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Another tragic day in US history

Twenty years ago today, the Philadelphia police, with the support of local officials and the FBI, dropped a bomb on the headquarters of MOVE, a radical African American collective.  The fire started at the MOVE house and spread throughout the neighborhood, destroying 61 homes, killing five children and six adults, and leaving over 200 people homeless.

I encourage you to read the novelist Alice Walker’s essay, “Nobody was supposed to live.”

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The numbers for the initial stage of each war offer some striking parallels.  (Figures for Vietnam cover 1964-66, except where asterisks indicate data for entire war)

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Badger-boy’s school had a fundraiser earlier this year – a magazine sale.  Always the “sucka” parent, I decided I wasn’t receiving enough junk mail, and I decided I’d help him out and order something.  But frankly, I don’t care to read 99.999% of magazines.  Fashion?  Blech.  Crafts?  No time.  Better Homes and Gardens?  Better not look too closely at my lousy housekeeping skills.  Much to my surprise, one of the cheapest magazines on his list was Rolling Stone.  So that’s what I ordered.  And the first issue of my subscription arrived Saturday, along with their special issue on the Top 100 artists of all time.

Oh man, how I loved this magazine as a teenager.  I had a collage hanging on the wall of my bedroom made from all the “cool” covers.  This was my favorite:
 

 

Getting Rolling Stone made me realize how old and out-of-touch I am with “what’s cool.”  But fortunately, there was an article on Duran Duran – “then” and “now.”  And now I can brush up on my music gossip.  (Badger-boy will have a pop-quiz later this afternoon on the Top 100 artists.   I was dismayed by his lack of music knowledge and his inability to identify these "influential" artists from their pictures.  Although to his credit, he was able to recognize NWA and name three of the members.)

I would start a new collection of Rolling Stone covers as wall decoration.  A friend gave me the recent issue that had Johnny Depp on the front (swoon!).  Too bad the issue I received on Saturday had Weezer, not John Taylor from Duran Duran on the cover!

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Damn good questions, provided by Gothmog

1.  Favorite fictional work of literature to teach, and why?

Having been stuck teaching college composition for some time – Sartre said “Hell is other people,” but truly, hell is teaching Writing 122 – I’ve only been “privileged” enough to teach literature for a year or so. 

So, of the texts I’ve taught thus far, my favorites are Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One and Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel – somewhat surprising, since I specialize in 20^th century lit.  Rabelais’s books are great since students are *shocked* that a sixteenth century monk could fill a book with so many fart jokes.  Rabelais segues nicely into a discussion of Bakhtin and even South Park.  Check out this title in a recent academic journal:  “South Park's Solar Anus, or, Rabelais Returns: Cultures of Consumption and the Contemporary Aesthetic of Obscenity.”  Sometimes, I just love the academy.  (Sometimes)

And Henry IV was an interesting play to teach, partly because of good ol’ (pathetic) Falstaff, and partly because it provides a great opportunity to teach Freudian concepts.  (You know the routine -- Hal must reject the maternal figure of Falstaff and learn to identify with his father Henry Bolingbroke in order to enter the socio-political world).  Plus, with Henry IV, one can show My Own Private Idaho, featuring Keanu Reeves, the greatest Brechtian actor of our time.

2. What will be your first official act after being elected Queen of the World? (yes, for an anarchist, this does indeed constitute irony)

Well, let’s hope I’m not elected.  That would be embarrassing for an anarchist.  Let’s hope I’m appointed by God, mkay?

I’d like to be a political queen, not merely a figurehead.  No profiles on coins or stamps, thank you very much.

So, when I am Queen of the World, I am going to free all political prisoners, especially Jeffrey Luers.  Then I’m going to turn the throne over to Assata Shakur, and let the good times roll.

3. Tell the story Badgerboy would pay the most money for you not to tell his future adult friends, ever.

Right now, he’s mortified of all the pictures we have of him in tie dyes.  He’s embarrassed that his first concert was the Grateful Dead.  But in 10 years, this all might be uber-cool, and he’ll wish we hadn’t sold the ’69 VW Van (we haven’t yet.  Anyone interested in buying?).

So depending on Badgerboy’s religious beliefs (and on the direction this country takes in the next 10 years), this story is sure to constitute embarrassment… or imprisonment – for Badgerboy and/or for me.

When Badgerboy was in the “What’s that?” toddler stage, the heretical Mr. Badger thought it’d be humorous to tell him that the correct term for the toilet plunger was “bible.”  One day, when the toilet was backed up, Badgerboy ran out into the living room (we had company – of course), yelling “Quick, grab the bible, the toilet’s flooding.”

4. Complete this sentence, with an explanation: "I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I really like(d)..."

KISS.  I wanted to be in the KISS Army.  I wanted to be one of those girls on the cover of Love Gun groveling at the feet of Peter Criss, Ace Frehley, and Paul Stanley.

(For the record:  Fuck you Gene Simmons.  I never fantasized about your filthy, fascist face.  In fact, here’s the link to the NPR Fresh Air interview that you don’t want anyone to hear ‘cause you’re such a misogynist pig)

Now that I’ve looked up the KISS discography, however, I see that Love Gun came out in ’77.  So thankfully I was far too young to be inducted.  I do blame the babysitter who introduced me to KISS for the whole sick fascination with big-hair-metal-bands that made me want to sleep with guys like this:

Eewww.

 
5. Most misunderstood historical figure?

Hmmm, probably Friedrich Nietzsche.  Many people read him literally (and wrongly, I think) and point to his ideas of “masters and slaves” and “will to power” as some sort of proto-Nazism.  Like many great thinkers who were “crazy,” lots of misinformation also surrounds his madness.  Although people believed for some times he had syphilis, a recent medical journal suggests this might not be true.   And right now, I’m reading a book called I Am Not Man, I Am Dynamite:  Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition that links his ideas of philosophy, history and aesthetics to anarchy.  Fascinating stuff.

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Today is the 35^th anniversary of the Kent State massacre, when the Ohio National Guard fired on students protesting the Vietnam War and Nixon’s recently announced Cambodia bombing campaign.  Four students were killed

ALISON KRAUSE (age 19)

JEFFREY MILLER (age 20)

SANDRA SCHEUER (age 20)

WILLIAM SCHROEDER (age 19)

and nine were wounded.

Nixon, who had recently called student protesters “bums,” responded by saying “This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy,” clearly blaming the activists, not the guardsmen, for the bloodshed.

It saddens me to think of the loss of life on that campus that day, and the loss of life at Jackson State ten days later, when Mississippi State police officers opened fire on the men's dormitory, killing PHILIP LAFAYETTE GIBBS (age 21) and JAMES EARL GREEN (age 17).

And I am angered by the misconstrual of activists—now and then—as the harbingers of violence and terrorism.  Dissent is a cornerstone of the freedoms this country allegedly holds dear. 

On the anniversary of this tragic day in US history, I ask that everyone think hard not only about these freedoms and rights (for they are indeed under attack from the likes of the US Patriot Act that links dissent to domestic terrorism), but about US imperialism and whether you have done enough, shouted enough, protested enough to bring today’s cruel government and unjust war to an end.

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I had this dream Sunday night.  (I should’ve written about it yesterday, but I was too busy ranting about my Marxist theory class.  See entry below).

The context:

My department has been going through a lot of upheaval and reordering lately.  It was time for a regime change, no doubt.  But some of the new policies are obviously weighing on my unconscious.  And obviously, I’m going through a lot of personal shit to boot.  And personal shit is never welcome in the Ivory Tower.

The dream:

My department assigns incoming graduate students a “mentor,” someone in the program with similar interests so we can help them navigate their way through the complexities of university life.  And the department assigned me… Constantine Maroulis.

I was pissed off.  I asked the head of the program why she’d assigned him to me.  I mean, he and I don’t have the same academic interests.  She replied, “you study reality TV.”

“Wha?” I said.  “Isn’t that a little unfair to pigeon-hole Constantine for appearing on American Idol?  I mean, he’s been accepted into a PhD program in Comparative Literature.  It’s not like we should judge him for being on TV.” 

The conversation devolved into a huge argument about her direction for the program, her definitions of what constitutes “good literary studies,” and who is a “winner” or a “loser” in the game.

The interpretation:

The academy has spoken.  I've been voted off the island.