Haiku on being a Dad #1

Children yell and scream:
"I want what I want right now!"
Fatherhood is great.

I think you need a lot of context to seriously examine anything

“I think you need a lot of context to seriously examine anything.”
- Gus, The Wire, Season 5

Lately, I've been lucky to learn a bit about the politics and social justice struggles in Israel and Palestine. I admit, I know very little about this incredibly complicated subject. This past summer, I read Thomas Friedman's first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, which was a good introduction to some aspects of the history and culture and politics that influences conflicts in this part of the world, but it was also a bit more about Friedman, his opinions and experiences. For example, one of Friedman's main cultural analyses of the roots of violent conflicts in places like Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq is that those places, and the people who live there, are inexorably shaped by long standing tribal relations and ingrained practices of blood feuding. For Friedman, those cultural practices and cultural histories explain, for example, the Hama massacre that occurred in Syria in 1982. Basically, Friedman's argument about the powerful influence of cultures of tribalism in this region of the world is that Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Arab peoples respond to threats and attacks with irrepressible violence. Friedman calls this "Hama rules." Any threat against people in this region must be met with crushing, total repression. As I read his chapters on "Hama rules" and his descriptions of how it seemed to be a widespread worldview in the region, I couldn't help think of when Sean Connery's character from the 1987 film, The Untouchables, describes "the Chicago Way," to Elliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner. To take down the ruthless gangster, Al Capone, Connery's character tells the fictional Ness, "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone." Perhaps a culture and history of blood feuding and tribal identities is enough to explain some aspects of politics in a place like Syria, but I had a hard time reducing something as repressive and terrible as the Hama massacre to a cultural practice. All the while I read Friedman I kept wondering, where are these combatants in Lebenon, Syria, Israel, Iraq, and other regions he covers, attaining their weapons? Should that factor into our understanding of the root causes and effects of this violence? How much context do we need in order to understand complicated political and social events?

One of Friedman's strengths as a writer is that he takes incredibly complicated political and social phenomenon and distills explanations of them through understandable factors. Why did the leader of Syria murder tens of thousands of people in order to suppress a political uprising? Because that is their culture expressions of power; that is the historical practice of Bedouin tribalism. But while that makes for a good story, and explains some aspects of what is happening it seems like it is only one slice of the context in which those events occurred. Undoubtedly, wider geopolitical factors such as the Cold War, arms trading, oil interests, and regional politics influenced what happened in Syria in the 1980s. Friedman side-stepped those issues, which would have complicated his story.

The character, Gus, from Season 5 of The Wire, is correct: we need a lot of context, conflicting context, contradictory context to seriously understanding anything. Such context does not necessarily help make neat stories, but perhaps we should sacrifice our need for simple stories built around dichotomies of good and evil, right and wrong, in order to really try and understand what is happening in a given political and social situation.

That is my approach to trying to understand what is happening in Palestine and Israel. I want context, not ideology. I want peace for everyone there, especially children. And I want to understand fully the multiple factors that shape people's thoughts and actions.

In my mind, Palestinians should not have to suffer from a violent, repressive occupation and Israelis should not have to suffer from terrorism. Stating that does not make the politics behind each phenomenon equal, but it does equate the common humanity that, I think, is the proper context from which to try and build broad knowledge of what is happening, and ultimately to build and struggle for peace.   

 

   

  

Open letter to my students about Boston marathon bombing

Dear Students,

No doubt you've heard the news about the bombing in Boston, and perhaps even seen the terrible images. I've lived through two acts of violent terrorism, both at the former World Trade Center in Manhattan; and unfortunately, many of us can recall recent news events of mass shootings: at schools - Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook; at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin; the attempt on Congresswoman Giffords's life; the shooting in the Aurora, CO, movie theater. Moments of violence like the one that happened at the Boston marathon make me feel very afraid, sad, and angry. Lately, when things like this happen here in the US or around the world, the only way I feel comforted is when I hug and hold my small children tightly.

But, awake earlier than usual, and still numb from the news in Boston, my thoughts wandered to my work as a teacher, and what my students and I try to accomplish in the classroom.

In lectures, documentary viewings, research projects, debates, questions, and discussions, we try to wrestle with ideas. Sometimes, those ideas are hard. Sometimes, the material we study is difficult and unsettling, but we do our best to strive for analyses based on honesty and integrity. We don't have to agree with each other, or like each others' arguments. It behooves us to challenge one another - to ask questions and seek clarity. I used to think this type of work was the luxury of working in higher education, but the Boston bombing and a great deal of other violence that rocks people around the world reminds me that intellectual exchange, debate, and thinking clearly on hard matters are not luxuries that should only exit in the halls of academia. We need those practices to exist everywhere, all the time, amongst all strata of people, especially in dark hours when violence and suffering befall human existence and explanations about why this happens, and what to do next, do not come easy, if they come at all. 

So this is a thank you letter to my students - thank you for asking hard questions about difficult topics; for debating one another; for pushing me to be clear in my thoughts and words and arguments; for reading and working and struggling with your thoughts; for valuing ideas. Please bring these practices with you wherever life takes you - military service; corporate work and business; artistic work; politics; technology development; law; medicine; theater; dance; social work; religious ministry; accounting; engineering; science research; education; parenthood; citizenship - global and domestic. 

Terrorist violence, war and human suffering occur when fear, narcissism, avarice, hateful and bigoted insecurity, or sheer insanity subvert intellectual exchange and bold leadership directed towards the widest possible peace and prosperity.

Intellectual exchange and deep thought on difficult questions has so far not eliminated war and terrorism. Perhaps, in the day-to-day course of events, what we do in the classroom - thinking, debating, listening, asking questions, reading, discussing, writing, researching - may not seem important.

But I shudder to think of our world without it. 

Sincerely,


Professor Purnell

Response to claim that Christians can love gay people but not support homosexuality

People certainly have a right to say what they believe; but you cannot say you "do not support homosexuality" and that you love gay people because, in fact, the first statement negates the second one insofar as it does not support a part of gay people's humanity, and therefore denies that person love. Christians who are not gay need to realize that a person can be straight, love gay people in all of their humanity, including their sexuality, and still be Christian.

In fact, to not support an element of other people's expression of love is, in fact, to deny them a part of their humanity and to not live as Jesus did which, in my mind, is to not be a Christian.

Writers Diet Test

Schoolyards buzzed with activity. Boys gathered in camps and plotted raids onto courts and fields. They ran and burst across the concrete, and wreaked havoc everywhere. Girls formed tight circles of conspiracy. They laughed and shrieked, danced over jump ropes and hop scotch. Boys and girls formed separate armies. Traitors crossed battle lines to flirt, pull hair, and blow kisses, but the hardcore troops forgot them, like the names of soldiers dead in battles.

Handball courts possessed speed, danger and power. The game was not for people with weak arms or hearts. One warrior could challenge another, and the two gladiators entered the arena with one goal: crush the opponent. When teams formed, the contest evolved into a fast dance of four bodies, one ball, and one wall.

+++

I wrote the above passage after reading two NY Times blogs on grammar and writing style and then clicking onto this website that had a "writers diet test." First, I entered two passages from my forthcoming book, and the test told me that my writing needed to go on life support. The prose was bloated, the verbs vague and clunky. This is a paragraph from my book that I entered into the test, one I thought was a great piece of writing:

On February 3, 1964, one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in United States history occurred. Nearly half a million students boycotted a racially segregated municipal public school system as parents and activists demanded a plan for comprehensive desegregation. Ten years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision had declared racially segregated public schools unconstitutional, this city’s government had failed to desegregate the school system. The integration movement rallied behind a Christian minister, a man known for his eloquent, trenchant sermons against racial discrimination and poverty. He transformed his church into a movement headquarters, which organized racially integrated “freedom schools” throughout the city. The man and the movement made history.

The diagnostic test said the passage was about to die from overuse of vague subjects and weak nouns.

It just goes to show - never trust writers or parents to be objective about what they create.  

Was my writing really horrible? 

Yes.

Addicts must admit their problems before they recover.

Hello. my name is Brian, and I am addicted to academic verbiage. 

I pecked across the keyboard and wrote that memory about mornings in the St. Mark's schoolyard. Thankfully, that short passage passed the test. The computer considered the prose and verbs and adjectives "lean." When I wrote that passage I concentrated on clear nouns and active verbs. 

What a great devise, and habit!

Meta-Brooklyn

In the late-20th century, people from Brooklyn were arrogant about being people from Brooklyn. We had a strange pride in being from a place that stood in Manhattan's shadow. And that pride could be sliced down into the most minute scales: to neighborhood, to parish or school or synagogue, to block, to building and street. We took pride of place to absurd levels and defended our love of home with religious passions.

I find it odd to read about Brooklyn as a meta-concept, a brand, because its always been that. Brooklyn has always been cool and hip, precisely because it was a place that was not cool or hip - not the Village, not Manhattan, not LA, not anywhere but Brooklyn. Growing up, we oozed Brooklyn in the way we spoke and walked in our neighborhoods, even the way we said Brooklyn, which inevitably came out with an air of, "and what of it." Even the nerdiest, least athletic, non-intimidating kid breathed a hint - just a hint - of urban realism when he said the word. No matter how much people who leave Brooklyn try to they can't hide it - even when they adopt a generic Midwestern way to say "water" or "coffee;" even when an Ivy League degree has beaten out the street or the island or the mosque from their voice. Try as they might, the new Brooklyn, the Brooklyn as international brand of urban cool, does not capture this essence. In fact, nothing really can except for the sights and sounds and demeanor of the place and the people as they are, in real time, not celluloid.

When I watch Girls, and yes, I do, which may signal a loss of credibility with which I am fine, I don't see Brooklyn. It is certainly a New York that has always existed, the New York of newcomer and dreamer. The New York of the searcher and the entrepreneurial. The New York and the New Yorker as fad. But this Brooklyn as fad will fade, as all fads do. The transplants will leave, and so will their hip culture. A new middle class will stay behind - see contemporary Park Slope - and new outcrops of Brooklyn hubris will emerge from the homes and streets of recent transplants, immigrants, the new working classes, from people who do not have the luxury of time or money to obsess over fashioning their Brooklyn chic brand.

It will just come out of their mouth when they say the name of the place to the inevitable question, "Where you from?"      

My mission - if I choose to accept it

I am two and a half months shy of 35 years old.
Before I die, would it be possible to read all of the National Book Award Winners in Fiction and Nonfiction?
Only one way to find out. 

These folks could benefit from reading Barbara Fields

I don't think Barbara J. Fields is right about everything, but her analysis of race as an ideology, and her call for historians to be clearer - indeed harder - about the ways they write about race are both very important. I think the contributors to this NY Times exchange on Black public intellectuals could have benefited from taking seriously some of the points Fields makes in her older essays, which have been republished in the book she co-authored with her sister, Racecraft.

Fields has a few main points to consider when thinking about and writing about "race" in America:

1) Race is an ideology, which is different from an idea and from propaganda and information. In essence, an ideology derives its meaning from everyday social interactions, and it is at that level of human interaction at which ideologies are made and remade. I tend to think of ideologies as frameworks through which people understand who they are, or maps that people use to navigate their social worlds. The clearest example of an ideology I can think of is religion, or a system of thinking and acting predicated on faith, and through which adherents order their lives and understanding of the world. Race serves a similar function. It is social and ideological; it is real, not because of science or biology, but because people make it real through social interactions and history.

2) Race has history. Fields spends a lot of time explaining this, but in essence, her main idea is that race is not metaphysical, ahistorical, or timeless. It came into existence at certain times for specific economic, political, and social reasons; and people made and remade it over time. Along these lines, race does not "have a life of its own," nor is it responsible for historical action. The best example Fields has of this is that race did not make slavery; slavery made race. If race continues to have meaning after slavery ended that is because people found new social practices in which racial ideology had meaning. In the US, Jim Crow segregation and ghettoization are the two most powerful social-historical phenomenon that have made and remade race over time.

3) For Fields, liberal and progressive intellectuals perpetuate a sloppy understanding of race and veiled sinister practices (her word is evil) when they insist on analyzing "race relations," which Fields rightly criticizes as an undefined system of social interaction, and when they push for diversity initiatives in curriculum and admissions. (I agree with her first point about race relations, but I disagree with her critique of affirmative action and multicultural education. Both do need to be much more specific with respects to how they deal with histories of racial ideology, but that does not mean that the mission of race-based affirmative action and multicultural pedagogy perpetuate the evils of racism.)

She makes many other provocative points, and this is a very rough summary, but I think the contributors in the above mentioned NYT exchange could stand to think more about what she says about racial ideology.

As I read the exchanges, only the scientists and the historian really wrestled with the socially constructed historical nature of racial ideology. (I am not sure exactly what the political scientist's and the religious studies scholar's point was.) Scholars who identify as Black - either because of their personal history or their political and personal ideology - have to fashion ways that their intellectual and professional work does or does not speak to that particular social ideology, and in what ways. While there is certainly not one way to "be Black" - as an intellectual or otherwise - there are certain socially and historically shaped ways - always multiple and always contested - in which Black people understand themselves and their wider world. Like Fields says, those frameworks are products of history and they exist in time and space. An intellectual who identifies as Black and who wants to connect particular social and political issues that some Black people experience to wider discourses and debates needs to be clear and conscious of the multiple communities she represents and addresses. I don't think this is anything new, and what that does or does not have to do with racial ideology depends on social context and history.

The problem with this NY Times exchange is that it made race a rarefied, metaphysical "thing" that Black public intellectuals either spoke to or ignored.

At their best, the participants in the exchange added context and specificity to their responses. They actually explained what it means to think about and make sense of racial ideology and who Black people are - politically, culturally, socially - in time and space.

(C) Brian Purnell, 2013

Rast Trent in a VW - Is It Racist When a White (American) Immitates Jamaican Patois?

I'll answer the above question in a real weak way - it all depends, but in this case, not really. Frankly, I think the VW add that has gotten so much attention is more silly than sinister.

Here's the premise: a predominantly white setting - an office park, perhaps in the American mid-West, which features what appears to be a nearly all white, all make work force. One man is perhaps American, perhaps of east Asian descent. A handful of white women work there too.  A white man from Minnesota imitates Jamaican patois as he goes around, smiling and spouting funny sayings to encourage everyone to be push away their Monday morning doldrums. In one clip he tells a clearly frustrated female colleague to "turn that frown the other way." The character is goofy and when I see it, I don't see anything that remotely resembles Jamaican or West Indian people, or even an attempt to mimic Jamaican people. If the presentation of a clearly non-Jamaican person tried to do that - in satire or even in an exploitative way - that would be, as NY Times columnist Charles Blow said, "black face with voices." But I don't think that's what is happening here.

This commercial spoofs Americans and Westerners, mostly white, but perhaps of any color, who adopt a cartoon-like version of West Indian and Caribbean style and aesthetics as a means of stepping outside their own seemingly humdrum social and professional worlds. Think of the American tourists who spend a week in Montego Bay and braid their hair and burn their skin as a means of vacating from their everyday lives of work and kids and commuting. I think the ad makes fun of those people more than anything or anyone.

A clearly satiric - and I think hilarious - spoof of white Americans "playing Jamaican" is Andy Samberg's character, "Ras Trent."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcK0MYgnHjo

Samberg is much clearer about who is the butt of his parody: white privileged college students who play at being Rastafarian as a means of rebelling against class, religious and parental conformity.  But Ras Trent and the character in the VW commercial are two sides of the same coin - privileged Americans with money who escape via what they imagine to be authentic, carefree, happy Jamaican culture. In truth, both the VW and the Ras Trent spook tell us more about the vapidness of those privileged Americans than about Jamaica or its people.          

Before I saw the VW add, I heard about it on the Public Radio International radio program, "The World." The podcast is available here:

http://www.theworld.org/2013/02/is-it-racist-for-a-white-guy-to-speak-jamaican-patois/

The podcast features an interview with Karen James, a journalist in Kingston, Jamaica. Her analysis is smart and basically, without directly saying so, I think she lets-on that the reason many Jamaicans are not offended by this add is that they are laughing at silly Americans making fools of themselves wasting money getting high and drunk and what have you during their Caribbean get away.

There are real exploitative issues at work in Jamaica's relationship with the wider world, namely that a place like Jamaica faces problems of debilitating poverty while at the same time serving as an international playground for massive levels of conspicuous consumption through its tourism industry.

Unfortunately, the VW commercial has not prompted conversation about that type of economic exploitation and imbalance.

And this is where I part ways with Karen James's analysis. She welcomed the VW commercial as a positive presentation of Jamaica and Jamaican people. (She even made an interesting argument about how the commercial uplifts Jamaican patois as authentic language, although it is ironic that a white American male playing Jamaican becomes the international vehicle through which Jamaican linguistics attains legitimacy.) As a journalist beset with the everyday problems Jamaicans face - poverty in the midst of plenty, and crime, violence, economic segregation - she no doubt saw this commercial as a chance to embrace a lighter side of life in her home, the side in which Jamaicans promote positivity and happiness to the jet-setters, wedding parties, spring breakers, and middle and working class vacationers who come to the island's white beaches to spend a week or so forgetting about their first-world problems. Perhaps, for a change, a spoof of how silly vacationing Americans look when they bring back their sing-song West Indian speak to their banal office parks can offer beleaguered Jamaicans a respite from their troubles. I can't fault her for feeling that way.

But I wish that instead of debating whether or not the VW add is racist, Americans could have a serious talk about how economic exploitation shapes life Jamaica, and about how international trade policies and histories of colonialism make possible that inequality, as well as Americans' enjoyment of it via tourism. In short, let's have some intelligent national talk about the themes raised in the 2001 documentary film, Life and Debt.

Because just like VW will laugh all the way to the bank through this parody of Americans playing West Indian,  someone is getting rich off all of the decadence American tourists experience during the sun fun weeks in Jamaica.

And it certainly isn't the vast majority of Jamaicans.

Amituofo - Blessings from the heart

This weekend my family and I drove to New York City to celebrate the 100 day naming ceremony for my niece, Zoe Amaez. My brother-in-law, Daniel Amaez, is a Buddhist disciple and student of Shi Yan Ming, the founder of the USA Shaolin Temple. Danny and his wife, Diana, held Zoe's naming ceremony at the Temple, and it was a beautiful event filled with good food, family, friends, and all-around positive vibes.

In this, my first blog post in a very long time, I wanted to share a meditation that I read posted on a wall in the Temple. I think it is a standard reflection in Chan Buddhism. When I read it, I found it so simple and inspiring.

"Before I was born, who was I?
After I am born, who am I?
Respect yourself, and everyone will respect you.
Understand yourself, and everyone will understand you.
There are mirrors all around you:
Strive to see and understand yourself.
Strive to have the heart of a Buddha.
Stop doing bad things, only do good.
Do whatever you can to help others.
In these ways you help yourself.
Help yourself, and you help the world."

During the naming ceremony, Shifu, which is the term for "Master," or even "Teacher," and is the title most people use when speaking with Shi Yan Ming, explained some principles of Chan Buddhism. "Amituofo," is a common term members of the Temple use in many difference scenarios: when greeting each other, or visitors; when entering or leaving the Temple; before they execute a Kung Fu form. Another disciple invited me to have a drink of Chinese "wine" with my brother-in-law and a few other members of the Temple. "Amituofo," can even mean cheers, or bottoms-up. When Shifu talked about Amituofo durint Zoe's naming ceremony he explained that all faith traditions are beautiful, and so are all people. "Jesus Christ is wonderful," Shifu said. "Christianity, is beautiful." In his explanation of Chan Buddhist philosophy, no hierarchy of belief existed. All Gods, all beliefs, all people were good and excellent, and all paths to peace were beautiful.

The entire spirit of the ceremony and the people just made me smile. "Do whatever you can to help others. In these ways you help yourself. Help yourself, and you help the world."

Amituofo!      

A Game of Thrones - Brief Reflection

Confession: I have a weakness for well-written television shows that I can binge watch for hours and hours and hours. Subscribing to a premium cable TV network (which will remain nameless until I earn a check for dropping its name, but soon become self-evident) has not helped my addiction. Not only can I access the shows I crave on my actual television, but I can log on to an "on-demand" website and watch old episodes of dozens of great series. If a twelve step program for people who fiend these serial television shows does not exist it soon will. Given the amount of TV I've watched lately I am not sure how I've been able to work my job and pay attention to my kids. I need a sponsor and a meeting to get right. 

Game of Thrones has become my latest high of choice. Like every fiend, a friend got me hooked. "Yo, you gotta watch Game of Thrones," another couple told my wife and I. "It is straight up sex and violence." Suspend speculating why we'd be so attracted to an hour-long visual orgy of quasi-soft porn and swordsmen hacking limbs and heads. While the description of Thrones was accurate, the show's characters, scenery, and story line rise above its trite licentiousness. The sex scenes are so common and ludicrous that I treat them as commercial breaks. The gore sometimes gets in the way of the story line. (The New Yorker published a good review of the series and an even better long article on the author, George R. R. Martin, whose 800-page books were the first drafts of the show's screenplays.) My wife and I became hooked. We took a week-long vacation to Westros, the show's medieval fantasy world setting, and watched the first season practically in one sitting. Family members visited for a long weekend and, like the good pushers we were, we made them sit in our living room and inject the first season - all 10 episodes. Now, on Sunday nights, after we put down our children, my wife and I get our fix of Game of Thrones and Mad Men. When our four-and-a-half year old daughter asked if she could stay up late and watch TV with us we told her that mommy and daddy watched grown-up shows on Sunday night. "Oh, you mean Game of Thrones," she said. It was like she found our works and white powder hidden in the sock drawer.

Martin certainly created an amazing fantasy universe filled with warring kingdoms, overgrown cerebral killer wolves, eunuchs, three baby dragons, one smart mouthed scene stealing little person, a seemingly endless amount of brothels and bastards, a giant bad-ass sword wielding woman, a teen-age girl who is impervious to fire, and the occasional pinch of sadistic torture and incest. I started reading the first book in Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire (the television series takes its title from this book) and am half way through it. The television show is on its second season, which corresponds to Martin's second title in the series. The book is entertaining, but I doubt I will read the others. They are very long page turners and like the show, more akin to candy than literature. Some, of Martin's characters are captivating and complicated. Ned Stark, Lord of the North, around whom the first book's narrative revolves, is honor-bound and dutiful, which endears him to readers while at the same time enraging other characters. He also stepped out on his wife and sired a bastard son, Jon Snow, which adds a dab of dirt to his otherwise spotless character. Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf son of the book's version of the Bush family-meets the Saudi aristocracy, is by far the most entertaining and engrossing character in the television series and the book. He is an outcast who so clearly dominates every dialogue and scene. Similar to when I watched The Wire for the first, second, and fifth time, and I moved to the edge of the couch when I saw Omar coming, I can't help but smile when Peter Dinklage appears on screen. I also find Aria Stark, Ned Stark's youngest tomboy daughter, and his bastard, Jon Snow, to be captivating and complicated. As the review in The New Yorker observed, the show captures in a compelling way the pains of outsider status and the slippery ways pariah figures - dwarfs, bastards, women - seek and wield power.

I've had my fun. When I finish the book I will go back to reading Richard Price novels and monographs for work. I will continue to watch the series because, if indeed we are living through a new golden age of television, the network that gives us Game of Thrones is certainly at the forefront of this historic era. Game of Thrones is not The Wire (really, is anything?); nor does it illicit the grotesque sympathies that drew people into The Sopranos and Mad Men. But thanks to George R. R. Martin's ability to weave together an entire fantasy continent - several actually - and the network's ability to shoot on location in some pretty amazing places, the television series does exactly what good television should do: it entertains and enlightens. Beyond the brothels and the blood here are a few reasons to get hooked on Game of Thrones:

1) The show depicts how bad politics and society can become when sons inherit power and fortune from fathers. In fact, the entire sub-theme of outsiders like the bastard Jon Snow, the dwarf Tyrion Lannister, and nearly every woman in the show, who are trying to establish themselves as individuals and to attain some stature beyond their station is a subtle argument against hereditary and class-based domination of social and political power. The show has two words for why the practice of giving the same positions of power and privilege to the same people (and the practice of incest) is just plain bad: Joffrey Baratheon. In the real world, when we promote policies that create diversity - all kinds of diversity and especially racial and gender and class - we diminish the ability of someone like that to constantly rise to power (and sadistically torture people).

2) The show has powerful women characters, some of whom are stereotypically despicable (Cersei Lannister seems a bit like a photo copy of every wicked step mother witch) but others (Aria Stark, Catelyn Stark, and Daenerys Targaryen) who, while not without flaws, possess depth and humor and tremendous courage. Clearly, given the show's predilection for gratuitous female nudity, it does not have feminist leanings. But the women characters give a dynamic and varied depiction of women who want and possess power and use it, or seek to use it, in multiple, complicated, contradictory ways. Anyone who thinks the world would instantly be better if women ran politics should consider some ideas presented in this show.

3) The fantasy world of Westros issues a strong critique of possessing political power for power's sake. Unfortunately, the politics that drive conflict in Game of Thrones is wrapped up on familial bloodletting and feuding and disconnected from the engine that historically drives wars for possession of power: economics, trade, and land possession. Clearly, some form of labor and taxation fills the coffers of the Seven Kingdoms, but viewers don't see that side of the politics. Instead, the game of thrones is a game of personalities and entitlement and honor. Common people either serve dutifully or don't appear, and on one occasion rioted uncontrollably in a very disorganized, depoliticized way. None the less, politics, even if it is a watered-down-made-for-TV version of politics is at the center of this show. And Game of Thrones does show how, except for those who operate the levers of power, greed, corruption, and manipulation turn everything to shit. Eventually, those kings and queens who posses power, or those people who don't understand it, also wind up with their heads on spikes. The show invites viewers to ask, what of the masses of people whose daily lives are constantly effected by the missteps of the few? That is always an important question to consider.               

Fiction II

On nights when the breeze was just right, the smell of the bay filled the streets. It hung, like signs of high tide along the concrete wall that surrounded the water and skirted the southern edge of the neighborhood. The water came in from the Long Island sound, and before that, from the Atlantic, cold and greenish brown. It carried small fish, blue bellied crabs and odd collections of garbage that boat riders chucked overboard on lazy summer afternoons: pieces from styrophoam coolers, aluminum foil, and empty cans of Bud. A greasy gasoline film coated parts of the bay's skin, and if the sunlight hit just right, the oil slick made murky rainbow colors. When the tide went out it coated the retaining wall with a wave shaped outline of grime. The bay gave off a mixed scent of ocean, brine, fish guts, and sewage, but it had its own beauty, its own charm, especially on evenings in the summer. People strolled along Emmons, or stopped and rested their elbows on the rails of a pier or the East 27th street promenade or the wooden bridge that crossed the bay and connected Sheepshead to Manhattan Beach, hands clasped together in a lazy prayer position or cupped around a cigarette, staring out at the water. Crews from charter boats with names like "Dorothy B IV," "Brooklyn III," "Happy Ours," and "Fugetaboutit!" scrubbed down the decks while fishmongers hawked fresh Blues, Striped Bass, Flukes, and boys trolled the pillars with nets at the end of seven foot polls and white plastic buckets in search of crabs clinging to the wall or pier pillars. Smells of baked clams and fried shrimp and oysters mixed with the bay. Teenagers hung out. Nine-to-fivers walked briskly from the station at the Bay Road to attached homes and apartments. The large highrises at the edge of Coney Island dotted the western horizon. Manhattan Beach's mansions sat quietly to the South. The Sheepshead side, the Emmons Avenue side, was dotted with piers and restaurants and cafes and bars apartments and bungalows and the occasional empty lot. Beyond the Bay facing East loomed the Marine Parkway Bridge, Breezy Point, and Rockaway. Sheepshead was its boats and bay and stores, and a crusty mix of people that made a home in this southern edge of Brooklyn.   

Why the Naomi Schaefer Riley/CHE Media Storm Has Nothing to do with Black Studies

The hubbub that brewed in the aftermath of Naomi Schaefer Riley's blog post slamming Black Studies proves why news, commentary, and facts - information itself - in the digital, internet age is, at best, shadowy and shallow. At worst, they are nonexistent. Welcome to the new normal.

One writer does a decent but still somewhat stereotypical piece on the current state of Black Studies - stereotypical insofar as Stacey Patton can't help but situate this academic field in a one-dimensional understanding of the "swaggering" political context of the 1960s. The PhD students Patton profiled are different from their predecessors in Black Studies, she opens, because these new scholars were "not baptized in the fire of racial politics." To be fair to Patton, there is much more to her original article than cliches about dashikis and identity politics. She actually does research and interviews some of the top scholars in the field, namely Kahlil Gibran Muhammad, Director of the Schomburg Center; Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of African American Studies at Duke; Darlene Clark Hine, one of the Deans of African American History; and Martha Biondi, whose book on the 1960s-era, student rebellion origins of Black Studies academic programs is due out this summer. Overall, Patton gives readers a dynamic portrait of some of the exciting new scholarship coming out of Black Studies. Still, the article is slightly flawed because it can't help positing the contemporary scholarship as a progression, indeed a maturation, away from highly politicized 1960s era from which Black Studies supposedly originated.

Colleges and universities - correction, historically white colleges and universities (HWCUs) - may have developed what we now call Black Studies (Africana Studies, African American Studies) after the late-1960s, and PhD programs grew in the decades that followed, but Black Colleges and Universities and Black scholars have been engaged in an academic field of that is easily recognizable as "Black Studies" for many, many years. George Washington Williams published the pioneering history of people of African descent in the 1880s. Journalist activist Ida B Wells conducted investigative reporting in the late-nineteenth century that overturned arguments about Black male licentiousness, challenged myths about Black rapists, and indicted America mores that justified lynch law. Carter G. Woodson started the Association of the Study of Negro Life and History, and the Journal of Negro History, in the 1910s. W.E.B. DuBois initiated a series of studies of Black life from his position at Atlanta University. John Hope Franklin's book, From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947, made the African American experience central to US history. Dozens of other examples of Black Studies existing before the 1960s exist. And yet the story often still begins with campus take overs and nationalists and identity politics. As Martha Biondi, Ibram Rogers, Peniel Joseph and others have shown, cultural nationalism was an important part of the late-1960s political, intellectual and artistic movements, but Black Power was about much more than an Afro pick.

As well-intentioned as Patton's article was, I am not surprised that Naomi Schafer Riley, the latest right-wing wunderkind to become a leading voice slamming liberal arts education, tenured professors, and everything to the Left of Ronald Reagan, used it as fodder for her own conservative claptrap. In Riley's CHE blog post, she uses Patton's PhD students to take aim at the entire field of Black Studies, calling it everything but a child of God. Now, after a groundswell of outrage from the PhD students themselves to Black pundits like Melissa Harris Perry, the CHE has fired Riley, Riley has shot back from the protective conservative cover of the Wall Street Journal, and round and round the brouhaha goes. By next week, people will have moved on to the next controversy, wracking up tweets, hits, blog posts, and a whole lot of smoke with very little intellectual fire.

As a professor in an Africana Studies program at a liberal arts college, these conversations (if you can really call them that) irk me to no end. First, they are often initiated by people who know very little or nothing about Black Studies. Patton's piece came from a good place, but is it really newsworthy to write about PhD students defending their dissertation? If the CHE wanted to highlight a significant story about academic work on Black Studies, isn't there something out there to cover more substantial, more advanced than dissertations that are just-out-the-printer? Riley's blog post had absolutely nothing to do with Black Studies, and everything to do with her own personal axe grinding. While Riley's rant generates a lot of buzz, if people really want to know and discuss and debate the merits and deficiencies of Black Studies - which is certainly a worthy debate to have - Riley's water-cooler diatribe is a poor way to go about that. Second, when media outlets privilege blog traffic and tweets above comprehensive investigations and deeper frameworks for informative stories, than intelligent debate and knowledge about a subject are very difficult if not impossible to generate. If the CHE wanted to do an informed piece on Black Studies there are a dozen scholars who are also good writers, some of whom work in Black Studies and some of whom do not, who could have written that piece. Or perhaps the CHE could have given Patton more time, space, and resources to produce a more comprehensive, well-rounded portrayal of the past, present and future of Black Studies programs. Instead, Patton's piece centered on one side of Black Studies - its political origins as an academic field - and gave readers nothing about its other sides - its long standing position as an intellectual critique and field of study rooted in Western, modern thought. When Riley saw Patton's piece, as a smarter, more polished Anne Coulter, she couldn't help but write something incendiary and ignorant.

Riley is not a racist. She should not be pilloried for picking on graduate students. I do think it is sloppy that she commented vehemently about things she did not even read, but that is not totally her fault. Riley's blog piece should be attacked as a simplistic, cartoonish critique of Black Studies, but Riley was just responding to another piece that had its own minor problems with superficiality. When one reads Patton's original piece, though, given her interviews and variety of comments from contemporary leaders in the field of Black Studies, it raises the question: did Riley even read that piece in its entirety, or did she stop at the dissertation titles and load up her right-wing six-shooters, go to her laptop, and blaze away at symbols of her imaginary liberal-Left cancer destroying intellectual life?

The real danger here is media outlets and editors who care more about speed and sensationalism and less about thorough, smart, well-worked stories. The CHE should seriously rethink how it reports stories. It should not cut corners and stoop low if its mission is to spark debate about higher education. 
     

Fiction I

"I'd say the nightmare is always the same, but that'd be a lie. People say that shit in movies. Every night I have the same bad dream. Bull fucking shit. I live a nightmare. It ain't when I'm sleeping. What happens if I sleep, that shit is just a dream. Parts feel real. I can seem'im clear - not really his face - but I can see the parts of him I saw - and it feels real. I can feel the blast, but not see it, cause I never saw it. But I know all of it is fake. It is all fake. When I have it, the dream, I know it's bull shit Because when I wake up - that's when the real nightmares begin."

___

My keys. I need my keys. Got my ruck sack. Got my water - my keys - need my keys - my d-tags. Got my gifts for my niece - my grand niece - wait - wow - "Hey! What is Joey's grand daughter - what am I - I ain't yelling! Whose yelling! I'm just projecting my voice, Mair. Hey, what's Joey's grand daughter - what am I to Kayla, and I her grand uncle, in-law? What does it matter?! Mair, all I'm doin' is askin' - I can't ask a question! Ah Jesus Mair, whuthufuk! Yeah, I'm goin', don't worry aboudit." Got my ruck sack with the gifts. Got my water. Got my disc man with my Hank Williams. Got my - my great grand niece I guess. I'll be dipped in shit. What is she - what am I to her - let's see - Joey is my wife's brother and she's his granddaughter so I am her - Got my wallet - got my - ha! That Hank Williams boy, he can sing boy - There's a tear in my beer - got my ruck sack - Where's my keys?

___

I hate finding him passed out - or asleep - because this is the only way he does sleep. He's always in the most uncomfortable positions. Tonight, he passed out slumped over at the kitchen table, his arm holding a mug half filled with now-warm Meister Brau. His head never hits the table, just rests on his chest, which barely raises and lowers, so he looks dead. A layer of stubble covers his face. His glasses, a thick plastic tortoise shell colored frame pair of old school Buddy Holly type glasses, are still on his face. His portable CD player was on the table too, next to scattered cards and envelopes, the family address book, its black plastic cover and red tattered spine, splayed out in front of him, open to Aunt Michelle's latest address. Older ones, all written in the old man's block printing - the man writes like a second grader taking a spelling test - have been crossed out in pen and practically take up the entire page. That woman moves more than I don't know what the fuck. He had managed to write a few cards before going out cold: to two of his God children, my cousins, Kevin and Michael, one to my brother, Sean, and his two kids. He passed out in the middle of a note to his sister who lives in California. "Dear Mich, how are you lass! Top of the morning to you on this fine Saint Patty's day. I hope this note finds you well and in good spirits. Me? I am fine. Hey, here's a Saint Patrick's Day joke for you: What is left out on the lawn all summer and is Irish? No, its not your brother, Chris. Give up?" That's where it ends. God, Pop - how many times you gonna tell that same fuckin' joke? No wonder you passed out when you did. At least you took of the headphones. Should I help him to bed? Let'im sleep. Don't know when the last time the old man actually kept his eyes closed for more than twenty minutes. If I mess with him he'll probably start doing dishes or vacuuming or some shit and go until he crashes again, if he crashes again. Let the fucker sleep. Probably the best thing for him. How the fuck were Sean and I conceived if he can never make it to his own God-damn bed room?

Fascism on the Rise?

The BBC presented a story on Greece's nationalist party, Golden Dawn that put into clear perspective the ways austerity measures, corruption, and inequality produce xenophobia, isolationism, and thuggery. The New York Times has also covered the rise in popularity of this right-wing party. Its website has a very good short video on Golden Dawn, its beliefs and widening appeal, especially amongst those hit hard by increased austerity measures and rising unemployment. Balancing gaping budget holes on the backs of workers and middle class citizens will only make such neo-fascist parties more popular, their brand of street-tough militancy will seem like a more proactive form of populism that best serves the interests of people most in need, especially when compared to the weak willed and anemic establishment politicians. When fascism spread throughout Europe in the mid-20th century, many organized forms of resistance, especially from Left-wing groups - Communists, Socialists, Anarchists - and liberal democrats - opposed turns toward nationalist bigotry. In fact, in Italy, Germany, France, and Greece, some of the strongest foes of fascism were Communists. These were not the politburo stooges who made possible the reigns of terror that Stalin and Mao brought down upon millions of people, but ordinary workers and patriots who saw the internationalism and labor solidarity at the core of communist principles as a powerful counter force to the visceral reactionary populism of fascists. Needless to say, the local Communist resistance movements faced persecution and violence. Allesandro Portelli wonderful analysis of oral testimony and memory, The Order Has Been Carried Out, documents the ways people in Rome remembered how fascists murdered over one hundred members of a communist resistance movement. As terrible as communist ideology became in the hands of murderous dictators, those local communist resistances were some of the most consistent and disciplined opposition movements against the rise of fascism and Nazism.

Who will stand up against the neo-fascists in the twenty first century? Golden Dawn is only one example of world-wide hyper-nationalist, religious extremist movements that have spread violence and chaos amongst the most vulnerable people. Charles Taylor, the Liberian strongman, has just been found guilty of war crimes perpetrated against the people of Sierra Leone. Religious fundamentalists of many different stripes have twisted Islam into a call for global violence and suppression of women's rights. Christian fundamentalists in many different countries wage war against gay and lesbian people. The gunman in Norway who gunned down scores of people, many of them teens, because of their liberal political beliefs is not an anomaly. One might dismiss these examples of fascism as fringe movements, or isolated incidents, but as poverty and alienation rise, and as democratic governments prove incapable or unwilling to address the underlying structural causes of joblessness and corruption, fascist populism will become more and more appealing and even mainstream.

The world will watch the elections in Greece to see if Golden Dawn gains a foothold in the Parliament. The U.S. would do well to think seriously about how anti-immigrant, anti-labor movement, conservative fiscal policies lend tacit support to the same types of right-wing thuggery that has emerged in Greece. If the democratically elected state cannot put a check on the types of tax evasion, financial corruption, boarder insecurity, and economic stagnancy that is effecting millions of citizens lives, right-wing fascists certainly will.     

A Plea For the Liberal Arts

The role of a college education in American life has become a topic of national conversation. Unfortunately, this important issue has not risen to a vigorous debate regarding how we, as a nation, can make college more affordable, more accessible for more people. Instead what we have is a rather silly tit-for-tat between firmly secure (read elite) individuals who feign indifference over their academic pedigree. Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have degrees from Harvard University. In fact, every President since Harry Truman has had a college degree, and all but two of them (LBJ and Reagan) have degrees from either Ivy League institutions, Duke, or national military academies. And yet, the national discourse, especially when elites want to appeal to "normal folks" is to play down these academic credentials. National leaders then either argue for continuation of the status quo (the Democrats anemic attempt to prevent Stafford loan interest rates from doubling), or call into question the need for all Americans, from all classes, to pursue college educations (the Republicans silly attempt to paint their rivals as aloof intellectuals with claims that not all Americans need college, nor college debt, to advance economically and socially). We certainly have real, important issues concerning higher education to discuss and defend. Crippling student loan debt, dismal job prospects, and rising costs of higher education all deserve national attention. Rather than address these serious issues our leaders disparage the very academic degrees, the very education that has paved their path to political power. As time passes, more and more Americans find it harder to attain advanced education, either technical or in the humanities. The nation as a whole suffers these fools and their selfishness, and not gladly.

Everyone can benefit from a well-rounded liberal arts education, not because it will enable an individual to manipulate widgets, but because studying the sciences, mathematics, the humanities, and social sciences helps individuals appreciate the process of thinking, listening, and debate. No matter what our station in life, whether we are car mechanics, sanitation workers, administrative clerics, physicians, assembly line workers, janitors, writers, artists, wouldn't we be able to function better as thinking citizens in a free society if we were skilled at deciphering arguments and asking questions? Why should that skill be relegated to a small, lucky elite that can access college education, and capitalize on the social networks and skills acquired in a college or university, using them to eventually enter the workforce or become entrepreneurs?

The statistics certainly are grim for recent college graduates. Some economists point out that graduates who enter a recession economy never make up the depressed wages. Over fifty percent of graduates are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they work in areas where their degree supposedly does not matter. The economy is grim - very grim - but it can never get better if we dumb down the work force, or consider the liberal arts and advanced education an elite privilege. Gone from debates about education costs and student loan debts are the bipartisan policies that over the past thirty years have eroded citizens' access to affordable state colleges and universities. Pell grants have lost funding. State universities and colleges have lost funding. Predatory lending to students has become a billion dollar business. And on top of all this, public education and public school teachers are under fierce attack. Public school teachers, forced by increasingly well-funded state assessment policies, are losing autonomy to teach with creativity and spontaneity. Students who are not taught to think and debate and question in the early years cannot learn to do so when, or if, they enter college and the work force. We need a society of educated critical thinkers, and that comes from developing an appreciation of reading history, science, sociology, anthropology, literature, politics, and philosophy and theology. It also comes from quantitative reasoning and appreciation of the arts. It comes, in short, from a foundation in the liberal arts, which is something that every person in a free society not only deserves, but requires in order for that society to be, and become, free.  

Elites poke fun at the supposed irony of the philosopher major turned barista, but what is so wrong with more philosophically-minded people in every sector of public life? Maybe we'd be better off if more people read and debated ideas. Maybe if more people had access to liberal arts education we'd be less susceptible to manipulation by corrupt elites who've spent quite a bit of time in college lecture halls and seminar rooms learning and debating the big ideas they seem to conveniently forget when they attain power.           

Hurray for the Nuns

I never thought that I'd write in praise of nuns. I went to Catholic school from first grade through college, sixteen years, and for the first eight, I interacted with a few nuns. Sister Mary taught me fourth grade Math, and give me my first pink slip for talking during her lesson on long division. Her face would get redder than a candied apple when she was mad, which was quite often. Sister Catherine, the school principal, resembled Mrs. Doubtfire. I spent quite a bit of time in her office for one thing or another. A handful of my early "running buddies" were expelled, or taken out of the school by their parents, outcomes Sister Catherine relished predicting when she scolded us for being adolescent boys. Our behavior wasn't really bad, just stupid. We needed stern reprimands in the scared straight fashion but instead got tirades about how we were degenerates and likely to end up in prison. While I never had Sister Margaret for religion class, my brother did, and, as memory serves, she was very upset when he colored the faces of a cartoon picture of Jesus and his apostles with tan or brown colored crayons. Truth be told, I am sure I gave the nuns at a hard time, and I deserved whatever punishment they gave me. But they were also a cold, uptight bunch with short, hot tempers. I did not find them warm, or anything close to resembling the word loving. 

My most positive experiences being Catholic came from the Jesuit priests and teachers I had at Xavier High School and Fordham University. With respects to religion and theology, the Jesuit and lay religion teachers I had taught us - in fact required us - to question our Faith. One high school teacher I had for a fantastic course called "Images of God and Man," would bellow that blind Faith caused people to walk into walls, and that if God wanted human beings to be robots, God would never have given us free will. We read Socrates, Kierkegaard, Satre, Nietzsche, the Book of Job, and talked about existentialism and Christian mysticism. "The unexamined life is not worth living!" Mr. Foley boomed from his desk at the front of the room, and whenever we parroted the simplistic catechism we received in grammar school, namely that our responsibility as human beings was merely to have "faith, hope, and love," Foley constantly exhorted us to, "Get out of the cave!" That class was topped by by freshman year religion teacher, Fr. John Garvey, S.J., structured a year-long course around the theme, "Faith and Life Are One," which pushed a class of thirty fourteen-year-old boys to take serious stock of the choices about almost everything we made, and would make in the future. We talked about how our relationships with parents, siblings, friends, girls, God all had the potential to be loving relationships, or selfish ones. We talked about sexuality, physical experimentation, and peer pressure, not in a doctrinaire, "do this and don't do that," way, but in a way that gave us agency and helped us to see the range of choices we could make, how, with discernment and patience, we could aspire to make choices that helped us to love others, not use them. I'd be a liar if I said my adult life unfolded exactly according to the moral high ground of selfless love and relationships based on mutuality and common respect that Fr. Garvey outlined for us, but I certainly feel I am able to be a better husband and father because I had those lessons.

And because of my high school teachers in religion, English (Br. Chris Derby, S.J., was the first teacher I ever had who made me see that I could read and understand poetry and Shakespeare, and that I could be a writer) and History, God is not an abstraction in the clouds, but the love that emerges when human beings treat each other and their world with selfless respect. In college, I was lucky to have Robert T. Cornelison as a theology professor. He encouraged us to read Immanuel Kant's, "What is Enlightenment," and sat there for the entire class as we debated the best ways for human beings to "dare to know" and free ourselves from self-incurred tutelage. Fr. Mike Moga, S.J., led his philosophy students through close readings of Tao Te Ching and meditation exercises. He was the first person who taught me about St. Ignatius Loyola's maxim that God was present in all things. Last, Fr. Gerry Blasczcak, S.J., Fr. Joe Currie, S.J., Fr. John Mullin, S.J., and Fr. Patrick Ryan, S.J., introduced me to Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises, a process of reflection and discernment about God's love and how humans can best experience that love by living committed, focused lives that try to promote love, seek truth, and work for justice.

All in all, I had very positive experiences growing up Catholic. For decades, I ignored the ignoble role that Catholics played in world history: the Crusades, the Inquisition, the enslavement of Native Americans and colonization of the Americas, the silence during the Holocaust and the rise of fascism. I turned a blind eye to the Church's discrimination against gay people. I never excused it, but shrugged it off with a "well, things aren't perfect" attitude. And I completely ignored the Church's systemic sexism: women could never be leaders, catechism taught that sex outside of marriage was a sin, priests and nuns abstained from sex to devote their lives to God. This is just the way life was, I reasoned. This was my Church. It wasn't perfect, but it was mine, and I loved the ways that my Jesuit friends and my Jesuit education inspired me to try and fashion a life "for the greater glory of God." I am certainly not a saint, but I learned in high school and college that that was never the point. The saints weren't even saints. Like every good Catholic, I chose to break the rules when life presented me with certain opportunities (usually for sex before marriage) and dutifully went to Confession during Lent to repent. Being Catholic was a part of my identity that gave me hope, purpose, and peace.

When the sex abuse scandals became public I defended my church with vigor. I didn't deny that such things could happen, but in all my years of knowing priests, of being an alter boy, a lectern, a catechism instructor, I never knew a priest to try and molest me. Some were drunks. Some were jerks. Some had loose hands with ladies. Some exhibited what my hetero-normative social world characterized as effeminate, sissy behaviors. But I never knew a priest to try and touch me, or any other boy I knew, in an inappropriate way. I chalked up the molestation cases to a few bad apples that would now spoil the bunch. Boy was I duped.

I still stand by my positive experiences being a Catholic. My Jesuit education gave me the critical thinking skills and the confidence to question hypocrisy delivered in the name of righteousness. In addition to the sexual violence some priests committed against boys the conspiracy of silence and decades of corruption that surrounded those sins adds exponential degrees of injustice to what must only be seen as soul destroying actions - soul destroying not for the victim and the perpetrators, but for the entire Church community. The denials, cover-ups, lies, and treachery that poured out from the Catholic sex scandals really turned my stomach and crushed me. I cried - I really did - when I saw that the systemic injustice sullied so much goodness: priests and brothers I loved and respected remained loyal to what I saw as a deeply corrupt institution, and it pained me that so many good people had to kneel in deference to such a soulless hierarchy.

And now the Vatican has reprimanded American nuns for supporting health care measures that conflict with narrow definitions of marriage and challenge the Church's stance against contraception and abortion. The Holy Sea will remain silent for decades as priests molest children, but rise up in opposition when septuagenarian women, who have dedicated their entire lives to serving the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, the sick, speak up for the rights of people to have access to health care that provides birth control for women. A Church leadership that is so blindly contradictory is rotting at its core. "If you look a who has more closely emulated Jesus's life, Pope Benedict or your average nun," writes Nicholas Kristof, it's the nuns hands down." Despite my checkered history with the nuns, Kristof is right.

Perhaps the Catholic Church has always been plagued by such contradictions, between a Faith of Love and commitment to social justice, exemplified by people like Dorothy Day and Pedro Arupe, S.J., and a politics of discrimination and repression seen in the sexual violence cover-ups that went on for decades in parishes throughout the US and Europe. Some devote, faithful Catholics can reconcile those contradictions and continue to give their allegiance to the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church. Despite my love for my Jesuit friends and my appreciation for the education I received in Catholic institutions, I am no longer one of those people.           

Hurray for nuns who champion health care for all people. Shame on priests and popes who cover up sexual violence against children.

Bird by Bird

I tried to start a blog once before and failed. Like my flirtation with hot yoga and cigarettes, blogging seemed like a good thing to try, but not worthy of commitment. Why would anyone really want to read about what was on my mind, I asked myself. I've kept a journal pretty consistently since the late 1990s, and I feel sorry for my children whenever some one other than me comes across those ramblings. While I enjoy the act of keeping a private journal, I'd like to develop as a writer whose work, if I am lucky, is read by other people. I hope that this blog will be a place to practice writing short interesting pieces on history, popular culture, politics, art, books, news, my always entertaining children, and life in twenty-first century America.

I've always wanted to be a writer. I have even published a few articles in anthologies on Civil Rights and Black Power Movement history, and, if all goes well, I will have a book on Brooklyn, New York's Civil Rights Movement coming out in 2013. But other than colleagues and maybe a handful of college students and other academics, I am not sure if many people read those pieces. I don't think my mother has even reads my academic work. My wife read my dissertation, but that was before we were married and parents. She probably pitied me and wanted to do everything possible to help me get out of graduate school, which would certainly make me more marriageable. Nowadays, I'd rather we spent time laughing about our kids, or at each other, than picking apart my writing. My longest friend read my book manuscript. We've known each other for almost twenty years, and if he wasn't such a history buff, I'd say he read it out of obligation: we've now been friends through girlfriend break ups, our children's births, his divorce and deployments to war zones, my movement to Maine. Reading my book was just another way he's supported me in good times and bad. While it would be nice for others to read what I write, the act of writing consistently and clearly is something I want more than fans and critics.

Which brings me to the subject of this first post. Anne Lamott's fantastic book, Bird by Bird is one of the funniest, most moving, and inspirational books on writing and writers, and who we are that I've ever ready. Did I say, we? I guess I did, because unlike other style guides and writing primers that I've consulted over the years, Lamott's book convinces me, with humor and compassion, that its the consistent decision to write that makes a person a writer. Whether or not a writer's work is published, or even read, is not the point. The point is that we write, every day, just for the sake of writing, because we have something to say, because if we don't, we get cranky and irritable, and even when we do, we can be cranky and irritable, but when we write and the writing goes well its better than any high.  Of course, I want recognition, "whatever that mudder-fuckin word means," as Piri Thomas wrote. But more than recognition, I want to work to write something beautiful or powerful, or sometimes I'll just settle for coherent. Anne Lamott reminds me that this pursuit is not only good, but necessary.

So I will try to blog every day. I will still keep a journal, because that is a place where I can write in private. And I will still work to write academic articles and books. But this blog will be a place to write thought pieces on everything and anything with a general audience in mind. No one may read these blog posts, and if someone happens to have started this, and made it to the end, thanks. You may really like Lamott's excellent book. And I also hope you will read another post on this blog.