File This Under "You've Got to be Kidding Me"

Last year, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, went through a farce of a confirmation hearing. Democrats, Republicans, everyone knew she would be confirmed. They knew she was qualified. But because she had called herself a "wise Latina," Republicans smelled blood, Newt Gingrich called her a racist, and Sotomayor was reduced to backtracking. She said, "I do not believe that any ethnic, racial, or gender group has an advantage in sound judgment."

She was confirmed, 68-31, but the Republican party continues to paint itself as the party of exclusion. This country is becoming more and more diverse, a trend that hurts the Republicans, and so their success is predicated on marginalizing and disenfranchising a large number of people. How can they think that, long-term, this is a) good strategy and b) moral?

Elena Kagan is the President's nominee to replace Justice Stevens, and hearings began yesterday. It is another farce, as Kagan is not allowed to give any real opinion. But knowing that it's a farce, I have to wonder why in the world the Republicans would focus their objections on Kagan's reverence for Thurgood Marshall? They repeatedly referred to him as an "activist judge" (now code for any hint of progressivism?), suggesting that the Supreme Court's first African-American judge was out of the "mainstream."

Just liked Sotomayor before her, Kagan will be confirmed. It will be along party lines, with a few Republicans crossing over. Perhaps the same farce probably would have taken place were both nominees white men; after all, they were nominated by a democratic president. But these hearings illustrate how out of touch they are and just who they are looking out for.

America is a living, breathing country. It adapts, slowly. It corrects mistakes, eventually. It bends toward justice. I'd like my America to go a little faster, but I can handle this pace: it's those who refuse to let it change at all that challenge me and my patience.

Food, Glorious Food

When I was seven or eight, I started giving up foods left and right. I developed lists in my mind of what I would and would not eat, and you can imagine which list was longer. Some foods I wouldn't eat because they looked weird or smelled weird or had a weird texture; others just because I hadn't eaten them before and didn't want anything unfamiliar in my mouth.

As with my shyness, I look back at this behavior and cringe. My poor parents struggled to find things I would eat; there were weeks where we probably alternated between macaroni & cheese (only Kraft brand) and chicken nuggets and fries. They thought I'd grow out of it, but I was terribly stubborn. It wasn't until college that I became slightly less neurotic, trying other brands of macaroni and cheese, and it was still years later that I began trying other kinds of food, like Indian and Thai cuisines.

I still have my lists, but the one of foods I will eat is longer now. Friday nights, as I sample baked salmon and gazpacho dishes I wouldn't have touched five years ago, I feel a sense of pride. Still, my bathroom scale tells me I need to eat some cheeseburgers and milkshakes, pronto.

Chipper Zombie (cont.)

I meant to post this yesterday. At the start of his play, "The Glass Menagerie," Tennessee Williams includes a line from the end of an e. e. cummings' poem: "nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands."

Here's the poem in full, "somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond":

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

 your slightest look will easily unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

 or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

 (i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Chipper Zombie

Today was a little better, though I feel like a walking zombie. I need food and sleep. A couple of my students (they're total sweethearts) hung around after class this afternoon: "You seem down," they said. "Is everything ok? You don't seem like your usual chipper self!" Once I got over my shock at being called "chipper," I explained I was fine, but thanks for asking.

If I ever wanted to change my name from "Perfect Sand," maybe I could give "Chipper Zombie" a try.

My Happy Place

Today was just awful. I felt miserable and ineffective. I felt like I was a character in "Annie Hall," standing beside myself, watching myself be ineffective, unable to make things better.

I want to shout: You get out of a class what you put into it. I'm not going to stand there and shove information into your brains; I'm not going to sing and dance and entertain.

I see indifference and lack of effort from so many who of course will feel like they're wasting time. Awful, awful, and I get to do it again tomorrow.

(Deep breath - I'm fine. Just a little on edge... Below is a picture I drew a few years ago. It's me in my happy place. Setting my alarm for 5am because mornings are always better.)

Express Yourself (cont.)

The other day I wrote about Malcolm X's experience as he learned to express himself in more than one way. In class, I ask students to write about a time when they had trouble expressing themselves; how did they deal with it?

Me, I was immediately taken back to my first day of fourth grade. Even though I was in the same house as the year before, I had a new bus route. I wasn't supposed to ride the 113 anymore. Unsure of what bus I was supposed to ride--and too shy to ask--I stood, paralyzed, until I was approached by the vice principal.

"Do you know which bus to ride?"

"The 117, I think."

She turned to another teacher: "Does that sound right?" She turned back to me and asked which bus I rode last year.

"The 113."

She ushered me onto the bus, number 113. I saw some familiar faces, but only a couple, and none of the kids who got off at the same stop or in the same neighborhood as me. I had never ridden a bus with all white people before.

I knew I was on the wrong bus, but I didn't know how to say it. Instead, I took my seat. The bus took an unfamiliar path, and I got off at the first stop and began walking.

My shyness never went away. Every day, words choke in my throat. I am unable to say exactly what I want to. Whether standing in front of a room full of students or being introduced to a group of would-be friends, I feel a disconnect between my thoughts and speech.

But I am still able to express myself. The words that don't come out of my mouth come pouring through my arms and fingertips and to the keyboard and onto the screen. With a push of a button, those words are sent across the United States, to Scotland, and to Kenya. I am able to share my thoughts and feelings with a much larger audience.

Simultaneously, a strange thing has happened: the more I write, the less of a disconnect I feel between what I think and what comes out of my mouth. The fear will never go away--in some ways, it drives me!--but saying what I want when I want is a good thing, in whatever medium it takes.

Express Yourself

In his autobiography, Malcolm X describes how he received a "homemade education" while in prison. He had always considered himself an "articulate hustler," but the language he used on the street--"Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat"--were insufficient within the prison walls. With only an eighth-grade education, he was unable to engage in meaningful conversations and correspondence. With access to little else, Malcolm X began to copy the dictionary. Starting with "aardvark," he wrote each word and its definition:

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world.... It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.

To listen to his speeches, to read his words, makes his "homemade education" all the more impressive. He felt unable to express himself, and he rectified it. He describes himself as never having felt "so truly free" in his life as when he was incarcerated, his eyes and mind and possibilities opened to the huge world contained in books. Language is power. Controversial as he was, Malcolm X was undeniably a man of ideas. His ability to communicate those ideas made him a leader.

I watched the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company perform his complete works (abridged). There were jokes scattered about crazy right-wingers, tea parties, and BP. At one point, one of the three actors--they performed hilarious versions of everything from Othello to Hamlet--said, "That's the craziest thing I've heard, at least since, 'Change you can believe in'... What, too soon?" There were audience members laughing and clapping. But I didn't get it. I still don't. I want to say, "Grow up! Obama is trying to govern!" I don't understand what more people want him to do. He needs support, he needs political capital to effect change, and by ridiculing him from the left, people are instead removing an important voice from the debate. Keep up the pressure, but let him lead.

We have so many opportunities today. Libraries, the internet, education: these should be equalizers! Good-natured people, myself included, worry about the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. But is anyone talking about the gulf between the "knows" and the "know-nots"? Am I just projecting here? The more television I watch, the more I read, the more I think about (what I perceive to be) rampant anti-intellectualism. Politicians, the media, appealing to our basest instincts, worrying about the 24/7 news cycle instead of truth and progress. Where are the intellectual leaders? Who has big ideas today, based on fact and reason, that has enough celebrity to garner attention? Will corporate media allow any other voices? And when will we be smart enough to demand better?