed with the scent of frying scrapple, grits and green tomatoes. We pray for her watermelon rind pickle as she repositions the tortoiseshell combs that hold her endless hair in place and her world together. …

Harmony buzzes — a chorus of lawn mowers, insects and low flying planes. The grass is yet moist with tears of another day’s passing, another day closer to replacing steamed crabs and corn on the cob with brown bag lunches at the big kids’ school. But for now, summer flowers play pub to bees and lipstick to girls who yearn to be women. We dress in fairy gowns of weeping willow and woven clover, with tomato breasts and berry-stained nails, and we smoke cornhusks when no one watches from the kitchen window. We hide along a stream’s bank, escaping plebeian Cheerios, taunting big brothers, demands to be something other than our dreams. We imagine gossamer barges and honeyed rosebuds, the grace and wisdom that will one day be ours. …

Inner tubes with six-pack anchors voyage across a watering hole. Once boys and girls, now barely adults, we plot the world’s salvation: Love and revolution are the answer — or is it revolutionary love? This is our wholesome debate as cows bellow to the music of a generation wading through sparkling ripples of change. We feast on homemade cheese, the sprouts of provocative vision, the final summer of our youth. We dive to the murky bottom one last time and surface with the muck from which our species first emerged. It oozes between our fingers and we know the very world is in our hands. …

Wafts of ocean breath curl round limbs entwined in sweltry sand. We draw long strokes of air and each other, tremble at the touch of fingertips, the sun, the lees of a million million waves, the ebb and flow of unanimity. Tears mingle and meander the joy and sorrow between us. Romance has blown in before a ferry of tourists, binoculars perched on the ship’s rail searching for secrets, cameras poised to frame history — but will we have one? Passion crosses over them like an angel over blood-marked doors and alights dangerously in our lovers’ arms as we crest with the waves. And by summer’s end, all evidence, save the love, of a couple walking hand-in-hand is shifted by the tides to someone else’s strand. …

We watch the glue of an inflamed mob bubbling beneath the sky-high images of Hitler and Obama and Lenin. The three are falsely strung together by practiced loathing, the vitriol of glib puppets who toss the masses bonbons of fear like cheap Mardi Gras beads — in hope of bare-breasted adulation. The mob feasts on the ephemera their idols spew with such self-serving vengeance — dark accusations that evaporate in the sun but linger in unquestioning minds, calls to arms amputated by ignorance, dried tea leaves that swirl out of reach on the hot air of hate. …

And I look back to earth. The quest for grace, the harmony of hopeful discourse, the rhythmic balance of unsullied tides, the common embrace of responsibility for our future — are they such arcane notions? I finger the ancient tortoiseshell combs and wonder if in this time they can hold the world together.

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Billboard photo courtesy of Bob Fisher, KRIB.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“You don’t mind if I sit here, do you,” he said. After his briefcase hit the empty seat.

I looked up from my book and was not surprised by what I found: older white male, expensive suit, assumptive bearing, and a physique to match the sonorous voice — he was too large even for the exit row. But upon a second, sneaky glance, while he stowed his luggage and adjusted himself into his seat, I noticed the faint hand tremor, the thinning hair approaching white, the hint of a stoop revealing his seventy, maybe seventy-five years.

I let a sigh slip. It was the damn tremor that swayed me, forcing me to close my book — Sue Townsend’s cruelly hilarious spoof of the British royals — and exercise the social graces Mother taught me. Besides, if he’d offered a question rather than a declarative before tossing his briefcase, I wouldn’t have thought twice about his claiming the seat. So I turned to him and said, “Of course not — please join me.”

He looked down at me without making eye contact and nodded a suitable smile in my direction as he unfurled his Financial Times, and I thought I caught disappointment flit across his visage. If only he had boarded a little faster, he might have landed next to the babe who’d sashayed down the aisle before me. She had a caboose even I noticed — as did the hungry hunter who snagged the seat next to her, licking his chops in anticipation of getting a mouthful of those sweet cheeks. So the poor old fellow was stuck with me — baggy jeans and sweatshirt (Father always said I dressed like an old boot) and a befuckled mood (I’d lost the joy of flying when the airlines stopped providing those cool little salt and pepper shakers in coach).

A flight attendant distracted our minimalist encounter when she requested verbal affirmatives from those of us in the exit row, thereby committing us to assisting in the event of an emergency. With the threat of terrorists misbehaving on planes, I took this responsibility quite seriously, but checking out my fellow prospective heroes, I had to question the legitimacy of the airline’s process.

There was one brooding skateboarder, who, upon declaring “Yes” that he was ready and willing to assist, reinserted his iPod earbuds, despite having obediently turned off the contraption, and pulled his baseball cap over his eyes, assuring neither social interaction nor emergency readiness. He was probably dreaming about the sashaying caboose.

Next to him was a gal who appeared to be on her first solo flight post aerophobia treatment. With clenched knees and jaws, her wild-eyed stare boring into the seatback in front of her and barf bag in her lap, she clutched the armrests as beads of sweat grew on her blanched face and nervous snot flicked from her nose.

Clearly neither she nor the kid could be counted on, which lent a new appreciation for my presumptuous seatmate. He looked as though he might still be strong enough to help me hoist the 70-pound door and I, having worked in social services, had proved my crisis-management abilities manyfold. In fact, the aerophobic’s nose reminded me of one such incident at the program I once directed for multi-handicapped blind adults.

I’d received a frantic call to my office from the nurse’s station one sunny California afternoon. “Conrad bit Nadine!” the shift supervisor shrieked.

“Is she OK? Did you isolate Conrad?”

“He bit her! He bit her!”

“Yes, I got that. Take a breath. Is Nadine OK?”

“He bit her! He bit her nose! In her room! There’s blood everywhere!”

“Bring bandages and an icepack to her room.” I ran from my office and met the supervisor at Nadine’s door, where Nadine stood silent and still, hands covering her face and blood drenching her blouse.

“Conrad bit my nose,” she said, dropping her hands to reveal a bloody void where her nose once was.

“Shit. Where’s the nose?” I asked the supervisor. “Did he swallow it?”

She was busy tossing her lunch in Nadine’s trashcan, so I had Nadine press a bandage to her new facial concavity, and I dropped to the floor. There I was, in my tidy little business suit and pumps, crawling across the institutional carpet in pursuit of a nose — which I found under the bed, right where Conrad had spit it.

Later, when I asked him why he did it, he said, “She was rude to me, so I felt for her nose and I bit it.”

So, yep, pushing people down the inflatable slide seemed manageable, as long as the old fellow could indeed help me lift the door out of the way. This thought shifted my predisposition from dislike to acceptance of the man.

Except then he blew it. After folding his newspaper and tucking it in the seat pocket, he settled his elbow on our shared armrest. Now, this alone is an annoying but common maneuver on a plane. Men do it to women without a thought, although bold women preempt it by getting there first. But it was the subsequent pressure of his upper arm against mine that set me off. I shifted every body part that I could toward the empty space between my seat and the emergency exit door, but it was not enough. Still his arm pressed to mine. It was surely an intrusion, and it was unbelievable that he couldn’t feel it.

Now, my Southern upbringing precluded my saying what I was thinking — that he move his fucking arm — so out of desperate discomfort, I leaned forward and buried my face in my book, determined to disregard him the rest of the flight.

But he had other plans. Having consumed his Financial Times, he proceeded to interpret it for the rest of us. “Obama Bin Laden,” he chuckled, “he is doing everything he possibly can to slow down our financial recovery.” My hackles began to rise, and I pretended to continue reading.

“People of wealth will never vote for him again,” he continued, “and the young derelicts who did in 08 might actually acquire the discernment to think twice in 2012, particularly the trust fund kids. I have one client whose offspring have probably voted away their inheritance.”

My pretense shattered and I turned to him, preparing to challenge him for likening the President to Osama Bin Laden.

But he prattled on: “Thankfully, it doesn’t much affect me. I’ve made a lot of money in my lifetime — of course, I am bragging — but, yes, I’ve made a lot of money in my lifetime. It’s long gone, now.” And then he paused, looked at me directly, and laughed a melancholy little laugh. “Most of my colleagues invested in commercial properties, things like that, but I didn’t. I saw the world instead.”

This time, it was that little laugh that swayed me. If nothing else, he deserved some consideration for his regrets, whatever they were. And there was that pesky Southern thing again. So I listened to his stories and nodded, oohed and ahhed in all the right places, and learned that as a young man he’d ridden his motorcycle across Europe; he was divorced years ago and never remarried; he didn’t usually reveal that he was an attorney, but he was; the district attorney and he barely tolerated each other, but he was friendly with a lot of the judges; he had no children he owned up to; he smoked fine Cuban cigars, but of course, he said, he was bragging again.

I patted his arm. “You’re entitled, Honey.” And he regaled me with his stories for the rest of the flight, while the skateboarder snored under his baseball cap and the aerophobic came to her senses and demanded to be moved from the exit row.

•     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •

The lawyer was on my mind as I drove home from the airport. When I arrived, I Googled his particulars and found his name in an attorney directory, where he mugged with one of his spiffy cigars. I searched for more and found an article. “Sweetie,” I called to my husband. “Look at this. I chatted with this fellow on the plane. In the 80s, he got into a wee-wee contest with a judge over wearing a turban in court.”

“Was he packing explosives in his underwear?”

“I think that’s probably racist, Sweetie. Besides, you joke like that and I’ll have to frisk you.”

“OK, then I’m packing explosives in my underwear.”

“Funny boy.” I kissed him. “Seriously. He refused to explain why he wore the turban, and the judge insisted that he couldn’t wear it without stating a ‘legitimate’ reason. He prevailed eventually.”

“Was he wearing it when you met him?”

“No. I suppose he’d made his point when he won.”

“Hmmm. So, what’s your point?”

“Oh, I’m not sure. It’s just interesting. Nothing, I suppose.” I went back to reading the case, amused by his eccentricities and disappointed I hadn’t been a little nicer. But I don’t know, maybe it was just that Southern thing again.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

*Oh the times! Oh the customs! – Cicero, 63 BC

(NOTE: Photograph by Nathan Rupert via a Creative Commons license.)

Writers

Want to submit your work to Excuse Me, I’m Writing for the sheer joy of having an audience? Email your original fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry — 2,500 words maximum — in an MS Word document or in RTF to kb@kbgressitt.com. If we publish your work, you keep all rights, including bragging.

Questionable things said in Fallbrook this week

Some men like big thighs.
I hope my husband is one of them.
You should have married an African-American.
Hmmm, is that racist?

I always say to Obama haters, you should only half hate him — he’s only half black.

I could have danced all night.
That’s what the pregnant ballerina said.

Sarah Palin has more power than anyone: She got Oprah to give up her show.

Fallbrook is dying. We’re moving to Oceanside.

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

That socialist, Marxist, communist, illegal-alien President Barack Obama gave a speech to the pure and vulnerable innocents of our nation Tuesday.

Now, put your head on your knees and take slow, deep breaths. It is really important that you are able to read on. …

This liberal invader broke and entered the sanctity of our dear ones’ apolitical and parents’-rights-respecting K-through-12 classrooms via television to misspend our tax dollars on spreading his socialist ideology to our impressionable babes.

This is a bad thing, a bad, bad thing. I know this because all the experts on Obama’s true despicable character say it is so. But just to make sure, I reviewed his speech and oh dear sweet Baby Jesus! It is a thing of evil — cosmic, pernicious evil! And to help out those of you who don’t understand just how malevolent the Antichrist Obama is, I’ve taken the liberty of extracting the essence of his speech and analyzing it for you.

Beware, though, what follows is not for the young, the weak hearted, those whose faith is infirm. In fact, you might want to say a prayer to God right now — drop to your knees and ask God to just lay down His protective filter between the Obamanable words and your blessed eyes, lest the Evil One insinuate his sinister propaganda into your God-loving heart. Then fetch your Holy Bible and hold it tightly while you read. Or maybe balance it on your head?

And just one more thing before we begin: I want to ask that you join me in thanking God’s great warriors who risk their souls for us, day in and day out, against the liberal hordes, who shine God’s understanding and insightful light on the messages that the Obama Beast would have us believe are only words of wise encouragement, when they are, in fact, a sign of Hitler’s struggle reborn. Yes, God, please heap Your blessings upon our heroic defenders. Among them, the following:

Brannon Howse, of Worldview Times

La Mesa-Spring Valley, California, School Board Trustee Rick Winett

Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party

VisionRevisted.com’s Mel Sanger

David S. Turndick at ResistNet.com

Oklahoma State Senator Steve Russell

The good folks at Today’s Obamanation

The anonymous author of the well-researched Christian Coalition blog post

And there are countless others — God knows who these saints are. Our prayers and blessings are with them all. Say amen!

Now, let me tell you, the Chairman Mao-bama reveals his beastly underbelly not more than three paragraphs into his speech, when he blatantly acknowledges his foreign education in a godless country:

When I was young, my family lived overseas. I lived in Indonesia for a few years. And my mother, she didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school.

Dear God, protect us from the mere imagining of what despicable anti-American filth filled the young boy’s heart and soul, turning him into the Arab terrorist-lover he is today. We don’t have to read the particulars; it’s enough that we know it is so — and it only gets worse from here. The white man-hating racist tries to usurp our authority over our precious offspring:

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and you get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with the Xbox.

Right there, now that’s a direct assault on our constitutional right to parent our God-given children as we see fit. We don’t need any foreign-born globalist to tell us how our natural-born kids should be spending their time. And Gamepraise.com has plenty of Bible-teaching games for Xbox, anyway. But we’ll need more than the Bible to vanquish the insidious clutches of his evildoer smut. He actually tries to urge our young ones into the radical lifestyle of the leftwing media liars and liberal elite:

Maybe you could be a great writer — maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper…

Yes, the Obamanation’s intentions are as clear as Christ’s suffering for us on the cross: He wants to indoctrinate our children into one world order of think-alike, anti-morality, God-hating, homo-loving, humanist soldiers for Satan:

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical-thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

And to top it off, he wants our own children to become part of his healthcare reform death squads for seniors:

We need every single one of you to develop your talents and your skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks solve our most difficult problems.

Oh, yes, we know what problem he’s spewing about, with his evil bile. It’s that little problem of the true patriots who are in his way, giving their lives to fight against the one world order he and the Devil’s imps are devising with all the Jews and the Muslims and the atheists and the pinko revolutionaries and the demon technocrats who steal our personal information every time we swipe a credit card or use an ATM. The Obaminator wants our own children to overthrow us:

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and they founded this nation. Young people. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google and Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

And if this doesn’t convince you, just take a look at his conclusion:

Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless America. Thank you.

I pray to God you just play the audio of this final sentence backward — it’s not what you think. He’s actually chanting, “God is dead, 666, God is dead, 666, God is dead, 666!”

So beware, true believer, the end times are near — see for yourself!

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

20 August 2009

From Café des Artistes

An insult attributed to John Bright: He is a self-made man and worships his creator.
Michael: That sounds like one of our regulars.

Customer 1: Hey, I saved this letter to the editor for you. It’ll make you angry.
Customer 2: Thanks? … Hmmm. … He writes, ”I don’t think for a minute that our law-abiding, tax-paying, home-owning population is responsible for the trash on the roads, shopping carts left all over our community, yard sales along Main Street or laundry drying on fences along Fallbrook Street. … I am not a bigot, but…” I guess he doesn’t know what that means.

Phone banking for healthcare insurance reform

Volunteer: Are you familiar with President Obama’s three core principles for reforming healthcare?
Fallbrook voter: What’s a core principle?

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

This health-care insurance reform thing is confusing. Are you confused? I’m confused, oh yeah.

Of course, I don’t really have time to actually read anything about the House’s draft legislation. I mean, what do I know anyway, you know? So I could sure use some sage counsel on this from someone more knowledgeable than I, someone with a better-informed perspective of all the complexities of health care insurance policies and finance, reimbursement schemes, pre-existing condition stuff, policy cancellation terms, the whole shebang. Yeah, this requires a real brainiac, a Solomon, a, I don’t know, someone such as, hmmm, well, let’s take a look at who all is out there offering up their insightful opinions of this critical issue. … Could it be … Chuck Norris?

Naw, not the kung fu guy? Yes, indeedy, the kung fu guy. No kidding.

So, what does old Chucky have to say?

Welp, in his townhall.com column, “Dirty Secret No. 1 in Obamacare,” Chuck tells us that he “decided to research the reasons so many are opposed to Obamacare to separate the facts from the fantasy,” and in the course of his research he found some “dirty little secrets buried deep within the 1,000-plus page health care bill.”

Now first, I have to say, I am so impressed that the guy read the thing. Whooee! That’s a whole lot of time away from pounding on bad guys. Second, I am so grateful that he read it so I don’t have to! And I’m sure I can trust his interpretation because, well, you know, he’s like famous — and a good guy. And good guys don’t lie. Politicians lie, but not good guys, like movie star types.

So I want to know what secret he discovered about this critical health-care issue that the darn politicians tried to hide from us, buried in the 1,000 pages of that, um, well, it is a public document. But no matter. They must have known hardly anyone would read it. Thank God for Chucky!

And what exactly did he find? Well, get a load of this: The government wants to go into people’s homes and usurp their parental rights over their children’s care and development. Can you believe it? The dirty rotten scoundrels! Bastard’s all! And I do feel quite right using the male, non-inclusive nomenclature, because that’s what Chuck does — no pandering to political correctness there. So what if we have a few women in Congress.

Anyway, Chuck writes that in sections 440 and 1904 of the House bill (Page 838) — and I must say my hat is off to the guy for honing in on this specific issue, among the whole 1,000 pages, and for sourcing the references so helpfully — the bill describes a program for educating new parents about early childhood development. In the home, no less! That’s so intrusive, so darn presumptuous, as though parents don’t innately know what’s best for their own kids, like we aren’t born with a deep understanding of “age-appropriate child development in cognitive, language, social, emotional, and motor domains” and “skills to interact with their child to enhance age-appropriate development.”

Why, this is an outrage, a blight upon the very freedoms our forefathers fought and died for as they birthed our great nation! (There were no female forefathers, obviously, because the gals didn’t know nothing about birthing no nations). Bravo to Chucky for bringing this most dirty of secrets to our attention, because this sort of thing could lead to the downfall of our nation. It’s just a disgrace, an abomination, I say!

Oh, except, hmmm, in my conservative little town of Fallbrook, California, our conservative little school district, which continues to preach abstinence only, despite our burgeoning population of teen parents, offered a very similar parent-education program when my daughter was a toddler. In fact, we allowed one of those “government agents,“ as Chuck describes them, into our home, and we adored her. She taught us some wonderful techniques for encouraging Katie’s readiness for school. It was, well, it was a great program, and it was free and we were grateful for the experience.

Oh, Chucky, I’m so disappointed. You happened to pick on the one thing in the House bill that I actually know something about, and you are so, so wrong. Bummer, man!

Now what do I do? I sure can’t count on Sarah Palin, with her bogus caca about senior citizen death squads, taking out the disabled — or was it disabled death squads taking out the seniors? I don’t remember. I just know better than to trust that nitwit to explain anything. Besides, she’s pretending to be all scared about “health-care rationing,” as though she’s not aware as a former governor that we already have that in so many ways. Of course, she quit that job, which might explain her ineptitude on the health-care issue.

So, I guess what it comes down to is I have to read up on this stuff myself, so I can form my own darn opinion about health-care reform instead of relying on someone else with her or his own nincompoop agenda. Jeez, what a bitch.

At least President Obama understands that I have a life. He put up a handy-dandy website, healthreform.gov, where I can get some for-real information about what he has asked Congress to come up with and the progress being made. This, despite Republican efforts to shoot down reform in a blaze of failure — in hopes of keeping Obama from being reelected — and despite the railings of folks who are lucky enough to have good health insurance coverage, both of which groups really kind of suck, because they don’t give a good goddamn about the millions of people whose insurance companies dumped them when they got really sick, who were denied coverage for life-saving treatments, who are not insured, who went bankrupt trying to pay for their health care, who died for lack of treatment! That’s the real bummer.

You know what would be really cool? It would be really cool if Chuck Norris and Sarah Palin and all the other naysayers would actually take a look at the president’s website and let us know if they agree or disagree with his goals:

• Reduce long-term growth of health care costs for businesses and government

• Protect families from bankruptcy or debt because of health care costs

• Guarantee choice of doctors and health plans

• Invest in prevention and wellness

• Improve patient safety and quality of care

• Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans

• Maintain coverage when you change or lose your job

• End barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions

Declaring their support or opposition would put their opinions in an interesting perspective, because, if they agree, then they should be helping make reform a reality instead of trying to undermine it. And if they disagree, then isn’t that telling!

Yeah, that would be way cool.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Note: Chuck Norris photo from raindog808 via a Creative Commons license.)

06 August 2009

A not-so friendly debate from Fallbrook the Friendly Village on President Obama’s healthcare insurance reform effort

From: usocialist@live.com
To: Undisclosed group of Fallbrook healthcare reform activists from Organizing for America
Subject: Obama whores. “yes master”
Message: blank

From: One of the healthcare reform activists
To: usocialist@live.com
Subject: Re: Obama whores. “yes master”
Message: I realize you are unable to consider an opinion different from your own, but please respect me enough to delete me from your email list. I am not a whore.

From: usocialist@live.com
To: One of the healthcare reform activists
Subject: Re: Re: Obama whores. “yes master”
Message: You are projecting yourself onto me by saying that I do not consider different opinions. I have considered the truth and the truth is you are wrong. History proves it. Obama is wrong also, but you do not care because he is your master. Do some research and you will see. But you will not.

Editorial note: Huh?

Read more Fallbrookisms…

28 July 2009

United States Senate
Washington, D.C.

Dear white guys in wingtips,

If you had to appear in court and were given the opportunity to select your judge, I wonder how many of you would prefer the white guy in wingtips to the wise Latina judge with the richness of her experience.

Respectfully,
K-B

29 July 2009

English Department
Palomar College

Dear instructors who responded to my query about online writing classes with implications that I might fail to do my work, turn it in late or allow someone else to do it for me,

You are presumptuous, rude and, well, kind of sucky, and I am too old for this stuff. I surely hope this is not how you normally communicate with your students, a population I’ll not be joining.

By the way, your website content needs a little editing.

Collegially,
K-B

30 July 2009

Dear Tony, Sandra, Charlie, Martha and Percy; Dear Milt, Dionne, Warren, John, Patricia, Zo and Thelma; Dear Bonnie, George, Terry, Cliff and Mohammed; and Dear sweet girl who played with me at Lutherville Elementary when I was new and shy, and whose cornrows I craved when my thin, blond hair stuck to my pasty forehead,

I am writing to apologize for the many white folks who still don’t get it.

In our cushy little lives, insulated by the lily color of our skin, we just don’t get that prejudice prevails.

Oh, sure, the majority of us proudly extolled our enlightenment when we elected our first African American president — even some of us who didn’t vote for him — because it validated our belief in our moral superiority, our proud capacity for acknowledging a person’s abilities and potential regardless of race. And it was indeed a stellar moment for our nation.

But when it comes right down to it, when it comes down to the black-man-fumbling-at-the-front-door test — or the black-man-fuming-at-the-cop test — the election results mean squat. And for that I apologize.

White folks just don’t get that our historic willingness to wholeheartedly embrace the enslavement of a human race as an economic necessity prevails today, albeit in other forms, as so many of us wholeheartedly embrace the assumption that an angry black man is bad and scary — and even that a happy black man on a dark street is bad and really scary.

So, when President Barack Obama said the police behaved stupidly, some folks, but not enough, heard the sentiment of a person who has had experiences that lead him to empathize with a black man unfairly arrested.

And when Fox News’ Glenn Beck reacted, saying the president is a racist, some folks, but not enough, heard the sentiment of a person who has not had experiences that lead him to empathize with a black man unfairly arrested.

As for me, I heard a person who has behaved stupidly.

Love,
K-B

31 July 2009

First Energy Corporation

Dear Ms. or Sir,

Thank you for the refund check for $67.98 from my mother’s JCP&L account. It’s a nice little amount that might lend Mother lots of good fun, except for one glitch: The check is made out to my father.

This poses a problem because Father keeled over by the fishpond so many years ago, we can now joke about it, although we still sorely miss him, of course.

Unfortunately, Bank of America has no sense of humor. (The existence of BofA’s heart is also in doubt.) Consequently, I cannot deposit the refund check. So, we’d be most appreciative if you were to cancel the enclosed check and reissue the refund in Mother’s name.

If this is not within the realm of possibilities, a check made out to Mrs. Tillman Gressitt might unpucker Bank of America’s sphincter.

What do you say?

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely,
K-B

Remember kiddos, MAMMA says talk about same-sex marriage every chance you get!

Thanks to MAMMA Kim for this entertaining speech by  …

Patricia Clarkson at the 2009 Human Rights Campaign Dinner

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In a valiant effort to join my husband in one of his rituals, I recently girded my loins and settled into the serial viewing of an evening’s news shows. I was set on ignoring the racist and misogynistic slurs against President Obama’s Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I planned to zone out as the strategically matched, aesthetically pleasing male and female co-anchors blathered segues from story to story. I was determined to avoid imagining the thousands of autoworkers’ families poised for despair as industry and political leaders negotiated in the billions. I even committed to withholding my normal rant that the commercials require reducing the television volume three or four bars. And, my fail-safe device, I had an adult beverage in hand, ready to comfort when reports of violence cut through my emotional insulation. But, despite my intent to remain unresponsive, I was wholly unprepared for the revelation that hugging among teens is a phenomenon — and a bad one according to some schools.

Where have I been, lo these many — apparently naïve — years? With my head up the armpit of an inappropriately affectionate hugger? Have the countless embraces I have received and committed been the subtle precursors to sexual harassment or — horror! — the authority-challenging pursuit of “excessive displays of affection”?

I learned that term when I couldn’t stand the news anymore and got up to research this phenomenon of affection that made it from a feature in The New York Times to my coast’s evening drivel. Our local high school’s 2008-2009 Student Handbook says, “Excessive display of affection is inappropriate on school grounds or at school sponsored activities;” the Band Room rules preclude everything but handholding; and violations have consequences:

1^st offense — 2 hrs of Thursday school
2^nd offense — 4 hrs of Saturday school
3^rd offense — 1 to 5 days of home suspension, parent contact Ed. Code 48900 (k)

I don’t know what Thursday school is, but it sounds bad, and Saturday school? That’s definitely bad. Home suspension could actually be OK, but the referenced education code says a California public school student can only be suspended if he or she has been really bad — violent, in possession of a weapon or drugs … disruptive of school activities or defiant toward a “valid authority.” Hmm, hugging on a par with violence?

This means if a California student were to hug someone and if a valid school authority observed the hug and deemed it disruptive and demanded the hug be discontinued and if the student defied the request, he or she could be suspended.

Oh, the idiocy of it!

My daughter attended a charter high school where public displays of affection (PDA) were de rigueur — same and opposite sex. So I called Kate for a reality check. She’s now 20, not much removed from her high school years.

Me: Honey, did you hear about the problem with hugging?

Kate: What?

Me: Hugging.

Kate: What? (Lots of background noise.)

Me: HUGGING! Apparently it’s a problem with teens. It was in the news. Some high schools have prohibited it. One put a time limit on it: Two seconds max or you’re out.

Kate: Whaat! People should be embracing the fact that kids are open and warm with each other instead of being hostile and hateful — like the adults who are persecuting them. This is one step closer to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

I love my kid’s sense of wordplay. And her literacy.

Kate: This is really offensive to me. My friends and I — everyone I knew in high school, boys and girls — hugged each other to say hello. It’s not like we were trying to get off. We were being friendly. It’s a human thing to do. This isn’t the dark ages. It’s not like we’re whipping out sex toys and going at it. It’s just saying hello. There is a difference!

Kate was with a couple of friends in a coffee shop, probably surrounded by folks hugging unfettered, and her friends were equally passionate about PDAs.

Vartuhi: This is why people hate Americans! I’ve been hugging my friends since junior high, so I really don’t understand why this is an issue. We watched [the video] and we all thought we were back in the 1950s, where these moronic “problems” were an issue to people — it’s puritanical! It’s sad that people think it is an issue when there are actual issues they should be dealing with – teen pregnancy, drugs, violence, all the budget cuts in schools.

Ariel: So much of kids’ socializing is on the computer, texting and Facebook and stuff, parents should be glad their kids can connect in person — hugging is a way to compensate for all that. If kids are hugging, it’s filling a social, emotional and physical need. There are so many things the schools should be focusing on, like sex education. [Hugging] is a way for kids to learn to be comfortable with their own bodies and other people’s bodies, without being sexual.

These gals are smart. They represent three well-populated and distinct ethnic groups for whom teen hugging has long been healthy and normal — and they know a violation of the human right to express affection when it whops them upside the head.

So that’s it. I’m not taking it anymore. It’s time for a revolution! I’m marching over to Fallbrook High and organizing a hug-in. Guess I better start with the WASPy kids.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo by antes yo no era ahora soy via a Creative Commons license.)

(Editor’s Note: This piece is cross-posted with www.ivorytowerz.com.)