You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
in any direction you choose.
You’re on your own.
And you know what you know.
You are the guy
who’ll decide where to go…~Dr. Seuss,
“Oh! The Places You’ll Go!”
"As the World Keeps Turning..." HckySo, http://www.flickr.com/photos/hckyso/2617407808/
I am still getting caught up on all my Old School Friday colleagues’ posts from last week and here it is Friday again. So, I’ll make this a quick one. The theme is “Out of My Box“—our opportunity to post songs that are outside of our comfort zone. I am not sure I really have a comfort zone, as I’ll try any music at least once.
My playlist features a country and western legend—Johnny Cash. One time when we were traveling by car we stopped off at a Cracker Barrel and picked up Johnny Cash’s greatest hits as a gag gift for someone. We ended up playing the CD in the car and loving it. We had to buy a different gift.
Also featured are a couple of versions of Prince songs by people I might otherwise have never listened to. Not only am I a huge Prince fan, but I am fascinated by cover versions so these tunes fit both bills.
"Baby in a Box." QwirkSilver, http://www.flickr.com/photos/qwirksilver/5418906/
So, listen—enjoy! And happy Old School Friday!
“Mommy, some boys on the bus were singing a song that was very inappropriate.”
“Oh, really? How did it go?”
“There once was a genie
With a ten-foot weenie
And he went to the grocery store;
They thought it was a snake
So they whacked it with a rake,
And now it’s two foot four”
The decision by the California Supreme Court upholding last November’s Proposition 8 outcome is on-line in its entirety. It is 185 pages long, but not too complicated to understand.
The gist of the decision is not nearly as dire as some reports are making it out to be. This is not an against-marriage-equity thing; It is a procedural thing. Further, it is a California thing.
California is a funky place to do democracy. From the decision transcript (available here):
In considering this question, it is essential to keep in mind that the provisions of the California Constitution governing the procedures by which that Constitution may be amended are very different from the more familiar provisions of the United States Constitution relating to the means by which the federal Constitution may be amended. The federal Constitution provides that an amendment to that Constitution may be proposed either by two-thirds of both houses of Congress or by a convention called on the application of two-thirds of the state legislatures, and requires, in either instance, that any proposed amendment be ratified by the legislatures of (or by conventions held in) three-fourths of the states. In contrast, the California Constitution provides that an amendment to that Constitution may be proposed either by two-thirds of the membership of each house of the Legislature or by an initiative petition signed by voters numbering at least 8 percent of the total votes cast for all candidates for Governor in the last gubernatorial election, and further specifies that, once an amendment is proposed by either means, the amendment becomes part of the state Constitution if it is approved by a simple majority of the voters who cast votes on the measure at a statewide election.
As is evident from the foregoing description, the process for amending our state Constitution is considerably less arduous and restrictive than the amendment process embodied in the federal Constitution, a difference dramatically demonstrated by the circumstance that only 27 amendments to the United States Constitution have been adopted since the federal Constitution was ratified in 1788, whereas more than 500 amendments to the California Constitution have been adopted since ratification of California’s current Constitution in 1879. [Emphasis added; Citations removed for ease of reading]
Get that? Twenty seven versus 500+—in a much more expanded time frame, even. What happens now is that the fight will go on. And that fight must be, in my opinion, also on the procedural front and settled as a matter of constitutionality. I respect that many people are fighting the battle to change hearts and minds. But that can take a loooong time—if it ever happens fully at all. The dissenting opinion frames the way forward as a matter of the principle of equal protection:
The equal protection clause is therefore, by its nature, inherently countermajoritarian. As a logical matter, it cannot depend on the will of the majority for its enforcement, for it is the will of the majority against which the equal protection clause is designed to protect.… [Emphasis added]
In other words, the rights of a minority group, who is discriminated against by a majority, cannot be decided by the decision of that majority. The dissenting opinion concludes:
…Proposition 8 represents an unprecedented instance of a majority of voters altering the meaning of the equal protection clause by modifying the California Constitution to require deprivation of a fundamental right on the basis of a suspect classification. The majority’s holding is not just a defeat for same-sex couples, but for any minority group that seeks the protection of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.
This could not have been the intent of those who devised and enacted the initiative process. In my view, the aim of Proposition 8 and all similar initiative measures that seek to alter the California Constitution to deny a fundamental right to a group that has historically been subject to discrimination on the basis of a suspect classification, violates the essence of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution and fundamentally alters its scope and meaning. Such a change cannot be accomplished through the initiative process by a simple amendment to our Constitution enacted by a bare majority of the voters; it must be accomplished, if at all, by a constitutional revision to modify the equal protection clause to protect some, rather than all, similarly situated persons. I would therefore hold that Proposition 8 is not a lawful amendment of the California Constitution. [Emphasis added]
So the beat goes on. I have said elsewhere that this is the time for marriage equality. I think that there is a momentum, an arc of history, that is bending toward it. And I think that those who oppose same-sex marriage—no matter how passionately or sincerely they feel it—are on the wrong side of history on this one.
Time will tell. But I am not weeping.
It’s my understanding that Judge Sotomayor’s interest in the law was sparked as a young girl by reading the Nancy Drew series — and that when she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eight, she was informed that people with diabetes can’t grow up to be police officers or private investigators like Nancy Drew. And that’s when she was told she’d have to scale back her dreams….
~President Barack Obama, on his nomination of
Judge Sonia Sotomayor as Supreme Court Justice
"Underground Railroad Museum, exterior." PPR_Scribe
The woman painting my nails, several miles to the north of the National Underground Railroad Museum and Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, told me she had never been to the museum. But she thought it was a good idea. She was Black. I had no words to tell her what visiting the museum had meant to me. I did want to scold her for living a stone’s throw from the building but never having been there. Then I thought it inappropriate for many reasons, not least of which was because there I was on my Memorial Day weekend, celebrating my freedom by getting a $40 manicure. Who was I to scold. So I said nothing. She asked me how much it was to get in. I told her I could not recall, but that children and seniors get in for a reduced rate.
I chose A Ouibit of Red for my nails.
"View From Freedom." PPR_Scribe
Did anyone visiting that day catch the symbolism of this view from the museum’s grand hall? Across the vast, open space I could see the Ohio River, and beyond that, Kentucky. Once, a river separated enslavement from freedom. A few generations separated me from feeling the relief ancestors must have felt looking back from the Ohio side. Behind me as I was getting this shot a group of field tripping high school students—Black, White and Hispanic—were relating to their museum guide what they learned about the major cash crops the enslaved Africans harvested. They recited words by rote memory and the guide, a young Black woman, praised each answer—even the incorrect ones.
"Juxtapose." PPR_Scribe
I went through the museum reading the posted plaques. I opted against the recorded self-tour after being somewhat put off by the actors’ voices portraying US slavery-era Blacks. They sounded like cartoon characters. The woman who took our money and gave us our tickets (reduced price for children and seniors) had given us the children’s tour. I wondered if the voices on the adult self guided tour sounded any different.
I was somewhat annoyed by the juxtapositions of new and shiny and gleaming, and old (or, in many cases, replications of old). I walked inside the slave pen. Inside the pen was myself and (I am assuming by their dress) an Amish family. There were seven of us inside the log walls of the pen. I tried to imagine the pen filled with three, four, five times that number for days, weeks, months at a time. I could not imagine.
I was cataloging my reactions—for later retelling to friends and family back home and to visitors to this blog. “Antiseptic” was a word I kept using in my head. The actual artifacts were walled away in protective glass in a protective enclosed atmosphere in order to preserve them for future generations. The replicas were made to look old, but I have seen enough episodes of home shows on HGTV to know how they were likely artificially aged. Everything was clean. Antiseptic.
"Through Time." PPR_Scribe
This time line marched history along a curved wall in perfect, orderly, well-lit fashion. The years in between were lost. The vastness of those years was also lost.
I imagined a walk outside the grounds of the museum and throughout the city’s downtown. Each decade would be a half mile or so on the path, with markers all the way telling of the key events and figures and laws and battles and speeches. People would walk along the path, hopefully growing tired before they even reached the Civil War.
Yet… That would probably still be fairly antiseptic. There would probably be several Dippin Dots kiosks along the time line path.
"Point of View, 1." PPR_Scribe
I thought a lot about the field trip groups making their way through the museum. Several of the exhibits were life sized. This allowed the children to literally place themselves into the exhibits.
A group of preteen boys that I followed through several rooms were having an extended discussion about what weapons they would have used to break free from slavery. Here, two of the boys caressed the barrel of the rifle and said they would have over powered this single guard and stolen his weapon and killed him and ran away “up North.”
One of the boys decided that he would have hidden a knife in his pants. Then another boy became enthralled by a long machete depicted in another exhibit and decided he would rather wield that weapon.
I longed to tell them all to STFU, but their chaperon was only steps behind me. She, a White woman, was listening to the self-guided tour. She appeared to be crying.
"Point of View, 2." PPR_Scribe
Another school group came through as I was lining up these shots. One of the boys ran over to the seated men and exclaimed, “Oh, lookit! I’m a slave!”
His classmate, a girl, looked at him with disdain and said, “You retard! Being a slave wasn’t a good thing!”
The boy stood up, glancing at me as he did. I suppose I gave him a look, or perhaps it was his rebuke by the girl (who he had probably been trying to impress). But he stopped smiling and laughing and walked quickly away from the exhibit.
I thought the girl’s choice of words could have been better. Hers were not more enlightened than the rifle-choosing boy who told the potential knife wielder that his own choice of weapon was “so gay.”
But at least she had words. Apparently I just had a look.
I sat next to one of the life-sized seated men and took my shot.
One of the exhibits appeared at first to just be a darkened room with a large clear center column containing what looked like thousands of colored glass beads. I walked through quickly, in search of my children who I thought had gone on ahead of me. I found one with her grandfather, then returned through the room to search for my other child. I found her looking at the time line with her father.
I walked back through the darkened room. I stopped this time to look. The plaque said that the room was dedicated to all the Africans who did not make the Middle Passage with their lives. The colored beads were meant to represent them, because their names have—like their lives—been lost. I walked back through the room and suddenly burst into tears. I stood in a corner and silently cried for a few moments before catching up with my daughter and my father-in-law.
I amended my mental blog post to remove the word antiseptic.
"Young Witness." PPR_Scribe
My children also cried. One cried while reading the account of Margaret Garner, the woman on whose account Toni Morrison’s Beloved is based. She told me through her tears…it was so terrible…why would a mother do something like that?
I tried to explain that this shows how horrible slavery was, that a mother would rather her children be dead than return to be slaves. Could she imagine how horrible that must have been? She told me she hated slavery, and I was glad.
Both cried during a short film that used actors to portray a mother, her young daughter, and teenaged son about to be separated as the young man prepared to run away from his family and the plantation.
I almost did not go into the little theater, prepared to be annoyed at the actors. But I, too, cried. We hugged each other and remained seated for a few moments after the film credits ended. I asked my daughters if they wanted to ask me anything about the film. One said, “It was all just so sad.” I was happy that she was sad. All I said was that I agreed.
My other daughter wondered if the young man in the film made it. I reminded her that this was just a reenactment, but that some Blacks made it and some did not.
They wanted to go upstairs to the fourth floor to the genealogy center to “look up all of Paw-Paw’s brothers and sisters.” But it was nearly time for us to leave. We went through one other exhibit, then headed for the gift shop.
One daughter chose as her souvenir a fair trade beaded bracelet made somewhere in South America. She opted for no bag, immediately put it on her wrist, and remembered without me telling her to say “thank you” to her grandparents for buying it for her.
One daughter chose a finger puppet of Harriet Tubman. She picked Tubman over the finger puppet of Frederick Douglass, someone who I think was supposed to be Che Guevara, and several other figures I could not readily identify. The puppet was affixed with a magnet so that, I suppose, after you are finished putting your finger up through Black Moses’s skirt and lodging it into her head, you can use her to put your shopping list up on the refrigerator.
I was troubled by this thought and tried to convince my daughter to look at the free trade bracelets that her sister had already chosen from. But she was having none of it. She wanted the Harriet Tubman finger puppet with a passion.
Her grandparents bought it for her. She opted out of the bag, immediately putting the puppet on her index finger. She thanked her grandparents and ran out of the gift store. All the way to our car in the parking garage she extolled us, with the Tubman puppet held up high, to follow her to freedom. She managed a surprisingly accurate quoting: I freed a thousand slaves; I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves…
Although…her finger puppet Harriet Tubman’s words sounded much like Professor Minerva McGonagal talking to Harry Potter about the adequacy of his incantations at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Before I could become annoyed, I told myself that at least my daughter knew the words. That’s a start.
***More photographs from the National Underground Railroad Museum and Freedom Center***
"since it's memorial day." paul goyette, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pgoyette/155820893/
At dawn a mother gazes not at the sun rising over the High Plains, nor the purplish snows of Pikes Peak. She sits in her study staring at a laptop, because the place on earth she feels closest to her fallen soldier is cyberspace.
Dane was her first-born, the boy who always wanted to follow his dad into the Army. Even after she tried to talk him out of it. Even after — especially after — his nation went to war. He left for Iraq in July 2007. Less than two months later, he was killed by a roadside bomb. He was 19.
This morning his mother, Carla Sizer, logs on to Legacy.com’s “In Remembrance” section. Spc. Dane Balcon, like thousands of other servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, has his own memorial page. There are several obituaries, a musical tribute, 176 photos and a “guest book” with almost 1,200 messages posted by relatives, friends, neighbors, schoolmates, comrades and total strangers.
Carla visits the site first thing every morning, coffee in hand, and last thing at night, in her pajamas. She visits during the day (the site is bookmarked on her iPhone). She leaves a message or reads those posted by others. She calls up a photo of Dane and touches it on the screen with her fingers. At times like these, she says, “I know he’s smiling down. It keeps me going in the right direction.”
The Internet is changing how Americans remember the war dead. This Memorial Day, Carla and tens of thousands of others will turn to such memorial websites to mourn, honor and recall departed members of the military services…. (Source)
"Advice." laughlin, http://www.flickr.com/photos/wurzle/659315/
**UPDATED**
I am doing something a little different this week for Old School Friday. By the time this week’s theme comes out, I will be out of town and away from my computer. So, I have prepared an OSF post in advance and am scheduling it for release Friday for your listening and reading pleasure.
I have also come up with my own theme. It is said we live in an information age. I actually think we live in an opinion age, as true “information” is a lot harder to come by than someone’s guess, opinion, estimation, or advice. As such, there is a flourishing of advice columns, offering opinions to people who write or email in to request it. Well, thought I, why should Old School Friday not get in on this gig? After all, there is no question or quandary that a little music cannot answer. However, because no one has actually written in to PPR Scribe asking for my two cents, I have simply appropriated the questions from other folks’ advice columns.
First up is an advice seeker from Dan Savage’s popular Savage Love column. There are no profound reasons why I chose this particular question. It is just one of the few questions from Mr. Savage’s column appropriate for this PG-13-rated blog. A newlywed tells Dan:
My wife and I have been married for eight months, and I love her very much. However, we don’t have sex much, maybe three times a month. We’ve seen a therapist a few times, and it hasn’t changed anything. I still love her, but my needs haven’t been met and I’m frustrated. Due to my frustration, I posted an ad on Craigslist—not to cheat but to just get some erotic interaction via the web. I only sent a few pictures back and forth. However, my wife found the e-mails. I apologized and said I never wanted to be with anyone but her, but that I just wanted to feel like I was desired. My wife has asked me to move out for a while, which I did.
Are we effed? I know what I did was horrible, but I want to make this marriage work. I love her, and I don’t want this to end it.
This may not be the answer you are looking for, but I think your wife was being pretty clear when she “asked” you to leave the house. I think you may have added the “for a while” because you cannot face facts. So, yes: you two probably are effed. Or…not effed (by each other), as the case may be. At any rate, I would not be shopping for a one year anniversary gift for “Jill” any time soon.
But on the bright side, it sounds like you have found an alternative that works for you. I do not particularly recommend Craig’s List for this purpose, but there are many opportunities to engage in very safe and (I hear tell) satisfying sexual relationships on-line. Why fight it? As long as you have the bandwidth and are careful about the potential for repetitive motion injuries—go for it! While you are pondering this possibility, you might want to listen to “Computer Love” by Zapp for inspiration and motivation. It very well could be that you will find that special girl (or guy) to share in your computer world. You no longer need search for any other strategy, thanks to modern technology!
Shooby doo bop shoo doo bop and thanks for your letter!
Now for another computer-related query:
DEAR ABBY: A few months ago, my friend and neighbor, “Jill,” told me how much she enjoyed an online mothers group she participated in, so I joined. Last week, Jill announced on the Web site that she’s pregnant with her second child. I congratulated her online, then congratulated her husband in person when I ran into him in the neighborhood later that day. He was flabbergasted. Apparently, Jill hadn’t told him about the baby!
Jill is now furious with me because I “spoiled her surprise” by revealing something that was supposed to be a secret. How could I have possibly known her pregnancy was secret? She posted it on the Internet! Jill claims any information exchanged in the online community should be confidential as it is never mentioned in the “real world.” I think she should have told her husband before telling her online friends.
How was I supposed to know this “rule” about privacy when it’s never discussed? And how do I fix our friendship?
Well, “Jill’s” ex-friend, sometimes people (I suspect) write letters to advice columns to hear what they want to hear and I think that may be the case with you. Of course you had no way of knowing that this woman would tell a bunch of folks on-line of her pregnancy before she even told her husband and (purported) father of her unborn child. Of course you are under no legal or moral obligation to keep news received on-line confidential. But…
In this case you need to follow different rules than what you may be used to. Many people treat their on-line interactions like a time out of Time, a life out of Life. They use the internets as some kind of playground where normal rules do not necessarily apply. In this case, for all you knew “Jill” could have been making up an entire ghost pregnancy deal, real only in her on-line world. Or, she could have been engaging in performance art. Or, she had become pregnant through on-line relations with the previous letter writer to Dan Savage’s column.
The fact is: you do not know. Thus, a good rule of thumb for on-line relationships is to let everything you read on your computer screen go in one eye and out the other. Be like the Vegas hotel concierge: what happens on-line stays on-line. Pay no mind to what they say (on-line); it doesn’t matter anyway (on-line). Like the Go-Go’s, your lips should be sealed, always, with regard to anything you read from your friends on-line.
Thanks for your letter—and I wouldn’t be buying a baby shower gift any time soon.
I was not telling tales when I said that everyone is in on the advice-giving business. The following is a letter sent in to The Atlantic:
I have just realized fully, after seven years, that I am married to a racist. He’s used the “N word” a number of times over the years, and we always fought about it. But he has always claimed to be directing the slur toward somebody “acting” like one, and not toward people of color generally. Well, I recently learned how he truly feels. He voted for McCain and I voted for Obama. He said, “Looks like we have an ‘N’ for president.” I was saddened and disgusted by his remark. I don’t believe I can live with anyone who thinks like this, and I’m planning to get a divorce. This is not the only reason, but it’s certainly the icing on the cake. Do you think we can change racists’ minds?
Where to even begin? First of all, throw out the advice given to you by the columnist. “Racism isn’t a burden for us; it’s a burden for racists” is a bunch of poppycock. Racism is a burden for all of us—particularly all us people of color your husband is hurling the n-word at.
Now. Here again, I think you are looking with your letter for something besides advice. I think you may be looking for praise about how non-racist and progressive you are. OK. You are a wonderful, non-racist, progressive person—who voted for Barack Obama no less! Good for you, and here is your cookie! But…
I think it is unlikely that your husband has devolved into a raging racist or that you are only now “coming to realize” his tendencies. I think it is far more likely that you yourself are the one who has undergone a conversion regarding your attitude towards Black folks, fueled perhaps by the recent presidential campaign. (I am presuming both you and your husband are non-Black. I apologize if this assumption is incorrect.) There is nothing wrong with this. There were many stories during the campaign of formerly racist folks who resolved their cognitive dissonance around race by removing some of their former racist garb. Perhaps this has happened to you. And now, like the former smoker or born-again Christian or new Prius owner, you have little tolerance for people who are still lighting up and blaspheming in the old racist gas guzzler—your husband included.
OSF offers no advice for you on the marriage vs divorce front—although I do hope that you do not blame/credit your divorce on/to your husband being a racist. As you say, there are probably other issues at play, and the sooner you focus on and deal with these, the better your life will be. In the meantime, I would suggest that you model for your husband the proper words for people of African descent, as the n-word is not appropriate unless your name begins with “Lil” or “MC” and you have a million-dollar record deal. (And, IMO, not even then—although that is a different post altogether.) I think that if you listen repeatedly and even sing aloud to Aretha Franklin’s version of “Young, Giften and Black,” you may get the inspiration you need to deal with your husband’s bad verbal habit:
When you’re feeling really low
There’s a great truth you should remember and know
When you’re young, gifted and black
Your soul’s intact (and getting bigger)
And that’s a fact (and you are not a n*****…)
This may not change your husband’s heart and mind, but it may help you keep from slipping back into your (I am guessing) old ways. Thanks much for your letter. And thanks for your vote! (Although you do know that this action does not give you some sort of “get out of racism free” card—you still have much work to do…)
Finally comes this letter to an Essence magazine advice columnist:
My current boyfriend has the smallest penis of anyone I’ve been with. Can I do something to tighten my vagina? Or teach my man to work what he has—without hurting his ego?
I know that you expect me to comment on your expressed expertise with male anatomy. I first thought to go with a Prince song in which he relays the joke about the woman who asked her lover “Why is your organ so small” to which he replied “I did not know I’d be playing in a cathedral.” (Ba-doom-doom!) But in all seriousness. If it is really your concern that because of your previous sexual exploits you are now left with a certain…undesired roominess in your own cathedral, I do hear there are now cosmetic surgeries to downsize your…lodgings.
But I really don’t think that OSF should be recommending such drastic (and, IMO, unnecessary) action. I believe this may be a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence…or, the pipe organ seeming louder in the other sanctuary, as the case may be. You have heard the saying It isn’t the size of the boat, but the motion of the ocean, perhaps? Well, maybe your man could do more to compensate for the inadequate (for you) dimensions of his watercraft. A mega cruise liner does not necessarily make for a pleasant and exciting voyage.
If you do not believe me, then you should listen to Jean Knight testify about a man endowed with, apparently, “big stuff” but who was not all that. Like Ms. Knight, you should prefer to give your business to a tiny handyman who is a fine and attentive craftsman than to a big, burly carpenter who breaks his customers’ hearts, makes them cry, and leaves them with an invoice and unfinished job as big as his tool. When all a man has is a big, heavy hammer every project looks like a nail in a board. But when he has a box full of tools—Philips head screwdrivers and pneumatic drills and multiple grit sandpaper and power saws and pipe wrenches and tongue and groove pliers—why, there is no end to the exciting projects he can take on!
Anyway, I am out of rated PG-13 Ace Hardware metaphors, so—best of luck to you. Thanks for your letter!
Well, boys and girls, I think the mail bag is empty. I hope that OSF has provided some musical advice and encouragement this day. Have a great Memorial Day weekend and Happy Old School Friday!
**UPDATE** (5/25) As I said, I posted this in advance of the official OSF theme. For last week that theme was “This is dedicated to…” I’d like to belatedly dedicate this post to the creators of Old School Friday, and all of my fellow Old School Friday participants. No matter how annoyed by racial and other nonsense I am throughout the week I look forward to being able to blog with all of you on Fridays. All of your posts and songs always take me back and make me smile. And the theme fits perfectly with the one I went with here because there is no problem, no question, that OSF’ers cannot solve and answer with music!
***
As always, a big thank you to OSF hostesses, Marvalus at Conversations with Marva and MrsGrapevine. Please check out the rules for joining and list of other OSF participants here.
I did not fully realize it until I excitedly checked my DVR for this past Sunday’s episode, but The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is finished for the season! I plan to search around the web for any information on whether the program will be coming back for a new season—I certainly hope so. To keep me occupied in the meantime, I am planning a series of posts inspired by the series reflecting a little on race, cultural authenticity, and depictions by Whites of people of color. Racialicious has a good post up about this very issue.
Some random thing I may cover:
Those are some of my thoughts right now. I welcome any other thoughts you may have. In the meantime, I do not know what I will do without both “Heroes” and “The No. 1 Ladies’.” So if you have any suggestions for summer TV viewing, I’d appreciate that as well.
…The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in an admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son’s or daughter’s hardships can be relieved.
The question, then — the question then is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate?
…I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it — indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory — the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature….
~President Barack Obama,
Notre Dame commencement address
"Pro-Choice." Khadijah's Artworks, http://www.flickr.com/photos/choruslinea1qms/90863558/
Well done, Mr. President. Well done.
"12,000 Flags for 12,000 Patriots." dbking, http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootbearwdc/2081490619/
Dear President Barack Obama,
The time has come to end discrimination in our armed forces. We, the undersigned, ask you to stop the discharge of Lt. Dan Choi and any other soldier as a result of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. We ask that you uphold your pledge and push Congress to quickly put a bill on your desk to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Sincerely,
I am an administrator at an urban university in the Midwest. Among my many roles, I am mother to twin girls, wife to one of my best friends, and amateur photographer.
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"Working With Black Women" Series:
Much thanks to Verite Parlant at Who's shoes are these anyway? for awarding me this honor, created by Mimi Writes. 
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