Crystal Gayle, 70's feminist

For our 16th anniversary my husband got me a copy of Crystal Gayle's Greatest Hits.  More as a joke than anything, because we like to celebrate with the traditional gifts.  We like the idea that there's worth in simplicity and not always a need to modernize.  Really, who needs crystal for their 3rd anniversary?  You're barely off the wedding with its china patterns and gift registries and now more crap to go in the hutch?  Blech.  Work your way up there, earn it.  It's also possible we're a bit old-timey-snobbish and the modern list feels too suburban.  We like our old house, on the corner, by the elementary school.  And it can be fun to try to find things for Paper and Leather. So the traditional list says 16th is the Crystal year.  However, we also have some truly fantastic heirloom dishes, etc. and don't need any new crystal of our own.  So I got Crystal Gayle's Greatest Hits.  See what he did there?  That's not only why I married the fella, but am still married to him, 16 years later. 

I am of the opinion that you should never be ashamed of what you read or the music you listen to--the result being an open mind.  If you aren't afraid to try new things you won't get stuck in a fundamentalist rut.  A Neo-Nazi rut.  A New Age rut.  Any rut...there are no ruts.  Most people who have left their white supremacist past behind credit conversations with and surrounding new people, new material, as the the catalyst.  More information is rarely ever the problem.  Not enough info?  So very often to blame.  It's like the quote from Abraham Lincoln (or William Makepeace Thackery, more likely) "Whatever you are, be a good one." It's meant to convey whichever side of the civil war you fight on, be a good soldier, doctor, son, etc.  At the end of civil war battles, soldiers from both sides would tend to the dead, sometimes almost all from the other side.  Letters tucked in jackets needed to be sent home, often with a quick note from yourself as to where the man was located, a some other kindness.  And that couldn't happen until the man was buried, and you could give a good account to their family of how he died.  Do good by that man, by his family.  And I've come to realize, the more you never stop learning, the better you are.  Mark Twain said, "Travel is fatal to prejudice...".*  So travel, read, listen.  Do.  And don't be ashamed of what you are curious about.  It will only stifle you.

I loved not only the ingenuity of the outcome of the Crystal Year, but also...why not?  Not that many years ago I bought an Eddie Rabbit cassette tape I had to special order, then purchase from one of my bookstore co-workers.  ( I do love a rainy night.)  I was not afraid.  I remember being absolutely in love with Playing with the Queen of Hearts (by Juice Newton) and Why Have You Left The One You Left Me For (by Gayle) as kid.  I might have even roller-skated to both, at the roller rink.  So, Why Have You was on repeat for about a week.  Then I moved on and the disc stayed in the car.  I pulled it out again the other day.  As it was on repeat this time around, I realized something.  I miss this kind of unapologetic woman's voice in country music.  With the advent of 80's Country, it became even more a boy's club, despite break-outs like Trisha Yearwood and Martina McBride.  (Both kick-ass representatives for women's Voices in their songs btw.)  The music has lately been dominated by versions of 'climb on up in my big truck in your cut-off jeans while I drink a beer and then you can dance for me in front my headlights before we strip and skinny dip'.  

Are you serious?  C'mon fellas.  No wonder the USA is full of good ole boys who just don't understand sexual misconduct.  Step off y'all.  

Gayle, on the other hand owns herself.  That's the kind of woman I want in country music.  That's the kind of woman I want in any music.

First she runs through the litany of questions that have been on her mind since he left and why he might be back: Was the other woman not what you dreamed she'd be? Do you finally realize I'm better?  Did she hear the slamming door too, like I did? Basically running him through the gauntlet all while he stands on the stoop.  She hasn't even let him in.  (We can only hope it's raining.)

Then she takes stock of the situation: he's hurting, she can see that; but she can't tell if it's just for show, a pitiable pout for effect; she wants to have him back but only if it's for real--for good--this time.

And then we get to the line that made me take notice:

Ok, come on in.  I'll be your lover, you be my friend.

And yeah, maybe he's playing the same games, but she accepts that these are the terms this time around and doesn't struggle with the choice.  At the very worst, you're making sweet talk just to get a foot in the door, but you know what?  This time I know all about how you operate.  Ok, fine, cross the threshold.  I recognize the terms and I accept.  I'll take you as my lover knowing I am nothing more than a friend to you.  

The only chink in this feminism is when she says she won't ask again...and then does.  But I chalk it up to the catchy refrain.  Habits can be hard to break.  Why not back it up with a staple, snappy, a'Capella clapping version of the Ask, one more time.

It's a quick song, there aren't may lyrics, but what's there is an acceptance of oneself--faults and follies--and desires.  An un-shying-away from oneself.  I can appreciate that.   

* Full quote: "Travel is fatal to prejudice...". , bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

The Mini-skirted Ones Don't Get Less

I am very concerned about (Secretary of Education) Ms. DeVos' recent lack of judgement regarding civil liberties for all of  our citizens including protection of transgender students in schools.  Whether you and I agree or not if there are more than 2 sexes, a US citizen is a US citizen and is entitled to the same rights as every other citizen.  Ms. DeVos is not lawfully upholding her oath as Secretary of Education in not standing up for these citizens.

In conjunction with this glaring error, she has begun walking back policies on rape and sexual assault on college campuses.  If she chooses to listen to men's grievance and concern groups, that's fine--hearing people out is part of the job.  But to allow protections against victims to wane as a policy is subjecting women to bodily harm.

If a man grabs my butt in a bar as I walk by, that's assault.  It's not flirting, it's not playful contact, it's not 'boys being boys'.  There is a persistent culture of the latter.  Ms. DeVos' attitudes will continue to allow it.  I am also from West Michigan.  I have seen her involvement in the area.  She relies on religious doctrine and cites poor morals as a reason for a multitude of punishments.  Akin to 'if she wasn't dressed that way, she wouldn't have a problem'.  Let me be clear--poor morals is never, NEVER, justification for any kind of earthly punishment.  This is not a way to craft public policy.  Any woman deserves the same protections as any other citizen.  The mini-skirted ones don't get less.  Ms. DeVos' recent actions will allow a she-was-asking-for-it attitude to continue .

I will not stand by and allow her religious views of demoralized women to affect public policy.  While men's groups have stories of men wrongly accused there is a much more longstanding history of blaming and punishing the victims of assault.  We need to work twice as hard to counter that history; Ms. DeVos is walking us back to half. Focusing her efforts on a small percentage of men rather than as a part of the large percentage of valid criminal assaults is not halting an over swing of the pendulum.  It stops it from swinging toward justice altogether, and actually pushes it back.

Boy, Did He Deliver

Re: West Wing Reads 7/5/17:

"Tammy Bruce, in the Washington Times, praises President Trump’s wrestling match tweet, arguing “that the tweet was brilliant” in that it anticipated 'a ridiculously overwrought reaction by the legacy media, and boy, did they deliver.' "

The American public never underestimates the indecency of this president, as was also proven by that tweet.

Bruce's article brings into sharp focus the absurdity of the crass things the president will do. The point of the article wasn't the president's brilliance, or even his intelligence in tweeting it--it was that the gif was made to incite and it succeeded.  Citing this article proves how ludicrous the president's choices are, how he will always choose to incite rather than unite, he will always go for the low blow.  And boy, did he deliver.  He moved on it "like a bitch", as we'd heard him do before.  

West Wing Reads is a pretty sad expansion of an already diminutive form of access to information.  Despite being a WA Times article, this article in particular is from a Fox News contributor, reinforcing the information bubble.  The pieces chosen for 1600 Daily, while obviously propaganda as expected from administration communication, are all opinion pieces.  Opinions are fine, but that's all they are. If you negate the pro and con opinions, Bruce and her contemporaries, the facts are what remain: the climate is in danger, every excursion to a Trump business puts money is his personal pocket, he lies regularly and about silly things as well as big issues, he prioritizes childish behavior above anything else.  Bruce says that we can all choose to ignore it; so could he.  Except he can't.  He's incapable.

The attempt to provide what looks like more expanded content of the president's readership actually serves to point out that there is no substance to the effort.  A repeating refrain of this administration.

And it's not fooling anyone.

Are You Hip With The Young Kids?

I work in Books.  So the continual question of Are bookstores still valid? is ever present.  Do you have an online presence?  If you don't, you must be sunk.  How is your social media?  How many followers?  And the always grody question: Are you hip with the young kids?  (Gag me with a spoon, but it had to be said.)  Those young kids now being Millennials.  And everyone is scrambling to find out who they are, what they like, how to tap into their world.  They are as big as the Baby Boomers are.  My generation is sandwiched between 2 incredible, vastly different buying super powers.

At my job, our Marketing Dept is also having an on-going brainstorm about Millennials and just like every church seems to be, we are trying to figure out how to draw in young people.  People not necessarily attached to their parents.

It started with this idea of M's rejuvenating local shopping and neighborhood places.  Independent bookstores are seeing an upswing if you can believe it.  More are opening, and more of those by young people.  It's natural; people grow up and eventually start to do adult things.  But there has been a marked revitalization of a neighborhood mentality, of community, of shopping locally, keeping dollars in the area, partly because of this younger crowd.  I came of age with big box stores being awesome, then the fight to keep the little guys.  M's have grown up with an easy balance between online shopping, (not the horror to them it was to some of us,) and local stores.

Our discussion evolved to coming off the idea of your choices and habits being open to the possibility of being "hacked"--not literally, more that your options are subject to someone else's preferences than your own--by the new Amazon practice of allowing anyone to win the bid on a Buy button, possibly pushing publishers off of their own book sales.

One coworker commented that Millennials think nothing of the fact that once you put it out there, yeah, it's on the internet, so what? because they have grown up with this.  People of even slightly older generations might be worried about their information being actually hacked, or find the notion that choices are being fed to them via unseen algorithms disconcerting, but Millennials accept this and even use it themselves, or appreciate the suggestions.  Not that they are mindless--not at all.  They are simply aware that this is the process and are unafraid of it.  Older generations are alarmed at finding themselves in an information bubble whereas Millennials are like "Duh.  Of course there are bubbles."

So, to continue this thread, I had a new idea to throw into the mix:

If Millennials have grown up in this way, with a greater awareness and acceptance of this, does it also make them more capable of unplugging?  For example, is unplugging as natural for them as their acceptance of internet culture?  Are they better at it because it's natural?

And does that inform our marketing efforts of physical books, an atmosphere, a non-internet experience, when they choose to have it?

-- 

You Must Be Joking

Re; 1600 Daily 6/20/17:
"President Donald J. Trump is embracing big change, bold thinking, and outsider perspectives to transform government and make it work better, and at a far less cost. This new spirit of innovation will make life better for all Americans by modernizing critical IT systems, making government more transparent, and saving the taxpayers up to $1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years."

Make it work better--this is obviously incorrect.  His "outsider perspective" is proven contrary to the Constitution and illegal at every turn.

Making government more transparent--You must be joking.
There are 3 congressional investigations into his campaign, his financial ties to Russia, his own obstruction of justice in regard to those, and he continues to profit from his position through his personal business, as do his family.  His children have high-level access to state information as undefined counsel to the office and continue to refuse to divest their interests from their own businesses.
He has yet to release his taxes.
He tweets policies later contradicted by his own statements and spokespeople.
There is nothing about any of these examples that creates a more transparent government.  This president personalizes power rather than being an instrument of it.  That is not a transparent democracy.

I find these updates a compilation of poor spin-doctoring, the only result of an administration without experience and out of its depth.

Fact Check This

Re: 1600 Daily 6/8/17:
"'[Senator Schumer] had confused the official statistics. At the time, the 63 nominees awaiting Senate approval were in addition to the 39 confirmed – meaning that Trump had nominated 102 people to top posts overall.' - Fox News"

Guys.  Seriously.  If fact checking is "what you're reading" you are behind the times.  The nation has been fact-checking the vague superlatives of the president since his candidacy's infancy, and finding huge holes--no superlative needed.  If you want to start slinging "confused...official statistics" arrows, be prepared for the barrage that will come back at you, derived from factual evidence.  A concept as foreign to the president as coherent speech.

And to pluck such a random, inconsequential irregularity from the multitude of greater incongruities shows you are grasping at straws.  Find more to read, broaden your fact checking horizon.  Start with the waivers brought to the Ethics Office.  But don't showcase petty mistakes; it reveals your laziness when the rest of America is picking up your slack.

You're sending him out into the world?!?

Re; 1600 Daily 5/17/17:
"President Donald J. Trump will be traveling abroad for his first foreign visit. He will be making stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy, and Belgium, and will be attending both the NATO and G7 summits.  The President will be meeting with foreign leaders to strengthen our partnerships and work together to address the many challenges facing our world globally."

Good god.  The man can't be trusted to not divulge state secrets on his own soil and now they're sending him abroad.

Better make sure no one quick jotted down his cell number for safe keeping.

review: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Mild melding reality into irrationality, Crouch has created a cyclone of heart-pounding action and second-guessing, of an unraveling fantasy turned neo-scientific experimentation.  A scientist whom science engulfs, Jason Dessen eludes his mysterious kidnapper and struggles to get back to the only life he wants by making the same choice he has always made, no matter where it takes him.  Every plot twist, every derailment, culminate into one unerring lesson: never underestimate what you know to be true.  

Bramble sprung up

I noticed the other day, in my flower beds, a riotous bunch of new growth.  Gone was the bright Spring shoots of new life, the tender and slender stalks, the small fragile bits that make up miniature fields all in 1 stretch of ground not even the full length of my house.  Now life has taken root and taken over.  Now is work, weeding and the chore of tending.  The crocuses have dimmed, their tall leaves growing and the flyaway seeds of weeds and wildflowers taking root along side them.  Thickets of tangle overtake the first signs renewal.  Now they are the dominant force and I am taken aback at how my little patches of land have gotten away from me.
When the earth warmed and the ground was moist and barren, these first signs popped up, fresh and cheery. And now Summer has not yet filled the air but I see her evidence in the ground, wet with rain or dried with shine, rife with scrub and boisterous pop-up plants.  Now the thickets threaten the grass--my lawn if I mow it often enough--bragging and boastful in their sprouting, "Look how high!  Look how messy!  I'll fill you up too before too long."  And they might.  I've got my work cut out for me.
I cannot bring myself to pull them all just yet though.  There are so few that are truly thick-stemmed and angry.  Mostly they are a new green afro covering the earth, fuzzy and intertwined.  I have plans--a kitchen garden of herb plants, a flowerbed for color and cutting--but those things I intended are not blooming yet and do not need the stage.  They are grown taller, fanning themselves out.  But they are not themselves yet as I remember them.
This place is still new to us, a plot we have not lived in a full year.  I remember pulling weeds in patches as I needed the space in the Fall, but I need nothing now.  I am not ready to transplant, group or cluster.  Our landscaping is never that precise anyway.  I know what's coming from I planted months ago.  It's these unexpected things I notice now.  How quick they are!  How they use the rain to their advantage.  How prolific and sudden.  I don't have a plan for them, probably will not even next year.  Why would I?  Eventually the space will be filled with more and more perennials.  We'll chip away at this bramble year to year.  Or maybe we won't.  In my naivete I may think so, only to have more spring up elsewhere.  And so be it.  The ground is the ground and the growth the growth.  I will do my things and the miniature bramble will begin to block the sun to the basement windows.  I no plans for every part of my plot.  Only as things occur to me, as I see potential for a more manicured thicket, will I intrude.  I like the work, when I want it, and have no inclination to be beholden to my yard by needing a pristine cut pattern, or clean cuts rather frayed blades of grass; I braid the suckers sprouting from I know not what kind of leafy thing leftover from the previous purveyors of this land.  Let us both grow, taking a little time for crossing paths, but without needing to be in each other's way.

Appointments, not alliances

Re. 1600 Daily 4/28/17:

"The President has already defended Americans' Second Amendment rights by appointing Justice Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. " - This is extremely disconcerting because the justices are appointed based 1st on competency and 2nd on their general tenure of decisions.  No one is appointed because they have made a specific pact with the president.  The public know of no special promises by the new justice to protect 2nd amendment rights regardless of the law, as your assertion implies.

Be careful with your words.  

If there exists an agreement or arrangement between Gorsuch and the president, than both have broken the law.

Regarding only 1 news source link: Your news sources citing articles are getting pretty thin despite the abundance of credible news surrounding the administration. 

Your Nat'l Park Week is weak

Re. the 1600 Daily 4/17/17:
"President Trump Proclaims April 15 through April 23, 2017, as National Park Week."
I find this absurd since the president denies climate change, something his youngest son can educate him on, probably starting since the 1st grade, but most definitely at this age.  It's also ludicrous because declaring 1 week Park Week doesn't take into account the insight and forethought past presidents had in not only setting aside park land--a mental capacity the current president has proven he does have by allowing, among other things, coal waste to go back into streams--but it also goes against his entire policy structure of denying recognizing that these decisions must be made at the federal level, not the state level.  The federal government must take care of the needs of the country as a whole; waste and pollution from one state travel between many states.  An aerosol can in one locked apartment leaks to the ozone, across states, as surely as one person gets leaves from his neighbor's tree in his yard every year.
Your National Park Week is weak.

Sexist (and worse) President

Re 1600 Daily, 3/30/17:

No matter how many panels or conferences, meetings or forums you attend; no matter the women's issues and causes you pretend to champion, this photo with Rassmussen--and it's absent partner during Merkel's visit--out you as a liar.  You cannot profess to advocate on behalf of women and refuse to shake one's hand while also affording her male counterparts this simple, singular gesture of meeting.  A woman who is your equal in station and your better in leadership, compassion and voice.

Your behavior is an affront and you embarrass us.

Your EPA sucks dirt (when it should suck compost)

The White House has a email list anyone can sign up to receive.  The current administration has an email they are calling the Daily 1600.  I receive it.  And I usually respond.  I'll be posting that feedback here, among the others essays.

Re 1600 Daily, 3/28/17:
Under the section  "News Reports: The Washington Post: 'Trump Moves Decisively To Wipe Out Obama’s Climate-Change Record'"
You do realize this is a damning report of the president's actions, don't you?  I'm glad you included an opposing opinion piece, and from the WA Post, but I suspect this is like so many things in this administration, appropriated without really understanding what's going on.

Here's a quote from the article--the first few lines no less--had you bothered to fact-check:
"The order sends an unmistakable signal that just as President Barack Obama sought to weave climate considerations into every aspect of the federal government, Trump is hoping to rip that approach out by its roots. The president did not utter the words 'climate change' once, instead emphasizing that the move would spur job creation in the fossil fuel industry."
This is an unacceptable policy for a president, but indicative of this administration's galling sense of entitlement.  One of the first executive orders "nullified a regulation barring surface-mining companies from polluting waterways".  POLLUTING WATERWAYS.  When is that *ever* a good thing?  It's not.  It's obvious, it's a fact, and yet this administration continually chooses to ignore facts.

Probably the most damning piece and what captures the heart of the administration's utter ignorance and disregard of climate change, is this part of the article: "The sweeping executive order...seeks to...remove the requirement that federal officials consider the impact of climate change when making decisions."

That is an unintelligent, non-sustainable, unethical way of going about business in the world.  You are making the world--the entire world, you understand--a worse place, starting with the US.  Your legacy is idiocy flaunted in the face of anyone who needs to breath air, drink water, or live on Earth.

Truncated

Businesses are always looking for way to increase productivity, eliminate inefficiencies.  ​So you might think a platform regulated to 100 characters or less--including spaces--could be a business owner's dream.  Get rid of that inconsequential 2nd space between sentences!  Not only is there no need, now it takes up space better devoted to the message.

But here's the thing about having to fit coherent, business-like communication into such constraints...it propels itself to even more abbreviated thoughts.  Emojis stand in for complicated thoughts.  A new shorthand develops (or is revived from secretarial days).  And suddenly the tweet is almost incomprehensible.  Or it takes a few of them in a row (1/3).

Which may be why the president-elect likes it so well.  He comes from big business, thinks himself a formative force and example of the best business tactics.  (Note, not behavior, not practices.)  So if tweeting is a model of efficiency, it should not be surprising that he uses this as his main form of communication with news outlets--instead of press conferences--with the public, or to jab at whatever nuisance needs to be poked to get him what he wants.

​Except that I'm not sure that there's much thought put into it.  I think it's actually a case of his phone is the device he has closest to his fingers and so that's what he uses.  There's no evidence of forethought in the tweets themselves; I can't imagine there's any in which form of communication is best.  His own adviser Ms. Conway​ says he isn't capable of speaking what's in his heart, that America needs to look past the words and focus on what's in his heart. 

​Tweeting could be seen as the next break through in efficiency for business communication.  Except for the fact that it inherently makes communication look childish. Not the best platform of presentation for the president-elect. Especially when you shout.  #allcaps  So let us not mistake business for government, tweets for press conferences.​

Which, by the way, brings up another point: brush up on your double dash punctuation America, you're going to need it.  As evidenced by the transcript of the 1 press conference we've had so far.