More on Gender

Yesterday's post was lazy, I admit. I didn't make any connections or delve deeper. It be's like that sometimes.

I could have elaborated and said that there have times that I've felt like an honorary boy in my family and described what that meant. I could have talked about the limits that rigid gender roles created in the family, for both women and men. I could have written about gender perks that I enjoy (like usually having a young brother step up to lift my old lady cart onto the bus for me when it's heavy with groceries). I could have shared that I have this longing to be a gender outlaw when I'm really fairly boring in my gender expression.

Since I didn't do any of that, in today's post, I am sharing some of other folks' work about people who are transgender because I started thinking that to talk about gender roles, maybe you need to look at the gender line and people who've seen both sides of it.

Daisy Hernández wrote a very interesting article titled "Becoming a Black Man." It actually includes perspectives from both transmen and transwomen, as well as sharing snippets from individuals who are part of a few other communities of color. The bulk of the story does focus on the words of Black transmen.

Louis Mitchell described how he has had to change since transitioning:

Before transitioning, Mitchell recalls being “cavalier and reckless” about what he did in public and about his interactions with police officers. “I didn’t think about it so much,” he says about cops. “At some point they would find out I was female” and that would diffuse the situation. Now, Mitchell finds that he doesn’t engage in small transgressions like jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk. “I never know if they’re just waiting for something to happen to roll up, and I do not want find myself in custody. That would be just precarious and dangerous in so many ways.”

In the article, Monica Roberts shared that in addition to no longer being viewed as a "suspect," she has felt more powerful in the community:

Her father, a local radio commentator, tried to groom Roberts for leadership as his eldest child. Yet, it was only after transitioning that Roberts felt able to take on such a leadership role. Perhaps it was due to the toll that living in the “tranny closet” had taken on her self-esteem. But Roberts also noticed a difference in the responses she received from other people to her leadership as a Black woman. She got positive reactions, she says, “because I was basically doing the traditional work of Black women in the community in terms of uplifting the race.”

The following is the trailer for "still black," a documentary about Black transmen.



The blog post Trans Woman of Color Erasure & Objectification makes the point that transwomen of color are doing a lot of important work, though that might not be the impression you get if your only exposure is from the mainstream media. Another blog post, America’s Undeclared War On African American Trans Women, observes that Black transgender women are a target and that the violence is minimzed by the press and law enforcement.

Life is a many gendered thing

My family believes in gender roles. Strongly. Which you think would be a little difficult to do since we are a family of primarily women, but nevertheless true.

The Mucha (my absolutely adorable one and only nephew) is not even two years old yet. Countless times I've heard my grandmother remark "That's the boy in him" when he's done something. He throws his blocks around? "That's the boy in him." If you leave him in a queen size bed, he will have touched every square inch of it before morning. Why, you ask? "That's the boy in him." He pulls the folded laundry off the couch? "That's the boy in him." Really? Now, when the girls in my generation, say, ran around, talking to everybody and trying to take things away from people like my nephew does, no one said "That's the girl in them." Likely, they were labeled busybodies and everyone wished that they would just sit still. The Mucha sleeps much like I used to, yet all I remember is having people shake their heads and tell me how I slept wild.

This all annoys me to no end. I do not appreciate his world being circumscribed. I just don't.

Gender is a strange thing. Based on the appearance of their external genitalia we create these ideas of how babies should be and reinforce and shape their behavior accordingly. I want there to be a world where he feels that being a dainty ballerina is as possible as growling football player (okay, I'd prefer he not set himself up for bodily harm...but theoretically I mean). I'd like the gender police to leave folk alone.

The Bougie Princess of America (that would be The Mucha's mother...I swear I heard her call herself that once. I think she thinks it's a good thing), I'm pretty sure, has never mowed her lawn. She has no idea what yard tools are in her garage. She thinks this is The Way It Is Supposed To Be. Sometimes Princess worries me.

Unfortunately for the dear Mucha, this is not just confined to our family. We are but a symptom of the larger society. Good luck, child.

Lesson of the Day

I learn something new every day. Most of these lessons, I don't seek out. They just come to me on their own. Today I learned that broccoli is a flower, that those little green knobs atop the crown are flower buds. I didn't learn this in a gardening catalog, in an encyclopedia, or even from Wikipedia. I learned this as I went out into the garden this morning. My little florets are giving way to little yellow flowers. Oh, well. Supposedly those are edible too. Hopefully they're good.

Artists and Paying Bills

Last week I went to the India Arie concert at Chene Park. And it was a great concert...it was so good that even though she was forced to wrap it up mid-song due to rain that insisted on joining her onstage--even with that I was still happy and contented afterwards. But this post is not about dear, sweet India Arie who described how she almost lost the love of making music working in the recording industry.

As people were starting to fill the venue, Jessica Care Moore shared some of her poetry with us. One of her poems described her financial struggles. And there seems to be something wrong with her having to struggle to pay for her son's daycare bills. She has performed her work internationally. I first heard her perform in 1996. I was in New Jersey for the summer and we took a field trip to Amateur Night at the Apollo. I heard "Blackgirl Juice," which affected me enough that I talked about the poem, quoted a snippet on the little web page I had back then, and remembered her nearly a decade later when I heard her perform in Atlanta.

[I grabbed the poem below online, no guarantees that it's formatted properly here. But it is in her book, The Words Don't Fit in My Mouth (that link takes you to its page on Amazon)]


BLACKGIRL JUICE
By Jessica Care Moore

MAPLE syrup

In the morning

Brown sugar that sweetens
Cinnamon twists in apple cider
Magic Black dust is inside her

Wheat Bread with homemade spread
This Juice goes straight to the head
Coffee without dairy cream
Any man’s dream

Black cat That will bring you luck
Aphrodisiac you’d love to suck!
You wish! Black twisted licorice.
Cooking black-eyed peas.
Wearing black knee-high stockings
Black pump. Black hat. Black dress.
Black eyes.

This juice makes you wise
Allows the sun to shine
Black eagle. Black butterfly.
Black tears she sometimes cries
But one sip and you’ll believe
Braided hair natural cut or curly weave

Nails with acrylic tips, and wide-shaped hips
Most men fiend to hump her
Nails cut off she has a nice touch on her jumper.

Revolutionary waters she’s your mother,
Auntie, sister-friend and daughter
You oughta recognize her eyes

She rolls them when she’s mad and
she keeps her eyes wide open whe she makes love
cause she’s bad to the BONE!
Blackgirl Juice is a nutrititional boost
Bananas Strawberries and Melanin Nectar
No average man can affect her

Ingredients are Spicy-Mild-Sweet
Burns your tongue like an Jalapeno
Pepper steak with authentic chopsticks

First round draft pick. Black Afro Pic.
The one with the fist!
Tight.
Deep.
Loose.
Have you ever tasted Black Girl Juice?
You might want to pour some inside a jar
let it linger on your top lip
take it on a trip

or dab small circles of it on your wrists ankles or ears
And if you’re daring enough to ask…..
I’ve got some Black Girl Juice
If you have an empty glass

Transition and change...

Someone said that when we transition and become ancestors, we become more than we were and what remains of us is not faults, only our greatness. I don't know if I believe this on a regular day, but that's what I'm feeling today.

Bus Update

I spoke with the supervisor this morning. She confirmed that there was no policy prohibiting passengers from using headphones. Additionally she was really interested to learn that the driver had been on his cell phone. It turns out that DDOT has a policy that drivers should not use headphones or cell phones. I was able to give her all the necessary information (bus number, route number, direction traveling, and time) so she will be following up with this. I was transferred to an agent who collected my personal information and apologized on behalf of DDOT and thanked me for calling because if no one calls, they will not know. I also have a complaint number to use to follow up on this issue.

That is good customer service.

Speaking of buses: there is an organization called Transportation Riders United (TRU). I don't have any experience with them, but their focus is public transportation in the metropolitan area. They are organizing action kickoff meetings throughout the region (see below). I won't be able to attend the meeting next Tuesday, but I do plan to look into who they are and what they are doing and seeing if that might be something I should get involved in.

Not my day for customer service

So yesterday just really was not my day for customer service. In addition to my fun at the bike shop, I got to have fun on the bus.

I had to wait 20 minutes for a bus, but it was a good 20 minutes. I had beautiful weather, a radio on my cell phone, and a pleasant enough stranger waiting at the stop with me. My easy contentment was squashed by the bus driver.

Before I could even greet him, he demanded that I remove my headphones. He claimed that the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) has a new rule that forbids headphones. I asked him for literature on the rule. He did not have any. I asked the reason for the rule. He said (repeatedly) that five people on a bus listening to loud music can distract a driver. I asked how my listening to my radio quietly would be a problem. He insisted that it disturbed him. He further stated that the problem came from people not keeping their volume to a reasonable level. When I asked why those people weren't the ones affected then, he dodged the question and told me that he didn't make the rules.

Not having my radio to keep me entertained, I got to soak up the full sounds of the bus. Like the really loud ringtones of some passengers. There were the three LOUD cell phone conversation that lasted nearly the whole time I was on the bus. My favorite sound was the sing-along that involved a line something like "I'm an 80s baby and my parents say I'm crazy." During all this, I and the woman who got on with me kept looking at each other "And our headphones would disturb him? For real?"

Then, of course, the kicker: that driver, who claimed headphones would distract him, got on his cell phone and talked for 15 minutes. Riiiight. Not only was he annoying me, he was endangering my life (the effect of cell phone use on a driver is similar to the effect of alcohol).

Me being me, I called in (FYI DDOT is at 313-933-1300). The customer service agent I spoke with knew of no new rule. She read me the only rule she had regarding headphones. It stated that headphones must be used to listen to electronic devices on the bus. Mmmhmm.

Unfortunately, the supervisor was not available so I will be calling back in the morning.

Really, I'm wondering if I should have forced the issue. If I had refused to take the headphones off and then refused to be put off the bus, what would have happened? Hmm...I ask because I'm not so sure I would be willing to take the bus if I couldn't listen to my radio. While I was sitting on that bus, the more I thought about it, the more I was sure that I should not have to make that choice. And once again that brought me to that fact that the bus service we get in metro-Detroit is ridiculous and we really need to do something about that.

Customer Service

I am very serious about customer service. I do not like to spend money. I try to spend the least amount of money that I possibly can. Don't ask me what I think will happen, but I just like feeling like if I needed or even just really wanted to buy something I could, without hesitation. So when I do spend my money, I like to give it to vendors who treat me well.

I went into the bike shop down by WSU...it's a small business, the kind of place I want to support. It's actually in the city. It's in a convenient location for me. They grew out of work done with a community youth group. They used to hold bike repair classes (they may still, their website is out of date). They're big on repairing and reusing. And they're cheap. Last year I had them do brake adjustments for me. There was a $5 charge. So all around it sounds good and I want to support them.

But, dear people, I am ornery. Even with all that, I still need good customer service. After walking 20 minutes in the sweltering heat and patiently waiting while three other people get their (slow) business handled, I want my turn and I want it with a smile. I don't want the scrunchy face when I say I need new tires--20", yes I said 20". I don't want you assuming I need installation. If I'm here to buy tires and I've told you I didn't bring the bike, that means I want to buy the tires and am perfectly capable of putting them on myself. I don't want my questions brushed aside and to be asked to wait while someone who came in after me and wants a complete overhaul gets checked in so he can go to work. I don't want to wait for you to handle his business and then wait again while you go upstairs to find the tires you think are up there. I myself need to get back to work.

And, obviously, I need to find someone a little more willing to sell me a couple of tires.

What does it take?

We will be having yet another primary in August.

In the special mayoral election in May, we had 95,477 votes counted (about 15% of registered voters). Many people may have decided that voting for someone to finish mere months of another's term was not worth the effort. And yet, even in the historic presidential election, only 53% of registered Detroiters voted.

What will be on the ballot?

• mayoral candidates
  
• 167 people vying for nine city councils seats, with the top 18 vote-getters making onto the November ballot
• school board candidates
• candidates for city clerk
  
• Possibly commissioners to revise the city charter (though this actually might not be legally on the ballot...check out this story from The Michigan Citizen)

Will we vote? We have a scandal upon scandal in city government, with several members of council accepting campaign contributions from individual representing companies trying to get contracts with the city; a public school system that fails entirely too many of our children; what can seem like imaginary city services, especially if you've ever tried to call the police and expected them to come; and rampant financial incompetence. And yet we are not voting. As a city we seem to have stopped believing that it matters. And if we don't believe that it matters, the politicians can get away with anything.

So what does it take? What can get the masses in Detroit motivated to do something about city government? What change do we need?

Happy Fathers Day

Friday I caught an NPR broadcast of StoryCorps segment about an adoptive dad and his son. The piece truly resonated with me. I really enjoy the StoryCorps segments. The mission of the StoryCorps "is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening." Friends and family interview each other and the recordings are preserved at the Library of Congress.

Fathers Day sneaks up on me now. Suddenly it's here with greeting card displays jumping out at me. Even though I try not to be manipulated by the commercialism, it still makes me sad to not have Grandfather around to call on Fathers Day. It makes me sad to not have a father who's a dad. Which is one of the reasons I love to see Black men with their children. Last summer one of my neighbors was always walking his kids up to the rec center field for baseball games. Always smiled to see it. My parenting role model is this good brother who spent most of his twin sons' early years as a stay-at-home dad. And I have much, much respect for the babas who have learned how to comb hair (I'd have much respect for me if I learned how to do that as well).

These Are the People in My Neighborhood

I love my neighbors. I just do.

There's my 70-something next door neighbor who talks to me through her window if she sees me outside. She puts up quite a unique Christmas tree each year (decorations include a string of lights shaped like alcohol bottles and pink Cadillac ornaments...I really don't think I'm making this up, but it gets harder for me to believe as we get further and further away from Christmas).

There's the neighbor down the way who, feeling sorry for my poor little lawn, bought me a bag of grass seed to spread around (I'm doing my best really I am!). I actually have a few neighbors pulling for my yard. Another consults with her landscaper to get advice for me. When she came over to share his suggestions, she told me "you work so hard!"

There are the little kids who yell "Hi, Lisa!" whenever they see me walking my dog. Really, my name is not Lisa, I do not look like her, and my dog doesn't look anything like her dog. Still this makes me laugh. Every time.

Then there's the neighbor on the other side of the empty house. He takes turns with the man who lives on the other side of him mowing the lawn of the vacant house. And last year he gave me tomatoes and peppers from his garden. Oh, yeah, I have a pack of sunflower seeds for him. Must remember to pass those on.

Laying off Teachers and Having Parades

I love NPR. Not as much as I used to, but I still listen to Morning Edition most days. Wednesday there was an interesting pair of stories.

The first described how thousands of public school teacher in Los Angeles would be laid off due the budget deficit in California. Lay offs affect teachers with the least seniority the most. Since newer teachers are more likely to work in urban, low-income areas, these areas' schools will suffer the most. The NPR story was focused on John Liechty Middle School, which opened two years ago to be a model of innovative education. More than half of its teachers will be laid off. The principal is concerned that the more experienced teachers who will replace the teachers she's losing won't be as invested in the kids or the vision of the school.

The second blurb was about how the city was going to have a parade for the Lakers, after they won the NBA Championship in five games. Initially there were concerns that the city should not spend $2 million on the celebration as it was facing a massive operating deficit. The Lakers agreed to pay for half and private donors contributed another $850,000 to make sure that the parade happened.

Of course, my thought is who is approaching those donors and the well-paid Lakers players to sponsor some teacher salaries?

More New Taxes

Homeowners in Detroit pay high property taxes. I understand this: we have an ever-shrinking population yet still need to maintain infrastructure and city services (such as they are). I believe we should institute another tax: the vacant house tax.

The owner of any home that has been vacant for more than three months should pay the city $400 for every month that the property remains empty. This would serve as an incentive for mortgage companies not to foreclose, push families out onto the streets, and leave empty houses sitting in our neighborhoods. A portion of this revenue should be set aside for grants to neighborhood organizations.

Just what is this blog anyway?

It's been over a month since I began this blog and I still don't know. I have yet to figure out what I'm blogging about. Which is, I suppose, in keeping with the alecha theme. So, how about a recipe?

The measurements are random guesses, sorry. And it really tastes a little different each time. That's the best part. One time, throw in some ginger for fun. A tiny, tiny pinch of berbere sometimes. Whatever you're feeling on a given day.

Mamazi's Alecha
ingredients:
olive oil, 2 tablespoons
garlic, 4 cloves
red onions, 2 medium
tomatoes, 8 Roma (or other kind, but they must be ripe, preferably from the garden)
potatoes, 4 medium
carrots, 6 large
red bell peppers, 2 (skip if they're too expensive)
green bell peppers,2
cabbage, 1 head
rosemary (fresh is best, but if you have to use dried use rosemary leaves)
salt, optional, to taste

Remove the seeds and slice the bell peppers. Peel and cut the potatoes, keep them fairly good sized. Actually if you've got one of those ripple cutters, use it to thickly slice both the potatoes and the carrots.

In a pan with the least amount of olive oil you can get away with, lightly fry the potatoes, carrots, and bell peppers. You can cook these separately (probably best for keeping flavors distinct) or together (probably best for time). Do NOT overcook the peppers, you want them just a tiny bit brown in places but still crisp. In fact, you could just not cook them at all and that would be fine. The potatoes don't need to be thoroughly cooked either, a little browning on all sides is perfect. Blot the grease off of these and set them aside.

Heat the rest of the olive oil in a pot over low heat. Add the garlic, which you have either chopped extremely finely or pushed through a garlic press. Stir, allowing the garlic to uniformly brown. Add the onions (they should be chopped finely). Stir every now and then allowing the onions to brown. If they start to stick to the bottom of the pot, you have two options: add more oil or add a little water (go for the water). While that's going on, chop the tomatoes. Maybe chop is not the right term, you should basically use your knife to turn them into tomato sauce. Though, honestly, if you're a little lazy, no one will be able to tell once it's done. After the onions are browned, you'll add in the tomato sauce. You can also add a little salt here. Stir and simmer this for...maybe 10 minutes...

...while you prepare the cabbage. I like to cut mine in half (or quarters if it's a really large head) and slice it. I eat a piece of the cabbage heart. If it has a bitter taste, I leave the heart out. But that's just me. (I find I have to cook the cabbage too long otherwise. If I want to use the heart anyway and don't want to cook it so long, throwing in about 1/2 teaspoon of sugar works for me).

At this point, I throw in the rosemary. Stir and then put in the cabbage. Cook this until cabbage is almost done. At that point, add the potatoes. The once the cabbage is ready, put the carrots and bell peppers in and stir a few times.

Enjoy!

Tulips and Time

I probably had the deepest thought I'll ever have when I was four. I was waiting for my mom to pick me up from school; she was late and all my little classmates were gone. I began pondering time. I was particularly struck by its transitory nature and the elusiveness of "now." I was amazed by the fact that I couldn't hold a thought in that now...that that moment was gone as soon as I registered it.

What my four-year self didn't grasp was the beauty of the now. I planted tulips this past fall and they bloomed recently. The flowers lasted no more than two weeks before wilting and leaving spent, desolate stalks--but, oh, what a beautiful two weeks they were!

Polling Michigan on "Gay Issues"

Apparently Michiganders are slowly coming around on gay rights. There was an article in the Free Press that reported that a recently polls showed some interesting tidbits:

• 63.7% support civil unions (only 46.5% accept same-sex marriage, with 48% opposed to it)
  
• 57.5% support adoption rights
  
• 65.5% support same-sex partner benefits for government employees
  
• 70.9% support inheritance rights for gay and lesbian partners

And yet the 2004 proposition that amended Michigan's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, passed 61% to 24%.What is going on here??? Do the people represented in the poll not vote? Are they not really honest with pollsters? Has there really been that large a shift in public opinion?

In any event, this information really convinces me of two things (okay, I was already convinced, this just reinforces it):

1. While folks are feeling so open-minded I can think of some legislation that should be passed:

• the safe schools/anti-bullying law: school is so hard for some kids for so many reasons and with two young boys recently taking their own lives because they could no longer cope with harassment from their fellow students...we as a nation and we as a state need to be collectively outraged enough to protect our children
• nondiscrimination laws (and enforcement) need to protect LGBT persons from losing their housing and jobs
  

2. Government should not be in the business of marriages. If, for tax and other purposes, we must recognize unions between couples, let's just have civil unions for everyone. If folks want to get married, they can see their appropriate religious or social authority.

Grandfather and Gardening

My grandfather was a farmer (in miniature), with a half a city lot dedicated to his garden. He had his own tiller and at least twenty tomato cages. I remember the deep freezer in the basement, full of gallon-sized freezer bags of tomatoes. Once I dug a hole that was about five feet deep and began a compost pile. He preferred chemical fertilizers, but he let me tilt my windmill. One year we built a very solid, very sturdy trellis that stretched at least 15 feet. It supported the most wondrous pole beans. The next door neighbor complained about it; I thought it was genius. We talked other designs and blueprints that rattled through his head. He told me about his idea for a mechanism to lower the top of a convertible. That was the year I began to picture him as an engineer and wonder if he would have been if he had the opportunity.

After high school, I didn't help in the garden anymore. Summer classes, summer jobs, and finally moving out of state kept me away. He teased me about being too much into email to do any real work anymore. So it's been a very long time since I've coaxed food from dirt.

This year I started my garden. I spent hours upon hours removing sod (basically I pulled up lots and lots of grass with a spade). I joined the Garden Resource Program and have been hooked up with seeds, plants and all kinds of organic dreams. No pesticides for me. It's a small garden, half of my postage stamp backyard. And yet I feel like my Grandfather's child: I am a farmer. Today I cooked with basil that I harvested; my lettuce and spinach have been making appearances at my table; I know now what a potato plant looks like; and I do believe that this is the week that I cook home-grown kale.

Slumdogs in the Post-racial World

First off, I will admit that I think too much. Now that we have that out of the way...

Last night I went to see Slumdog Millionaire (I recognize I may have been one of the last people to see the movie, which won eight Academy Awards and has already been out on DVD for a good long while). I thought it was a really good movie and really thought-provoking. What I was especially struck by was how the movie was set up as a "feel good" love story. One would think this would be hard to pull off, given such plot elements as religious violence, police violence (including a torture scene--there's your "enhanced interrogation techniques," people), and exploitation of children. And yet by its end, this movie has the star-crossed young lovers finally reunited and performing a Bollywood dance number with hundreds of people in the train station. *blink* So, we are to understand that this movie had a triumphant ending.

Towards the end of the movie, there's a scene after Jamal has been released from police custody. He has convinced them that somehow it is possible that a "mere slumdog" could have really answered the first day's quiz show questions and has been released to return for his second day on the show, after seemingly being tortured and kept awake all night. As he returns to the show, there is a groundswell of support for him, as people yell they love him and one woman says something like "go with my blessings, child." This is one of the few overt acknowledgements in the film that Jamal is not alone, that he belongs to a social context, that his struggles are not the lone cowboy kind of struggles which are unique to him, but struggles of the people who live where he lives, who are from where he is from.

What this made me think of is this (false, I'd say) idea that the triumph of one (or a few) means that the group has transcended traditional barriers so everything is all good now. A reversal of that famous phrase whereby the political is made personal and can be overcome on an individual basis. Hmm. So I started considering what "post-racial" means and how some people can believe it is reality signaled by the election of the first African American president. This is hard for me to accept as a fact, given the vast discrepancies that still exist between Americans of different ethnicities in terms of education, wealth, income, life expectancies, unemployment, child mortality rates, etc. Hmmm.

Breath of Hope

I'm trying to blog everyday, but today I'm a little more contemplative than usual and not quite sure where to go with it...instead I'll share an article from FLYP media (a multimedia web magazine) about Detroit, called Breath of Hope. It focused on efforts by various groups to reimagine our our city. Enjoy.

Midsummer Nights in Midtown

Detroit is a pretty good place. We've got our issues and our struggles, but it is a good place. I suppose home should always be.

Anyway before I get all carried away with the hometown love, I wanted to post a link to the schedule for Midsummer Nights in Midtown, a series of free cultural events in Midtown Detroit (the area around Wayne State/the Cultural Center...no idea when it became "Midtown"). It seems to be a replacement to the Detroit Festival of the Arts which is no longer being held. While I always pause when people leave "Detroit" out of any title, there look to be a lot of great options on the schedule. It starts this week and continues every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in June. June 4th, Theo Huxtable performs urban jazz/funk! Okay, so it's Malcolm-Jamal Warner, but I plan to go see the man because he used to play Theo. Hopefully he really can play the guitar.

I never expected to own...a car company

It's been 13 years since I owned a car. While I sometimes miss the convenience of a car, overall I like contributing less to the emissions of greenhouse gas; I enjoy being able to read or knit during my commute; I feel enriched by that slice of life you get when you ride the bus. The other day one of the 204 people running for Detroit City Council was on the bus trying to talk to voters. Not something you get to experience driving to work alone.

It's been 13 years since I owned a car, so owning a car company comes as a shock. I admit to not being excited about this at first. I wasn't angry like I was when the bailout package passed Congress. Being from Detroit gives me a certain weak spot for the auto industry. Still I didn't see the point of owning an entity and then "streamlining" it to make it "competitive," i.e. cut yet more jobs. Aside from nostalgia, I also don't see the point of having jobs with the automakers when those jobs are no longer secure, high paying, coupled to excellent benefits, nor leading to a guaranteed retirement package. So I was not happy to learn that we now own 60% of General Motors.

That, of course, was because I am not quite visionary. When President Obama stated that we would be just another investor, I grumbled and got stuck right there. Michael Moore did not get stuck, in his post Goodbye, GM, he laid out a beautiful vision for what ownership of GM can mean. And it has absolutely nothing to do with being a silent investor with deep pockets, but no input. He suggested we retool those closed auto plants and use all those laid off skilled workers to build bullet trains to connect our nations cities. I so love this idea. There's symmetry here: fast, efficient, convenient public transportation being built on the ashes of the automative giant's discarded resources.

How do you teach peace?

I want to be a pacifist. I'm not there yet, but I want to be. I'm currently reading a biography of Fannie Lou Hamer and am in awe of the nonviolent movement that was waged for voting rights in face of the violence of Mississippi. But I feel the sense of Ida B. Wells's advice "a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home." The question, I guess, becomes at what cost do you defend your physical life. What spiritual and social costs are there to violence? Honestly I don't know. I suspect that the world will change through peace and through love, not through weapons. I have this idea that violence twists the soul of a people. I have this idea that force does not show who is right, only who is stronger. And maybe just who is alive.

And, like Ida B. Wells, I believe there is something to be said for being alive. Though I'm not quite sure what.

These incoherent musings were sparked by the murder of George Tiller. He was a doctor who provided healthcare to women, including abortions. He performed late-term abortions. He was killed while handing out the service bulletin to parishioners at his church. His assassin was an anti-abortion extremist (check out this article from Time). I originally typed "pro-life extremist," but I corrected it because obviously one who would end a life is not pro-life.

In the wake of the murder, the Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered U.S. Marshals to protect clinics and doctors who provide abortion services (see this article from the Washington Post).

Returning to the subject of this post, I'm just wondering how to build peace and reflecting on a piece by Sonia Sanchez: