The Internet and Sleeping Dogs

Me in My Early Years Online

The problem with the online world is that is has presented us with a way to reconstitute the ghosts of the past. Yes, now we can reconnect with folks we may have gone to college with, known in high school or even grown up with as children. On its face(book), this doesn't seem like such a bad idea. I have both uncovered friends of long ago and been discovered by them. It's a heady reunion at first. We exchange excited emails, reminisce, catch-up. Then the weird part sets in. Email is not like snail mail. It's too fast and easy. My best friend in high school isn't necessarily someone I want to talk to every day, once a week, or even once a month. Why? Other than our past shared experiences, we no longer have anything in common.

This is probably more true for alternative folks than for traditional people. I'm not saying that my old junior high and high school friends weren't fun. We hung out, went to see our favorite bands, skipped school, shoplifted, did drugs together. Good times. But, even then there were red flag warnings letting me know that my life would be different from theirs. They were attracted to guys and I was not. They wanted marriage and children, the whole package. It made me gag. Around 1967, when I was in High School, I saw Gloria Steinem, for the first time ever, on the Phil Donohue Show. She spoke of a new movement called Women's Liberation. It was an aha moment! I thought, oh my god, I'm not alone. The lesbian thing hadn't really hit me yet, but I knew that the idea of subjugating my self, my ideas and personality, to a male was not going to work for me.I'd read all the stupid articles in Seventeen Magazine that talked about how you needed to pretend you were genuinely interested in your guy's football team in order to "catch" him. Why didn't he feign to share my interests as well? Questions like this weren't supposed to be asked.

When I told my high school friends about my feelings, my theories, my new ideas, they listened politely but they weren't driven by the same forces. I became Joan, their odd friend, the "women's libber." When we meet up via the internet they have husbands, ex-husbands, pastors, kids, grandkids, American flags waving from the porches of tidy houses. They might become uneasy when I write about my partner, my politics, my friends, even a book that I'm reading. We exist on different sides of the looking glass. I feel at a loss to explain myself because, the road less traveled is not well documented on television or in magazines.

I still care about my old friends and wish them all the best. But as people grow their paths diverge. I now have renewed respect for sleeping dogs of my history, having acquired a larger perspective regarding what lulled them into slumber in the first place. There are sound and valid reasons for leaving the past behind. That's a lesson I'm still learning.

100 Year Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Bodies of Some Who Jumped

 March 25, 2011 marks 100 years since 146 young immigrants, mostly girls and women of European-Jewish origin, jumped to their deaths or burned to death at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City. All of the dead were ages 16-23. The factory occupied the eighth through tenth floors of the building, too high for the ladders of the fire-fighters to reach. Most of the dead worked on the ninth floor. A bookkeeper had warned the managers, who worked on the tenth floor, of the danger. They were able to escape via the roof. Those on the eighth floor could head down a stairway that proved to be inaccessible to those above. Women could not access the fire escape because they were locked in. The rationale for this was that it prevented workers from taking unnecessary breaks and pilfering materials!


Union Mourners

 As a result of the fire deaths, the factory owners were charged with manslaughter but the jury, which deliberated for less than two hours, found them not guilty. Twenty-three individual suits were filed by family members of the dead. In the end, the families were awarded just 75 dollars per life lost. After the incident, the Triangle Waist Company fell into financial decline and eventually locked its doors for good.

The movement to protect workers spread like wildfire after that disaster. Trade unions formed and membership in them grew to unprecedented levels. This union movement peaked during the 1940's, an era when strikes protesting working conditions closed down both factories and entire cities. In the US in 1945, 35.5% of workers were represented by unions. Since that time membership has steadily declined along with wages and protections.

Today working people are facing a concerted right-wing effort to drive the nail into the coffin of those hard-won rights and protections. Many, like the Triangle workers who gave their their lives. The sacrifice of so many must not be forgotten. It's a struggle as crucial and relevant today as it was 100 years ago.

The High Cost of Being an Artist

Parents are notorious at discouraging children from undertaking any risky venture that involves creativity. Yet when a child of the upper-middle class says Mom, Dad, I want to be a poet, a novelist, a musician or a painter, Mom and Dad are likely to say, "It's going to be an uphill climb dear, but we'll support you."  Even as they stress the idea of having something else to fall back upon, they will often demonstrate their support by offering tuition to good colleges, introduction to friends in that field or just plain encouragement.

On the other hand, when a child of the working-class expresses the same sentiment, Mom, Dad, Auntie, Gramma or Guardian are likely to say, "Just get yourself a frickin' job!" only a slight paraphrase of what my father said to me!

Now, as the Republicans agressively move to defund National Public Radio we must consider the prohibitively high cost of art and what a bleak society we would live in without it.

Artists catapult society in new and innovative directions but too often the necessity of economic survival precludes and obliterates the desire to contribute something beautiful, thought-provoking or gut-wrenching to a regimented world. And that is not only sad on an individual level, it is everyone's loss.

Visualize for a moment, a universe where people are paid to contribute art, writing, music, theater and dance. In Cuba they called them "cultural workers" and they were educators as well, teaching people to think of a larger life beyond the boundaries of humdrum daily existence. A place where people don't have to be retired, disabled, sick or financial daredevils in order to reach for their dreams.

It is a world worth imagining. 

Zero Tolerance for Intolerance

A handful of high-profile, media "progressives," John Stewart and Stephen Colbert leading the pack, have been promoting a harmful ideology that proposes that any display of anger, passion or deep emotional engagement in political struggle is out of control, unbecoming, and essentially wrong. In their own words, it is "insane."This fallacy, illustrated by the Stewart/Colbert "rally to restore sanity" equates T-(yranny) Party wackos like Glen Beck and Sarah Palin and their impaired followers with leftist activists who are speaking out for the fair treatment workers, immigrants, LGBT, people of color, the disabled etc. and equates them with right-wingers who want to curb or eliminate civil rights.

In the LGBT community this tactic is obvious and particularly destructive, especially with the burgeoning renaissance of the "culture war." Obviously, queers are still a hot button hate issue for many in this country. Denying us access to marriage, medical coverage and an end to job discrimination on an across the board federal level is still a distant dream. The recent decision by the US Supreme Court that defended the rights Fred Phelps to allow his hateful army of imbeciles to bring their disgusting signs to funerals of gay people is an interesting example.  While I acknowledge that the erosion of the right of free speech is a slippery slope, I do wonder what the decision might have been if the roles were reversed and queers were seeking the right to harass and intimidate them. Although these Baptist Bullies have the right to appear with their signs, their ignorance should not be accepted on any level or equated with our protests on the other side. There should be zero tolerance for intolerance. Free speech is one issue, but the war against LGBT folks, women immigrants, people of color, the working class is real and tangible and should not be "tolerated" on any level.

Obama, who has recently stirred a bit from his long, winter's nap, in eliminating Don't Ask Don't tell and instructing his administration's justice department to cease its defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. We know that the amount of ambivalence with which he approaches the LGBT rights struggle is considerable. His erratic belief system that supports civil unions, but not marriage, hospital visitation but not full health insurance for partners, opens a window on his contradictory and muddled thinking. Is he in the process of re-evaluating his personal web of sophistry. A little dose of equality is like being declared partially dead. Either you are or you are not. At this point we have to put our faith in that long arc of the universe which will eventually be bending in our direction. 

Nuclear Workers in Japan Face the Greatest Danger

Nuclear Power Plant Workers

Like many of you, I've spent a large part of the last few days watching the Japanese disaster unfold. The accuracy of the picture we are getting has been called into question by some in the nuclear field as in this article by Ron Freeman, an engineer trained in Nuclear Physics. Rachel Maddow has also made reference to previous inaccurate reporting and cover-ups by the Japanese government regarding past nuclear incidents.

At this juncture, scientists are hoping for something less horrific than the Chernobyl incident. It's important to note that, while vast numbers of people are being negatively impacted by the present situation, it is the nuclear plant employees who are in the greatest danger.Their jobs will likely cost many of them their lives. Although we aren't sure exactly what is actually happening in Japan, or even whether or not the news reports are reliable, we do know that a simliar scenario is entirely possible in California where we have the same deadly combination of nuclear power plants, earthquake fault and tsunami potential.

The only optimistic note is that perhaps this disastrous event will mark the beginning of the end of the nuclear industry.

Fascism or Nuclear Holocaust?

Maybe we'll have both...Between Walker's walking all over the rights of the people of Wisconsin and the danger of meltdowns from Japan's earthquake and tsunami-damaged nuclear reactors, we are being Fukushima'd up down and sideways. Tractors driven by agricultural workers and the largest crowd ever, estimated at 180,000 protesters, descended on the Capitol in Madison and filled the rotunda. Deafening cries of "Shame! Shame! echoed throughout the building as Walker overrode the democratic process entirely to sign his "budget repair bill" into law. This demonstration was the first since that travesty of justice. Protesters were joined by the 14 renegade Democratic senators who had returned home in the misplaced hope that they could negotiate with the Dairyland Dictator. The well-mannered and patient demonstrators sang a few choruses of "We Shall Overcome."

Passing and Presumption of Identity

Much has been written about the phenomenon of "passing" although that term is not often used. Recently, I've been reading some fiction where the protagonist (male, in these three instances) is a working-class person trying to pass as upper-middle class, or even as part of the aristocracy. These protagonists are sometimes psychotic, "The Talented Mr. Ripley," by Patricia Highsmith but mostly they are just regular schmucks struggling to get by: "The Secret History," by Donna Tartt and "Old School," Tobias Wolff.


Although in the above cases, "passing" requires a web of falsifications, the most common form of it doesn't take any effort whatsoever. In every day life, people tend to assume that the folks they interact with are just like themselves. So, since the majority of people are straight, are brought up in the Christian tradition, aspire to be perceived as young etc...all these labels will be automatically attributed to you, if you simply keep your mouth shut.


Working as a librarian, the assumption of a Christian background and identity is a constant one. Many people use the library simply for its computers and a myriad of folks want to read one book only and that book is The New Testament.


Queers have made a ritual of passing for centuries, sometimes for the sake of security or financial gain, other times for the simple sake of expediency. Coming out is still fraught with problems although the legal protections are greater now than ever before.

Even in the bad, old days, I made a point of coming out as gay at work. Not in the interview, mind you, but afterwards in order to be able to converse about something other than the weather. I paid a high price for this as I can attribute the loss of 3 jobs to some aspect of homophobia. However, it was more commonly a hassle rather than a danger. I had a co-worker who was quite dense. She was someone I had to come out to repeatedly because she just couldn't seem to remember that I was a lesbian. This would not have been bad, in and of itself, except that when I least expected it, I would be subjected to a diatribe against some flaw or failing she attached to lesbian/gay culture. I finally learned to just cut her off and say, "Pat, I'm the wrong person to try and get support for your feelings on this issue."

As an older person, I find being called, "young lady" offensive. I have lived and worked hard for these wrinkles, this perspective, this overview of the human condition that can only be derived from experience. I'd rather just be an old crone until I engage in the ultimate passing. Passing away.