30/30: A Poetic Evening

October 13th 

After some light house projects and a couple rounds of bowling for Tommie with his guy friends, we spent the evening at a free poetry reading by Richard Blanco (Obama's inaugural poet) at The Carolina Theatre.  

I always enjoy poetry readings because you get to learn about the backstory of the poet and it givers greater depth to their poems.  Blanco's poems (and stories) were very entertaining and funny, and explored concepts of culture, identity, and family, which are universal themes, therefore, easy to relate to.  It's great to see a poet like him gaining traction and interest.

After the reading, I had my book signed and told him that he ironically lives in the same small town in Maine as my parents (I did tell him, Dad, that you two have yet to meet.  He said that eventually it seems everyone there does end up meeting, so don't worry there's still time.)

The Odd Age of 29

I forgot it was my birthday this morning until I saw the messages on Facebook. I think it's the third year in a row that's happened. I must be getting old.

Tommie and I got to see Michelle Obama yesterday (Oct. 16th, the day between our  birthdays), though she didn't give us a b-day shoutout...I guess there were more important matters to discuss. One of the perks of living in a swing state is getting to see people like the First Lady in a small stadium. 

One year before the big 3-0 and I'll be by myself on a plane to Vegas in a few hours to spend my birthday working. Womp. I'll have to have a big party next year, and the Obamas are invited.

Baby Talk

Everyone who has been engaged knows that when people hear you are getting married they don't just stop at asking you a million questions about your wedding...they move onto questions about your life plans: "So, have you two talked about when you're going to have kids?"

I hear it from family, the dentist, hairstylists and strangers. Maybe other people don't mind being asked this question because they have the answer everyone wants to hear, which is: "We'll enjoy being 'newlyweds' for a couple years, then have babies." The problem is, Tommie and I are far from "newlyweds" (being together for 200 years) and our plan for kids is adoption. Try explaining all this to your dental hygienist as she flosses your teeth.

I'm getting used to the strange looks I get, the assumptions that I can't have kids of my own, and the insults. What begins as an inadvertent insult to me: "Well, it would be a big mistake not to have at least one of your own children and miss the experience" turns into me inadvertently insulting them because I have to explain that I honestly could care less about the experience. In the end, the other person doesn't understand me so they just recite the Nike slogan, "Just do it!" and I have to smile and pretend I will because that's easier for them to handle. But the truth is I have always wanted kids, just not my own.
People want to know why and I don't have one definitive answer but I can think of two videos I saw as a child that helped shaped my decisions. The first, The Miracle of Life confirmed that childbirth was actually more disgusting than I could have imagined. On the most basic level, childbirth makes me sick. More power to all the women who are brave enough to go through it but it's not for me. Maybe I was supposed to be a dude, maybe I was supposed to be an inanimate object like a rock, but instead I was born a woman with the brain of a man or a rock and the thought of another living being growing inside one's stomach and coming out their crotch sounds like the worst thing that could ever happen to a person.

The second video was a news special about China's one-child rule and how so many baby girls were being abandoned in that country because if they had to choose one child, families would rather have a boy. This confirmed that I would much rather help children that are already alive. There are millions of children in every country that need loving homes. On top of that, we are living in a world that is dangerously overpopulated as it is. Why should I add to that problem?
When I think about having my own child, I want to curl up and die, but when I think about adoption I get excited...the way I imagine most women get excited about the thought of having their own. I have no doubt in my mind I would love an adopted child all the same (possibly even more because they didn't tear out of my who-who). I know it sounds strange to most women because it goes against that instinct to carry a baby, but I wish some people would stop to think that maybe some women don't feel the same way they do. Just because I have a uterus doesn't mean I have to use it or that I want to use it. This blog post is for other women who feel like this, of which I realize there are few, and for the people who struggle to understand them. It's not that difficult in my view...ultimately we all want the same thing, we just go through different means to get there and I'm okay with that.

What We Have In Common With Thoreau

We've all heard of Henry David Thoreau: he's that old guy who's really into nature, lived out in the woods and wrote about it. That's what I knew when I read Walden, but within the first part of the book something struck me as odd. Thoreau only spent two years of his life on the pond. For a guy who has a reputation close to that of a hermit, I found it strange that in reality he lived there for a short time.

That is what peaked my interest in a recently published book called "The Thoreau You Don't Know," by Robert Sullivan. I knew the book would help answer some of my questions about the often overlooked aspects of Thoreau's life, but it surprised me to learn how much Thoreau's world (1830's-1840's) parallels the current state of our own. To get a better understanding of Thoreau, Sullivan points out the social/economic state of Concord (and America) at the time Thoreau chose to pursue his little experiment in the Walden woods...times which are eerily similar to our own:

"To get an idea of what Thoreau was thinking about work and about making a living when he wrote Walden, you have to stop and look at the work situation in Concord and the towns in the area, to imagine the economic landscape around the pond the way you might try and imagine the trees and the birds and the water...

"The Concord that existed when he went to college, in 1834, was different form the Concord in which he is about to build a cabin, in 1845, at twenty-seven; like the rest of America, it is in the midst of a transformation. It bears repeating that from 1837 through 1843, the country was caught in a severe financial depression. In general, New England's economy was changing, colonial agriculture being replaced by the early stages of modern industrial capitalism, all the economic and political power that had been dispersed among farmers now being concentrated in a smaller number of people, primarily landowners and business owners." (Sullivan 125)
Just as in Thoreau's time, the America that existed when I went to college, in 2002, is vastly different from the America in which I am now building the foundation for my future in 2010. When I went off to school, 9/11 had just happened, we were going to war, but on the flip side, the housing market was booming and jobs were readily available. Fast-forward eight years...I am twenty-six (Thoreau's age when he built his house on Walden), America is in the midst of a similar transformation. Our country is once again caught in a severe financial recession. The ongoing war has not been cheap, the housing market has crashed and jobs have dried up. I don't know if it's comforting or disturbing to know that Thoreau (an aspiring writer himself at the time), was faced with very similar issues over 100 years ago...makes me wonder if we've learned anything from the past.

Even after reading this book, I won't really know Thoreau, but if his thought process about going off to be more self-sustaining, getting back to nature, not being owned by a job, was in any part due to his frustration with the way things were headed in Concord and America in general (industrialization, a failing economy, and class separation), then I know a lot of people my age can relate. We're frustrated, confused and distrusting. We graduated, like Thoreau, into a world full of broken systems and because of this we don't want to be a part of them. All this is enough to push even the most practical of us to want to get all "Thoreauvian" and desire to build a modest home with a garden on a little pond outside town.

Thoreau struggled with these things over 100 years ago and perhaps another generation will struggle with them 100 years after me in a world that is even more advanced and industrial. I wonder if this moment in time will spark modern Walden-like experiements...there is something about seeing the modern world in turmoil that causes a lot of frustrated souls to go running back to nature for the answers.

Kicked Off The Quarter

Poor Gloucester. It seems the only news Gloucester is able to hold onto lately is bad news. The city was due for some "good publicity" when the Fisherman's Memorial (Man at the Wheel Statue) was voted by the public to appear on the new Massachusetts quarter, but already that news has gone sour.

The Gloucester Daily Times reports: "Ignoring the wishes of 109,817 Massachusetts online voters, the federal government has rejected Gloucester's Man at the Wheel for engraving on the back of a series of U.S. quarters.

"Chosen in a landslide over hundreds of other sites in Massachusetts in Internet voting this spring, the Gloucester Fishermen's Memorial and its iconic image of the man at sea was deemed ineligible for the quarter program because it is not federally maintained, according to a Mint spokeswoman."

Democracy at it's finest...The feds won't even let us vote on what picture to put on a coin. The people had spoken. The Man at the Wheel was ready for his close up. Gloucester was ready for some positive attention. I admit in high school I used to make fun of the fisherman because, well, while other schools had cool mascots like tigers, falcons and bulldogs...ours was a fisherman who, on his off-time, made fish sticks (Gorton's anyone?). But I have to admit, I thought he was a good fit for the quarter. The stoic figure is a popular tourist attraction and holds a lot of meaning as he stands in remembrance of all those lost at sea.

I used to be able to affirm, "Yeah, I'm from the place they based/filmed The Perfect Storm," but lately it's been more like, "Yeah, I'm from the place where all those teenagers got knocked up," or locally, "Yeah, I'm from the place with bacteria-infested water." I guess Gloucester will just have to keep waiting for some good news.

Healthcare: The Non-Debatable Debate

I generally don't write about political topics because I know it gets everyone's panties into a twist and because I'm not the most informed when it comes to political matters, but there are some issues I just don't understand how they are even up for debate in the first place. Take an issue like healthcare.

I could go crazy following all the headlines, reading all the literature, watching all the news stations, and listening to all the press conferences and debates on healthcare, but I don't. And it's partly because I think politics messes everything up, and because I know how I feel about a topic like this independently of politics. I can't stand when people start spewing off things they heard on TV without ever adding in an ounce of their own thoughts. Do they even have any of their own thoughts?

I don't have any agendas; I don't have anything to gain or lose by this debate at this time, and I don't care what one side says over the other. Forget all that political gobily-gook and think about humanity. Think about the difference between right and wrong. Think about people who aren't as lucky as you might be. And, really, it is a matter of luck...it was sheer luck of the draw as to what country we were born in, what family we were born into, what economic status we were given, etc. YOU might have great healthcare. You might have a swell job. You might have had a better track for success because of your gender, race, or status. Your family might be rolling in the money, but other people are not. You know that, right? You don't care? Look, I am a selfish person, I'm not even a very nice person, but I know that every inherently good person and family deserves help when they need it and deserves affordable healthcare.

I don't feel this way because Obama told me to with that dreamy smile of his, I feel this way because I have felt this way my entire life. Because even children know that it's awful to see another human being suffer. Because everyone over age 12 knows that medical bills are out of control; that every time you go to the doctor's (even if it's just for a yearly physical) you inevitably end up on the phone with your insurance company because they charged you extra. That means the "big wigs" are capitalizing on peoples illnesses...and that is just sick. And doctors, it's true I'm already not fond of you because you come at me wielding sharp objects, but more of you should help people out of kindness rather than out of payments.

I know every action has consequences, every change is hard to implement, and every side should be acknowledged in the best possible way, but for once, can we throw out all the special interests and think about our fellow human beings on a human level? And with that, I'll descend from my cyber soapbox 'till next time.

Who Needs Clean Water Anyway?

Gloucester has been having a bit of a water problem lately. Since August 21 we have been under a mandatory "boil-water order," which means any water used for drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, and washing dishes needs to be boiled first. The Gloucester Daily Times reports: "The city continues to pump supplemental levels of chlorine into the water system in an effort to drive down the bacteria counts. City officials continue to emphasize that there have still been no traces of E.coli or other fecal bacteria in the water samples. The state's boil-water order is based on the presence of total coliform bacteria." Because there is no E.coli present (yet), the city is not passing out water, which means that businesses and residents have to spend their own money on decent drinking water. It's only water—it's not like we need it to survive or anything.

It's times like these I wonder how we've let it come to this: Why we think everything we've done to make our civilization more "advanced" automatically makes it "better?" Why we'd take a water treatment plant over a natural spring or well? It comes down to convenience. It's more convenient to turn on a faucet than go down to the stream or the well and hoist up buckets of water (if we'd even want to, given the fact that we pollute the streams). And indeed some places wouldn't be able to have wells at all (like San Diego)...and I'll take a page from Tommie's favorite enviro books and say, well, then maybe we shouldn't inhabit places where you couldn't have a natural source of water.

As a citizen of the modern world, I am torn. Of course I enjoy the luxuries of warm showers and faucets (and I'm pretty sure my scrawny pancake arm muscles couldn't pull a bucket out of a well even if I tried)...but where do these advances get us in times like these? I'd be better off going to my aunt's family cabin in upstate New York and drinking from the natural spring in the ground that's covered with decomposing leaves (it is, by the way, some of the best water I've had). Instead I'm in a city, like many others, that avoids bacteria water by pumping extra chemicals into it. So let me get this straight: I can either drink water teeming with bacteria OR chlorine chemical water? Pour me some of that! Maybe, just maybe, those shouldn't be our options.