Category: blog

Thank you, President Obama

Saying, “It is time that we end the politicization of this issue,” Barack Obama has rescinded the “Mexico City Policy” that put brutal strings on family planning assistance in developing countries receiving US financial aid.

This is a great thing. So many women (and by extension, their families) have been hurt by this inhumane policy. There’s no way to undo that, but today, at least, there’s a little less damage in the world.

The previous administration’s need to impose its morals on the world reminded me of a little kid sticking its chin out and saying It’s my ball and you have to play by my rules. But human beings are not baseballs; their futures and their health are not to be bartered. As Obama said in his inauguration address, “The time has come to put away childish things.” It looks like that includes the notion that we have any right or responsibility to be the world’s moral police. Good. Let’s keep growing up.

If you’re not aware of the new White House website and blog, go check it out. And here’s what I had to say about it over at Humans At Work.

On the highway

When I was writing “Dangerous Space,” I listened to songs I thought Mars and the band would like, and — especially — songs that Duncan Black might write and sing.

Here’s one: Audioslave, “I Am the Highway.”

It’s a song about relationship: for me, it’s the relationship between who I am in the everyday world, and who I am when I write.

I love my days and nights. They are sometimes tedious, sometimes very hard, often joyful. Nicola is here. People read my stories, and sometimes the stories come to life inside them. A bad day in my life is a bad day, but it’s my life and I love living it.

But here I am limited. Here sometimes I am so much less than I am. I don’t think I’m unusual that way, but that doesn’t really help (grin). I don’t like being less brave, less clear, less ready to throw my head back or throw my arms around someone, less generous, less passionately engaged… I love Nicola and my family and friends, I love this beautiful world so much, but I am not always happy about being tied to reality.

When I write, I am everything. And for those moments it is real, even if I cannot bring it with me into the real world.

I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
I am not your blowing wind
I am the lightning
I am not your autumn moon
I am the night

I love being everything.


click here if you can’t see the player

Friday pint

Every Friday I transfer posts here from the Virtual Pint archives.

I bought these first two posts over to this blog last May when I wrote about being a writing ally. But there are many new folks here on the blog since then, so here they are.

After I did these posts, I went missing from the virtual pub for nearly 4 months. Nicola and I quite suddenly and unexpectedly bought a new house, sold ours, didi some fairly hefty renovations to the new place, during which we moved, and about a week after that I traveled across country to do a guest teaching gig at my old high school. Leaving Nicola up to her ears in boxes and contractors and suchlike. It was a really special time for both of us.

But it worked out. And it certainly did jar some things loose, which was part of the point for both of us. Not to shake up our relationship, but ourselves — and then see how we would settle and re-form.

One thing it did was make me a little nostalgic for the people inside my head. As you’ll see in the last post.

Enjoy your Friday.

Praise song for the day

I thought this was beautiful, and true, and right for the day. Well done to Elizabeth Alexander.

——————

Praise song for the day
The inaugural poem by Elizabeth Alexander

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’™ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, ‘œTake out your pencils. Begin.’

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, ‘œI need to see what’™s on the other side; I know there’™s something better down the road.’

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by ‘œLove thy neighbor as thy self.’

Others by “first do no harm,” or “take no more than you need.”

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’™s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

Things feel possible

In November, Nicola and I drank champagne as we watched Barack Obama win the election. Today we drank tea as we watched him become the 44th President of the United States.

I went to the gym early this morning. It’s foggy here today; I felt that I might be the only person for miles, until I saw people standing like shadows at a dark bus stop. I was alone at the gym. I drove home in a still and quiet world.

Then I turned on the radio and heard millions of voices in the other Washington. And you know, here we go… I imagined that someday I might meet President Obama and shake his hand, and I began to cry in the car for the wonder of it all, and the fierce hope I feel that maybe things will be better. Not just for me and Nicola, but for all of us, everyone in the world.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true.
 
— President Barack Obama, from his inauguration speech, January 20, 2009

When one is a new president sending one’s first official greeting to one’s people and the world, the words one chooses are important. Honesty, hard work, courage, fair play, tolerance, curiosity (what a marvelous word to include!), loyalty, patriotism — these are good words. Today is a good day. Things feel possible. Things feel new.

In which the screenwriter shares her vision

I have this character in my head. She keeps appearing places: on trains, in the city, on the highway. I see her out there. She is heroic, but not like any hero we’ve ever seen.
— Debra Winger in this interview with The Guardian

I am proud of the women in the screenplay I have in development. They are as real as I can make them. They pass the Bechdel test. I love them, as I love all the characters of my fiction — and thank goodness, because I would hate to spend this much time with people I don’t like, real or not.

And they are young women. That’s what’s required for this story, and fair enough.

So here’s what I hope — that writing them well helps get the movie made, and helps me establish myself as a professional screenwriter. So that I can write the literally dozens of stories I have in my head for women in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s… stories of adventure, bravery, sex, love, action, suspense, big feelings, small everyday moments, across the spectrum of human relationships. Not sweet old lady stories; not stories where women play someone’s mommy or grandmommy in the background. We get enough of those. The stories in my head are muscular stories of intriguing, compelling people who come in grownup female packages and do things that apparently will startle the hell out of the men who run Hollywood.

I want to do it for Debra Winger.

And Meryl Streep.

And Emma Thompson.

For every woman who has ever had to choose between playing bullshit roles or playing none at all.

For every woman over 40 who loves the movies but wonders why no one who looks like her is up on screen kicking ass and taking names, living large, being sexy, being frightened of something besides old age or loneliness, and maybe, just maybe, being the hero every once in a while.

That’s what I’m going to write. And I can’t wait.

Friday pint

Every Friday I transfer posts here from the Virtual Pint archives.

Halfway through January already. Hard to believe. Is it like that for you?

Here are three long posts from the archives, all in some way contributing to extended conversation. My favorite kind. Lots of navel-gazing this round — I was in a ruminative mood. That happens (smile). I actually wish I had time to wander around in my own sandbox right now: instead I feel like I’m running on some endless track, around and around and around.

I hope your days are less loopy, in all ways, than mine are right now.

Enjoy these pints.

And I wish she were here to kick his

I wish High Kick Girl were here because someone needs to kick George Bush out to Saturn.

As part of a set of midnight regulations, the Bush administration has issued a rule that allows individual health care providers who receive federal funding to redefine abortion to include the most common forms of birth control — and then refuse to provide these basic birth control services. They don’t have to tell vulnerable women about their options. They can withhold the information entirely and keep women ignorant of the choices that might be available to them from another provider. They don’t have to confess their bias. They can simply say, sorry, you’ll have to have this baby, or sorry, just don’t have sex if you don’t want to get pregnant.

Please sign this petition at Planned Parenthood asking the incoming Obama adminstration to reverse this regulation. My god, how many women are going to be hurt by this before it can be fixed? And when are we going to stop hating the diversity of humanity so much that we will hurt each other just to make the sure the world reflects only our ideas?

And someone please kick Shrub in his lame sick fucking ass on his way out of the White House?

(Edited to add: thank you to Mark for telling me about this, and for posting about it himself.)