tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56820369906275151162024-02-21T05:00:47.303-05:00Brigid Brockway is Technically a WriterBrigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.comBlogger681125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-980302118641474972020-06-09T17:09:00.000-04:002020-06-09T17:11:08.244-04:00Black Lives Matter - Facts and Figures<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After over a week's worth of protests with no end in sight, and I'm seeing lots of white folks on social media question whether all this is really necessary. Cops kill more white people than Black people, I've seen some say. And these incidents, while horrible, are isolated, and aren't a sign of some systemic problem. And anyway, some say, Black people commit more crime and that's why cops keep killing them. So Black people should just stop being victims and just obey the laws and then they wouldn't have to worry about getting involved with the police.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And the truth is, it's easy to make a compelling case when you cherry pick statistics, when you don't tell the whole story. So over the next few blog posts,</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> I'm going to try and tell the whoooole story in hopes of getting folks to understand that yes, Black folks are provably and significantly more likely to be beaten or killed by cops. And while there are some crimes one race is more likely to commit than the other, Black folks are way more likely to experience police violence even over crimes that Black and white folks commit at the exact same rates. And finally, I'll provide several examples showing that Black folks don't have to be doing a damn thing to be the victim of police violence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In this post we're only going to talk about what goes on between police and Black <i>adults</i>, because the issue of policing Black kids is a whole egregious and heartbreaking mess that needs its own post. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So to get to where we are we're going to take a quick trip in the wayback machine to take a quick look at how we got here. Picture it. Dixieland. Reconstruction era. Following the Civil War, people in the South discover that paying Black people to do work means less money for white people, and they're not big fans of that fact. Fortunately, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution">13th amendment</a>, the one that banned slavery, gave them a loophole. You can't force just anybody to work without pay anymore, but you can still enslave people in prison. So as soon as the North stops looking, Southerners pass <a href="https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-120-the-tunnel-8-2-19/">Black Codes</a> - special laws, just for Black folks, with wildly disproportionate sentences, that allow for the arrest, conviction, and enslavement of Black folks. If you're Black, you could get arrested for not having a job, but you could get arrested for selling stuff without permission too. You could get arrested for loitering, being out after curfew, owning a gun, or drinking outside in public. If you got arrested, you went to jail for forever, and lo and behold, you were back at work on a plantation or on a chain gang. It's slavery rebranded. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once Black folks had been convicted and given inordinately long prison sentences for these new crimes, they could be "leased out" the plantation owners, construction companies and so on. Rules were, lessees could <a href="https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-120-the-tunnel-8-2-19/">shoot their prisoners if they ran away, and if one died, they'd get another</a>. The conditions were awful and a great many enslaved Black people did die. Folks, inside and outside, who complained were met with the argument that if these folks didn't want to be enslaved in this way, all they had to do was not break the laws. Sound familiar? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Within a couple decades, anti-slavery types started crying fowl on having special laws for Black people, and localities changed things up a bit. Laws about loitering, open container, disturbing the peace and so on would apply to everybody, but cops would have great discretion on whom they applied it to. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/07/black-lives-matters-police-departments-have-long-history-racism/3128167001/">Prosecutors would have discretion on whom they would charge, and judges would have discretion as to sentences</a>. And judges and prosecutors would just happen to use that discretion to charge and give crazy long sentences to Black folks. There are still different sets of laws for Black folks and white folks, but that fact is no longer officially acknowledged. This system was intentionally designed to put more Black folks in prison than white folks, put them in there for longer, and make money off of their labor. And the system continues to work exactly as designed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And if you think that cops can't possibly still be getting away with just up and arresting Black folks for next to nothing, take a look at Adrian Schoolcraft. Schoolcraft was a Brooklyn cop who had a crisis of conscience when his Sergeant started straight-out telling he and his fellow officers to arrest and cite people on trumped up charges in the mostly Black Brooklyn neighborhood that his precinct patrolled. <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/414/right-to-remain-silent">Schoolcraft started recording </a>his Sergeant saying things like, one Halloween, "any roving bands of more than 2 or 3 people, I want them stopped, cuffed, throw them in here, run some warrants... we'll come back and process them later on." Schoolcraft's sergeant was specifically telling officers to arrest people without cause and throw them in jail, and that they'd figure out what to charge those folks with later. Which is completely, blatantly illegal, but who is gonna believe poor Black folks over NYPD cops? Are those folks going to hire a lawyer every time something like this happens? Schoolcraft recorded officers arresting Black folks for trespassing on public streets. Citing Black folks for open container when they're walking home from church with a bottle of orange juice. Stopping and frisking Black men without probable cause, which was illegal at that time. This all happened in 2009. Not 1909, but two thousand - ten years ago - nine. By the way, when Schoolcraft started bringing these concerns to the people above him, instead of doing anything, they <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-08-11/new-york-cop-sues-city-saying-corruption-claims-landed-him-in-psych-ward">raided his home and had him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution for a week</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Any which way you cut it, according to any legitimate source, including our own government, Black Americans are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be charged, more likely to be convicted, and get longer sentences for piddly misdemeanor crimes than white folks. And, it turns out, cops are <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793">much more likely to assault and kill Black folks</a> in the process of And it isn't getting better. According to <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/">The Sentencing Project</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> In recent years, black drivers have been somewhat more likely to be stopped than whites but have been far more likely to be searched and arrested. The causes and outcomes of these stops differ by race, and staggering racial disparities in rates of police stops persist in certain jurisdictions—pointing to unchecked racial bias, whether intentional or not, in officer discretion. A closer look at the causes of traffic stops reveals that police are more likely to stop black and Hispanic drivers for discretionary reasons—for “investigatory stops” (proactive stops used to investigate drivers deemed suspicious) rather than “traffic-safety stops” (reactive stops used to enforce traffic laws or vehicle codes). Nationwide surveys also reveal disparities in the outcomes of police stops. Once pulled over, black and Hispanic drivers were three times as likely as whites to be searched (6% and 7% versus 2%) and blacks were twice as likely as whites to be arrested. These patterns hold even though police officers generally have a lower “contraband hit rate” when they search black versus white drivers. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's get back to the history lesson. Around 1930 the government finds a brand new way to unevenly enforce laws. Now, back then, in most states, you could get <a href="https://www.canorml.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/caloriginsmjproh.pdf">cannabis at your local pharmacy</a> - some required a prescription, some didn't. Cannabis was banned in some places, but for the most part it was considered pretty harmless. Then along comes Harry J. Anslinger and his Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger is hired as the founding leader of the FBN, and Anslinger hated two things: weed and brown people. Actually, that's only half true. Before he started his campaign against it, Anslinger had said that the idea that cannabis could harm people was an absurd fallacy. Buuut then he noticed how much Black folks and Mexicans liked the stuff. Anslinger said, "Reefer makes [slur] think they're as good as white men," and he warned that marijuana made white women want to have sex with Mexican and Black men. Anslinger encouraged referring to cannabis by its Mexican name, marijuana, in stories about its many ill effects, because he thought it made the drug seem foreign and that much more dangerous. Anslinger's allies in the media, notably his buddy William Randolph Hearst - who hated Black people almost as much as he loved <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/style/2004/12/19/leo-and-howard/1542e128-d81e-491b-ada3-a662621c7c20/">storing his urine in jars</a> - were all too happy to run false or exaggerated stories about the evil things brown people did when high on herb - anything that sold papers and made brown people look bad was a winner in Hearst's book. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the late 30s, Anslinger succeeded in having marijuana outlawed nationwide and before the ink was dry on the act, the justice system started enforcing it differently for white folks and Black folks. Black folks were more likely to be stopped, searched, charged, tried, and convicted, and once again, received longer sentences, even when it came to pass that Black folks and white folks were equally likely to use the drug. Once again, these drugs were designed to allow the justice system unfairly target Black people, and they continue to work as designed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You might think things are getting better now that weed is legal in so many states. But that isn't exactly the case. People who got busted for serious weed crimes are still in jail even in places where weed is no longer a crime, and those who aren't in jail anymore still have their criminal records (which can affect employment, student loans, ability to buy or rent a home, and more). And even in places where weed's legal, you've got to have a license to sell it - if you're not a licensed dispensary, <a href="https://www.canorml.org/california-laws/california-cannabis-laws/">selling pot can still be a felony subject to harsh</a>, harsh penalties including prison time. And it just so happens that Black folks don't even own 1% of the legal marijuana industry. The city of LA even created a program designed to provide cannabis licenses to people harmed by the war on drugs, which seemed like a step in the right direction, except that only <a href="https://estrohaze.com/3-things-remember-black-owned-cannabis-business/">20% of the businesses</a> that will benefit from the program are Black-owned.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So pot gets made illegal all over the country in 1937, and now you've got hundreds of thousands of disproportionately Black prisoners all over the country providing free labor in prison workshops - slavery rebranded once again. But the fun's just starting. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In 1971, Nixon kicks off his War on Drugs. According to <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/">Nixon aide and Watergate co-conspirator</a>,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By now, I probably don't have to tell you that the War on Drugs disproportionately affected Black communities. Black folks and white folks were equally likely to use drugs, but Black folks were far more likely to be targeted by law enforcement over it. Nixon's drug policy walked so his successors' could run, and soon we had the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which imposed draconian mandatory minimums on possession of crack cocaine - a drug favored among Black Americans - while imposing much lighter sentences on possession of cocaine, which is the same drug, except preferred by white folks. The US Sentencing Commission found that crack laws were maybe the most racially skewed laws on the books, with Black people being on the receiving end of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120229184659/http://law.fordham.edu/assets/LawReview/Beaver_April_2010.pdf">79% of crack</a> convictions. That disparity was eventually addressed with the Fair Sentencing Act, which was passed in 2010 over the fervent objections of - you guessed it - the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act#Opposition_to_the_Act">Fraternal Order of Police and the National Sheriff's Association</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At this point, I might be giving you the impression that the whole problem of racial disparity in our justice system rests on drugs. That cops might lean a little harder on Black folks who do drugs, which may be unfair, but is pretty easily resolved by just not doing drugs. But not so fast. We still haven't gotten to Broken Windows Policing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Okay, so Broken Windows Policing is a criminological theory that visible signs of disorder in an urban environment encourage more crime. A couple of social scientists back in the early 80s wrote an article called "Broken Windows" arguing that:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But, the authors said, if you repair the one broken window right away, no more broken windows. In a follow-up book, one of the authors of that article opined that what applies to windows might apply to crime. If you intervene then the small crimes happen, they'll happen less often, and crime will go down overall. Clean up vandalism right away. Get addicts off the street and into treatment. Get the community involved in keeping the neighborhood clean and orderly so they'll feel a sense of ownership and police themselves. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Law enforcement agencies were fans of the idea, but didn't maybe understand it so great. Seems cops mostly took the whole theory to mean that they should go into <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1588&context=faculty_scholarship">minority neighborhoods</a> to arrest and cite people for what the hell ever they could think of. "Disorderly conduct," which of course means whatever cops want it to mean. Spitting. Riding a bike on the sidewalk. Loud music. Trespassing for sitting on the stoop of a building they don't live in. Or sometimes buildings they do live in - mental health worker Rhonda Scott was arrested for the crime of standing on her own stoop without the ID to prove it, and suffered two broken wrists in the process. Can you even imagine - begin to imagine, walking out onto your front porch and having cops walk up and break your freaking wrists for doing it? I suppose the answer to that question depends on your skin color.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anyway, Broken Windows leads to more stops, more searches, more violence, more arrests, more charges, more convictions. All disproportionately affecting Black folks, and all having very little proven effect on the crime rate. If you've read this far, you've probably guessed that all this<a href="https://www.joincampaignzero.org/brokenwindows"> leads to a lot more dead citizens</a>, and of course, those citizens are disproportionately Black. According to CampaignZero.com, "in 2014, police killed at least 287 people who were involved in minor offenses and harmless activities like sleeping in parks, possessing drugs, looking "suspicious" or having a mental health crisis."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you need more evidence that police use of force disproportionately affects Black folks, check out <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793">this study</a> from the Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences. Head to <a href="http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/">MappingPoliceViolence.org</a> for a whole bunch of raw data. And <a href="https://www.joincampaignzero.org/reports">here's a whole mess of data </a>about police use of force policy and training and such.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From 1983 to 2016, the prison population has increased from 250K to over 1.5 million, and even though they make up only 13% of the general population, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mass-incarceration-a-dest_b_578854">Black folks make up 37%</a> of the prison population. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sp.2011.58.2.257?seq=1">One in three Black men</a> will go to prison in their lifetime, which means, by the way, that one in three Black men will be disenfranchised for some portion of their life - people in prison can't vote, and many states require former prisoners to pay a fine or make it through probation before they can vote again (and by the way, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sp.2011.58.2.257?seq=1">their job prospects </a>once they get out are way worse than a white man who committed the same crime would be). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If it helps you to hear it directly from the United States government, here are some direct quotes from the<a href="https://www.ussc.gov/"> United States Sentencing Commission</a>:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Black male offenders continued to receive longer sentences than similarly situated White male offenders." Black men's sentences are 19% longer on average and the disparity has not improved at all since 2012.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Violence in an offender's criminal history does not appear to account for any of the demographic differences in sentencing."</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Black male offenders were 21.2 percent less likely than White male offenders to receive a non-government sponsored downward departure or variance" (sentence below the minimum sentencing guidelines)</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you need to hear it from a conservative, conservative lawyer T. Greg Doucette has been keeping a <a href="https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1270402748895412224">running Twitter thread </a>of videos of police violence against BLM protesters. </span></div>
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3️⃣9️⃣2️⃣ Oklahoma City, OK: police shoot a black man as he has his hands raised in the air – and the media is streaming live <br />
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[<a href="https://twitter.com/BruceBrownJr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BruceBrownJr</a>]<br />
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<a href="https://t.co/9tLKcXatS7">pic.twitter.com/9tLKcXatS7</a></div>
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) <a href="https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1269791465707896834?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It isn't anyone's imagination. This justice system does not treat Black lives as if they matter. And until there's real, true justice, there's not going to be any peace.</span></div>
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<br />Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-87126375507566556912020-05-29T22:29:00.028-04:002020-05-30T10:00:13.887-04:00Filming a police encounter<font face="arial">I don't know what to say about the lynching of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police force. I don't know what to say about news that we now know that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/us/george-floyd-new-video-officers-kneel-trnd/index.html">at least three officers</a> knelt on Floyd for a time after he was restrained, and others stood around with their hands in their pockets as one of their own crushed the life out of him, not saying a word. I don't know what to say about the fact that only one officer has been charged and that one only with third degree murder - killing someone "without intent to effect the death of any person."</font><div><font face="arial">Black folks are already dying of COVID at 4 times the rate of white folks while doctors on TV blame everything from obesity to melanin, conveniently ignoring the well-established factors of <a href="https://technicallyawriter.blogspot.com/2015/08/pressing-advantages.html">medical bias</a> and environmental racism. And now the news is teeming with egregious cases of police and civilians alike executing Black folks on shadows of suspicion, reminding us that for all our talk of peace and unity, racism festers under the surface like dry rot. </font></div><div><font face="arial">Last night I felt so hopeful as I saw footage a protest in my small, conservative town - a truly multi-cultural group of protesters gathered downtown singing Lean On Me together while a man passed out masks to those who didn't have them. Not great in the social distancing department, but heartening to see. This morning I learned that the peaceful protest ended with cops lobbing tear gas and shooting rubber bullets into the crowd. <br /></font><div><font face="arial"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-kOIKhRXCwWfT7KICeyhAOjR9NH26MBMusrVrJCbMHXETmTnj5JL1_YdYcSUtIsJEEoNu4qONJ8kJm0tih027S9kyfA7y2UySh3SpTB3aBMpVOuedPZZF10iLsXXVHn1dn5bqkFM0oV-i/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="780" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-kOIKhRXCwWfT7KICeyhAOjR9NH26MBMusrVrJCbMHXETmTnj5JL1_YdYcSUtIsJEEoNu4qONJ8kJm0tih027S9kyfA7y2UySh3SpTB3aBMpVOuedPZZF10iLsXXVHn1dn5bqkFM0oV-i/w640-h360/light.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></font><div><br /></div><div><div><font face="arial">So I feel pretty helpless pretty much all the time. Getting to a protest in the past has been logistically very difficult, and now that we've got a plague and I've got a malfunctioning immune system, I'm not going to do much good there. I can donate money, and I do, but that feels like hardly anything. </font></div><div><font face="arial">The best thing I <i>can</i> do, far as I can tell, is stick my nose all the way up in people's business. </font><span style="font-family: arial;">So I'm going to use this post to talk to you about the time I filmed an uneventful police encounter. Not because I want cookies for being a good ally, but because this is a really simple way for white people to become part of the solution. If you pay attention to police encounter videos where there are multiple people shooting, you'll often notice that cops are going after Black folks who are recording and ignoring white people for doing the same. That means we've got an opportunity to use our privilege for good here.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">First, know that filming police encounters is your first amendment right, no matter what police might tell you. As long as you're not impeding their ability to do their job you are free to document. It does feel kind of like a dick move to stand around recording someone who hasn't done anything wrong yet, but I just reminded myself that most people have security cameras trained on them all day at their jobs, and nobody bats an eye about it.</span></div><div><font face="arial">So, this January I was walking through a parking lot and caught the immediate aftermath of a car accident. I didn’t see what happened, but from the conversation, it sounded like one of them was going the wrong way in a one-lane aisle. The two women involved - one Black and one white, were calm and civil, but I decided to stick around until the cops showed up, because I have seen way too many videos of routine traffic stops turn into lynchings to take for granted that everything’s gonna work out fine.</font></div><div><font face="arial"> Eventually the Black woman (call her Kay) noticed me lurking nearby, so I told her I'd stick around to record if that was okay. She seemed relieved to have someone in her corner - she was alone while the other driver had her mom with her, plus the owner of the restaurant whose parking lot we were in kept coming out to see if she was okay and if she needed anything (completely ignoring Kay of course).</font></div><div><font face="arial">So Kay and I chatted until the cop arrived. When he got there, I hung back, put the phone in landscape mode so that I could capture as much of the action as possible, and pressed my elbows against my body to reduce camera shake. I wasn’t live-streaming, but you probably should use some kind of live upload app, like Facebook Live that automatically updates as you’re filming. Cops aren’t legally allowed to take your phone or delete anything off of it but they sometimes will anyway.</font></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">When things were winding up, I went over to where everyone was standing to ask Kay if she needed a ride to the next place she needed to be and we hugged. The officer had clearly noticed me recording, but we nodded pleasantly at each other as I left. And that was that. Now that I've done it I'm going to try to always stop when I see police interacting with Black folks. </span></div><div><font face="arial">I butt in to other people's business in other ways too. If I'm in a store and the door alarm goes off, I'll go to the door and watch, not inconspicuously, phone at the ready. Just to make sure all parties are aware there's a witness to this, hoping to communicate with my presence that if things go down differently than they would if I'd set off the alarm, I'm going to have questions. In stores and stuff, I will eavesdrop on any conversation between other people that feels like it could turn into some kind of verbal altercation, just in case the next BBQ Becky takes exception to the way some customer from a marginalized group shops for salad tongs and calls the cops. I've read too many news stories where</font><span style="font-family: arial;"> cop calls for relatively minor offenses (or non-offensives) turned deadly in seconds. And I have a knack for wandering into and diffusing tense situations. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><font face="arial">If you're feeling as helpless and guilty and crappy as I am, please consider donating to one or more of the following: <a href="https://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision">Campaign Zero</a>, working to prevent police killings on a policy level; the <a href="https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/">Minnesota Freedom Fund</a> paying bail for people who can't afford it; <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">BlackLivesMatter</a>.</font></div></div></div></div><div><font face="arial">Also, please note that if you see Shaun King fundraising for this cause or are asked to donate to JusticeForBigFloyd.com, maybe direct your money elsewhere? Floyd's family has not been in contact with King about what King plans to do with the money and he doesn't seem to be working with any of the other charities involved.</font></div>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-29172046443897967262020-05-11T20:30:00.000-04:002020-05-11T20:30:49.535-04:00Happy Mothers' day... week<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Going back to my roots today, I thought it'd be fun to talk about the etymology of the word <i>mom</i>. Did we get it from the Swahili word <i>mama</i> or the Gaelic word <i>mam</i>? Did it come from Arabic <i>ahm</i> or Hindi <i>ma</i>? Maybe from the Urdu <i>amee</i>? Or did they all come from proto-Indo-European, that great great great grandparent of so many of the languages spoken throughout Europe and India.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nope. Turns out the reason that people in countries from the arctic circle to the horn of Africa have such similar names for <i>mom</i> is that the term is coined by babies, who develop the ability to make sounds in roughly the same order, no matter the language those around them speak. See, sometime in the 6 month range, they leave the directionless babbling of infancy behind and start experimenting with intentional sounds. <i>Ahh</i> is the easiest vowel sound to control, as it requires no special movement of the throat, mouth, or lips. And since the <i>m</i> sound requires one simple movement of the lips, it'll be one of the first consonant sounds they make. Moms respond to the sound of ma-ma-ma, which reinforces to babies that saying ma-ma-ma summons mom-mom-mom, and eventually, the sounds become words. The other sounds babies develop around this time, of course, are da-da, na-na, pa-pa, ba-ba, and ta-ta, in no particular order. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-83554654000360504612020-04-24T12:01:00.000-04:002020-04-25T00:18:34.159-04:00COVID scam roundup<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As the weather turns warmer and the walls of our houses and apartments slowly close in, a lot of people are feeling pretty ripped off. Seniors are getting shafted out of the proms and graduations they've looked forward to for four years, teachers are losing out on the goodbye hugs as they send their kids off, kids can't go out and play with their friends. We are all getting cheated like nobody's business.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some of us more literally than others.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In times of human tragedy, you can count on a lot of things. You can count on the helpers. On </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">seeing the best in people. On seeing the last person you'd expect step up in a big way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And you can count on scammers circling like jackals, falling over themselves to make a buck off of fear and misery and suffering. Then there are the normal, garden-variety scams that folks are running across just by virtue of being at home and online more. So I figure it's probably a good time for a good old scam roundup.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Phone phonies</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are a <a href="https://www.fool.com/personal-finance/2020/04/21/these-covid-19-scams-have-cost-americans-134-milli.aspx">whole mess of scams</a> going around that start with your answering your phone. I've gotten quite a few calls from some organization trying to sell me some bogus supplemental insurance. You might get calls claiming to come from a doctor, or a nonprofit that wants to give you a free coronavirus test kit, or a hospital demanding payment for a loved one whom they claim is close to death.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The <a href="https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2019/phone.html">AARP gives a bunch of guidelines</a> for avoiding getting taken in by these scams. They say not to even answer the phone if you don't recognize the number on caller ID. If you do answer, and a robot starts talking, try to remember if you've ever given written permission for this company to contact you via robo-dialer. If you haven't, hang up - unsolicited robocalls are illegal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If a charity calls, it's best not to donate over the phone. Ask them to send you materials in the mail - scammers won't bother - or how to donate online. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No legitimate organization will ever ask for your full social security number over the phone, and it's best never to give <i>any</i> personal information to a stranger who calls your house. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you get a call that rings once and then hangs up, don't call it back. That may be a ploy to get you to call a hotline that charges you a per-minute fee. Beware of phone calls in which you receive a strange-sounding voicemail that doesn't include any discernible words - that's another trick to get you to call a toll number; the scammers come up with audio clips designed to peak a person's interest so they'll be more likely to call back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Cyber-sick</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.bbb.org/article/news-releases/21903-scam-alert-mandatory-covid-19-test-texts-are-a-scam">According to the BBB</a>, scammers have been texting folks telling them they have to take a mandatory COVID-19 test online, but it's just another scam to get a bunch of your personal information. I mean, "online COVID test" should probably have been your first clue? Anyway, BBB says not to click on the link they send you and not to text them back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Social Security</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Motley Fool reports that lots of folks are getting official looking mail that seems to have come from Social Security. The letter says that your benefits are going to be suspended due to COVID unless you call a certain phone number. Once you call the number, they tell you that you have to pay to be reinstated, and it's all a ploy to get your personal information and credit card number. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you get a letter that seems to come from Social Security, it might be wise to find your nearest Social Security office's phone number online, rather than call the phone number listed on the letter. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Quizzes</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This isn't directly COVID-related, but now that a whole lot of us have nothing better to do than sit at home playing around on social media, many of us have grown careless with personal information. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A bunch of those surveys that go around asking for your favorite vegetable, your first job, your stripper name (which might consist of the name of, for instance, your first pet, another common password question) - those were designed to get you to reveal your password questions for various websites. That makes it a whole lot easier to hack into your accounts and steal from you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Another quiz scam - Facebook apps. Couple years ago, Cambridge Analytica got a whole bunch of Facebook users' personal data by getting them to opt in to a Facebook quiz app without reading the end user licence agreement. You'd think after that happened Facebook would have taken steps to prevent that sort of thing, but now a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/09/tech/facebook-ukraine-hackers/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2EkIDcjby100OdlL_7ZSbUvlzNhVDxACii9yeilkKpSi6FvFP_wcl9Nio">security firm is saying that</a> Ukrainian hackers used the same method to get user data very recently. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You can make yourself safer by keeping your account set to friends-only, never taking quizzes that never require you to enable an app or accept an end user license agreement, and avoiding quizzes that include personal information. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Emails</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Phishing is the practice of sending emails that appear to come from a legitimate business, but which then trick you into going to a phony website and entering personal information. In an especially cruel twist, scammers have been sending phishing emails that appear to be job offers, offers of financial help, and insurance offers. People get a job offer email from someone posing as LinkedIn, they click a link in the email, try to log in to LinkedIn, and then the scammers have full control of the victim's LinkedIn account as well as any other account that uses that password. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you get an email that seems to come from LinkedIn or another job search website, don't click the link in the email. Instead, open a new browser tab, and type the web address in the search bar. This allows you to be certain you're going to the correct website; if you do in fact have a message waiting, there will be a notification icon. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Door to door</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Red Cross is <a href="https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-awareness/covid-19-scam-roundup-april-6-2020/">tracking reports</a> in which scammers, posing as Red Cross workers, show up at people's door claiming to be selling or giving away home COVID19 test kits. These scammers are after your money, your personal information, and may even want to rob your house. The Red Cross isn't selling test kits door-to-door, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no other legitimate organization is either. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You might run across other, non-COVID door-to-door scams as well, just by virtue of being home during the day. For instance, <a href="https://www.saveonenergy.com/learning-center/post/protect-yourself-from-door-to-door-energy-scams/">there are scammers</a> who dress in what looks like an energy or home security company's uniform and show up at your door with a clipboard, making it sound as if they need you to sign some routine paperwork, or claiming they can lower the price you're paying for energy. Sometimes they claim your service is about to be shut off. What you'd really be doing if you signed on the dotted line is agreeing to pay a recurring or one-time fee for essentially nothing. These scammers are like virtual quick change artists - they're really, really good at convincing you they're legit. Here's what you can do:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If someone claims you have to take immediate action, you can go and find your last bill from the company that provides the service in question. Use the 800 number on that bill to check whether the visitor is legitimate.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you do get tricked into signing up for a service they're selling, don't worry and don't be embarrassed. These folks are very, very good at what they do. The good news is that the <a href="https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0176-buyers-remorse-when-ftcs-cooling-rule-may-help">Federal Trade Commission</a> gives consumers a 3-day "Cooling Off" period for sales made at your home. You just need to fill out the cancellation form that came with your paperwork (or write a cancellation letter if no cancellation form is available) and send it by certified mail within 3 days of your signing up. If problems arise, you can file a <a href="https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/#crnt&panel1-1">claim with the FTC</a>, who will get it straightened out. </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When it comes to door-to-door salespeople, I think it's probably safe to assume that no legitimate business is sending their employees door to door during the shutdown </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That's not nearly all the scams that I dug up, sadly, but those seem to be the biggest ones. Just, remember to keep your eyes open and your minds skeptical, because people are horrible and the world is depressing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But now, some good news.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Meet my weekly watch-n-weep. I am way too jaded and</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">cynical for these shenanigans. And yet. </span></div>
Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-36733120115702362712020-04-19T11:36:00.000-04:002020-04-21T13:59:12.736-04:00Fighting for the death<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the past couple of days there have been protesters spread across the front pages of newspapers across the country. If you'd have asked me to guess what people would be willing to break isolation to protest over, I would not have guessed that they'd be demanding that more people be allowed to die of SARS-CoV-2, but that's apparently what the kids are into these days. But then, there are a whole lot of well-funded organizations convincing them that it's a grave injustice that we should sit at home for a couple of months in the hopes of saving a few hundred thousand lives. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/far-right-coronavirus-protests-restrictions#maincontent">Organizations tied to</a> Betsy DeVos, the Koch brothers, Adolph Coors, who'd like to have their workforce back and aren't worried if a few of them have to die for the cause.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And I want to talk about some of the points that some of the protesters and their online supporters have been making, because some of them actually seem to have merit when you look at them out of context, and it's actually not impossible to imagine being so convinced by aspects of the small picture that the big picture gets out of focus.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I keep encountering people online who insist that we're all just being crazy and anxious and over-the-top. We're so scared of getting sick that we've abandoned all reason. Now that most places aren't seeing the nightmare scenarios that were predicted early on, this is an especially tempting view. Even though the nightmare scenarios were projections of what would happen if we <i>didn't</i> take aggressive containment measures, anti-climaxes are anti-climactic. Now it's true, the public does panic unnecessarily all the time, over really foolish stuff. Politicians too. Remember how everybody freaked out about those 4 Ebola cases in 2014 and everybody was losing their minds and demanding the president close the borders? Heck, we've done that over every major Ebola outbreak. Remember when everyone wanted to shut the country down over SARS? MERS?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But do you remember who was remaining calm and telling Americans "there's no reason to worry, we got this"? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Institutes of Health. Doctors. Scientists. Epidemiologists. They worked efficiently and with great urgency with the international scientific community to contain those illnesses, and to get treatment to those who needed it. They told us we didn't need to worry and they were right. The researchers who have been working to protect Americans from infectious diseases are world-class. They've got a thousand years of historical data to draw from, some of the most advanced technology on the planet, and they know a lot better than Karen on Facebook how diseases work. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If every infectious disease expert on the planet is saying "this is the one we need to worry about," then this is the one we need to worry about.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is no reason, y'all, that all the infectious disease specialists would band together to sell you a big old lie. In fact, every one of them would kill to be the one that discovered the silver bullet that ended the international nightmare. Setting aside saving lives and all that nonsense, the researcher who figured out a way to contain or cure the disease without shutting down the economy would have a Nobel prize, a book deal, and every cent of research funding they wanted for the rest of their lives. They'd be the greatest hero on the planet. Not a one of them <i>wants</i> to have to tell you to stay at home if you want all your loved ones to stay alive. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now, I've heard a number of people suggest that what we need to do is reopen the economy but leave all the old people at home while everybody else develops herd immunity. Because they heard the expression "herd immunity" once and decided to start using it without actually understanding how it works. Here's the problem with that plan.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We're sitting at about 30K new cases of COVID-19 per day, with social distancing. Of those 30K, 6,000, or <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm">20% will be admitted to the hospital</a> (not counting people who are treated in the ER and sent home). A significant number of those 6,000 people will die without prompt medical attention. Unfortunately, those patients don't go home after a day. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/post-intensive-care-syndrome-why-some-covid-19-patients-may-n1166611">Many will remain weeks</a>, some a month or more.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The good news is that, except for in hot zones like New York, our hospitals, for the most part, have the capacity to handle this. For now, most have the beds and the staff to get prompt and effective treatment to everybody. Doctors and nurses in some areas are working past the point of exhaustion, which, of course, makes deadly mistakes more likely. Hospitals across the country still lack adequate masks and gowns, which means that doctors and nurses are getting sicker at a much higher rate than necessary, and that's causing some staffing issues that are for the most part manageable. So far. Because of social distancing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So what happens if we stop social distancing tomorrow? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There will be a spike in new cases. I don't know how big - you'd have to ask an epidemiologist - but I do know that if we're adding tens of thousands of cases a day despite half the country being in underground bunkers, the spike's gonna be somewhere between massive and staggering.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Hospitals don't have enough beds to accommodate a massive spike. Hospitals don't have the staff to accommodate a massive spike. And when hospitals are short-staffed, people die. People with COVID-19 who could have been saved would die because doctors didn't get to them in time. People with conditions completely unrelated to COVID-19 would die because doctors couldn't get to them in time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The ICU fills up with COVID-19 patients, leaving no room for people with other life-threatening emergencies. Ambulances can't keep up with the demand and people with COVID-19 and without will suffer or die because there aren't enough EMTs in the city to respond to every emergency in a timely fashion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But it gets worse. If we reopened the economy tomorrow, hospitals would not have enough PPE to keep themselves safe. Medical professionals would continue to get sick at much higher rates than the rest of us. 20% of doctors, 20% of nurses, 20% of respiratory therapists, will end up being hospitalized and unable to work, leaving hospitals even more short-staffed, which leaves more COVID and non-COVID patients dead.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've heard a few people make the argument that sure, social distancing might be necessary in big places like New York, but in small towns, it won't spread like that. Well, in fact, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/15/coronavirus-rural-america-covid-19-186031">COVID-19 is barreling its way toward rural America</a> and experts don't think rural America is ready. See, the smaller the town, the smaller and less well-equipped the hospital.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There would be other dire consequences to reopening the economy too soon. COVID-19 is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/16/covid-19-is-ravaging-nursing-homes-were-getting-what-we-paid/">already ravaging nursing homes</a>. How much worse will it be when every staff member's kids are back in school/at daycare? How are businesses going to thrive if the open back up only to have all their employees get sick at the same time? Who is going to maintain order if all the cops get sick at the same time? This isn't just a normal bug - this is every employee who gets sick going on mandatory quarantine for two weeks, assuming they don't get hospitalized, assuming they don't end up on disability because the disease <a href="https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-10/coronavirus-infection-can-do-lasting-damage-to-the-heart-liver?fbclid=IwAR2GTmLXHZDHABkreKdlyqECDXaXokm-_kAkWqz0ssQ-CAQBJRw8QLQPZ5Q">ripped up their organs</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Look, y'all, this shut down sucks. It sucks so much. I am bored and I can't stop eating and I'm getting really antsy about not having a job and I miss my family and I legit cannot breathe through that stupid mask. But Fauci’s gone from estimating death rates in the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands. The peaks we were so worried about have turned to gentle slopes. Look, for instance, at Ohio, which took some of the earliest and the strictest social distancing measures in the country. The yellow shows what researchers were predicting with no intervention at all. The blue shows what Ohioans have accomplished by just staying home and being safe. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2mGtCabiDmFK6U23tyJaMv7IgKqNRXHI0vRFfs3fWA34eGDv5FLIDEcaCuzR6hXmNX2Fym_A1RnCLQUfenPiajbhVg2L8ppAjcEWW1swW2fBSGzSlio1XC2YHwX6nA3CZWsuheha5tQKh/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="726" data-original-width="1280" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2mGtCabiDmFK6U23tyJaMv7IgKqNRXHI0vRFfs3fWA34eGDv5FLIDEcaCuzR6hXmNX2Fym_A1RnCLQUfenPiajbhVg2L8ppAjcEWW1swW2fBSGzSlio1XC2YHwX6nA3CZWsuheha5tQKh/s400/download.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">“Our latest projection is 1,600 cases per day — still a lot of cases per day, still a load on our hospitals, but this is the effect you have done. In Ohio we took our prediction and you have basically done this… you have squashed this and you have stretched it. Honestly, this is you. This is what you have done. This is how you have saved lives.” Dr. Amy Acton, Ohio Department of Health Director</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ohio plans to start very gradually reopening businesses come May 1st, and I'm cautiously optimistic about the prospect. The health director and governor have been very clear that we won't return to business as usual for a long, long time, but hope that cautiously reopening some non-essential businesses will offset the financial hardship for struggling families. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I will confess that I am more concerned about the economy than I am about my getting sick. I know that if I do get sick, even with my compromised immune system, my odds of surviving are still really good. I am unemployed and way, way more worried about my personal finances than I am about my slim chances of catching the plague. Yes, I get that it is vitally important to avoid another great depression. But we can not, must not grease the wheels of capitalism with the blood of our countrymen. We are all in this together.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So does the economy stay closed forever until we get a vaccine? I don't see how that's possible. Several medical models have indicated that we'll need rolling shutdowns from now until 2022 - that's when we expect to have a vaccine. I don't know enough to have an opinion on that, but I do know that, at the very least, Americans have a moral obligation to stay at home until every hospital has enough personal protective equipment to keep their staff alive. We cannot applaud doctors and nurses as heroes and then put their lives at risk by behaving irresponsibly. There are a lot of people talking about their rights to get their hair cut or eat at Applebees, but don't thinking about the fact that hospital employees have the right to live. </span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I love you all. Stay safe, and stay home!</span>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-25261951216046523802020-04-16T20:39:00.001-04:002020-05-03T20:49:21.324-04:00Touchy<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Good information about catching COVID-19 from contaminated surfaces seems hard to find. Some news reports say that the virus remains on surfaces for a few days at most, while some seem to say it can remain for a couple of weeks. Some sources say to wear gloves everywhere you go, and some say wearing gloves is worse than touching things with bare hands.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are a few reasons we see so much conflicting information. For one, COVID-19 is a brand new virus, and researchers’ understanding of it is improving every day. For another, news outlets tend to be really bad at vetting sources for their science reporting, such that they’ll give the same weight to a study with a sample size of 4 conducted by the Clown College of Cooterville as they do to a huge study by the CDC.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Luckily, my recent liberation from the world of the gainfully employed gives me plenty of time to dig through the science behind the headlines and separate the concrete from the riffraff. If you don’t have time to read this whole story, here’s a summary: you most probably can’t get COVID-19 from food. You can get it from surfaces, but you’re far more likely to get it by failing to follow social distancing guidelines. COVID-19 remains on surfaces for 1-5 days depending on the surface, but statistically, you aren’t nearly as likely to get COVID from your groceries, say, as you are to get it from your fellow grocery shoppers. Note that all this is true as of the middle of April 2020, but our understanding grows every day. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">*Exceptions include stainless steel, on which the virus remains active for 48 hours, and copper, on which the virus remains active for only 4 hours.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But hang on. There was definitely a news story about the CDC finding COVID-19 virus on a cruise ship 2 weeks after the last passengers were off, wasn’t there? Yes, CNBC did run a story with the headline, “CDC says coronavirus survived in Princess cruise ship cabins for up to 17 days after passengers left.” But the word “survived” is misleading here. What the CDC found was viral RNA, evidence that the disease had been there, but they didn’t find any live, infectious virus. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now let’s talk about what all that means for groceries and deliveries. The CDC, the WHO, the NIH, and infectious disease specialists everywhere say that the risk of getting COVID-19 from your Cap’n Crunch is minimal, and you should worry way more about person-to-person spread. They’re right, of course. All the experts say to get your groceries delivered when you can, and when you can’t, treat the grocery store like a game of Operation. Where the pieces move. And you don’t know whether you’ve successfully removed the funny bone for two weeks. They say you should touch only the stuff you plan to buy (that includes your face), stand as far back from the cashiers as you can, and use touchless payment methods if you’re able. And of course, wash your hands 100 times a day while singing the entire Beatles back catalogue. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">They’re right, of course. Especially since, as far as they know so far, somebody’s got to cough or sneeze right on your summer sausage to leave COVID cooties on it. But I personally do prefer to clean everything that comes into my house. If you do too, here’s the dirt. You don’t need to bust out the bleach or the flamethrower to get rid of Miss ‘Rona, you don’t even need to break into your precious supply of anti-bacterial wipes. Any old soap will do. Soap contains compounds called amphiphiles that weasel their way in between the lipids in the virus membrane, which causes the membrane to break up, which turns the virus into a harmless jumble of molecules. Wipe items down with a soapy rag then a clean wet rag, and they’re good to go. You should do the same with the counter once you’ve got all the groceries put away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Experts say produce can just be washed like normal, no soap needed. Remember, the plague wants to feast on you, not your food. Stuff in cardboard can just be dumped straight into reusable storage containers – or just left alone for a day. Clean up your fridge handles and cupboard knobs just to be safe and then, you guessed it, wash your hands. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In my house, when we get food delivered, we do transfer it to our own plates, use our own silverware, and wash our hands after we’ve disposed of all the bags and packaging that came with our food. I give packages and mail a quick spritz with Lysol before I touch them, which the experts would probably tell me is over-the-top, but I certainly don’t have anything better to do. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So the long and the short of it is that science says stay home. When you can’t stay home, stay away from everyone. When you get home, you can give your wares a wipe-down, but you’ll probably be fine if you don’t.</span><br />
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<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Coronavirus Resource Center” Harvard Health Publishing 04/16/2020</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“How COVID-19 Spreads” CDC.org 04/12/2020</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Desai, Angel N. MD, MPH1; Aronoff, David M. MD. “Food Safety and COVID-19” Journal of the American Medical Association 04/09/2020</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Moriarty, Leah. “Public Health Responses to COVID-19 Outbreaks on Cruise Ships — Worldwide, February–March 2020” Centers for Disease Control Website 03/27/2020</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Putterman, Samantha. “There’s no evidence COVID-19 can survive on surfaces up to 17 days.” Politifact.com. 03/26/2020 </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thordarson, Pall. “The science of soap – here’s how it kills the coronavirus” 03/12/2020</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">van Doremalen, Neeltje, Ph.D., et al. “Aerosol and Surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARS-CoV-1” New England Journal of Medicine. 04/16/2020</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">WHO team “Q & A on Coronaviruses (COVID-19)” World Health Organization website 04/08/2020</span></li>
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-69746272285904127522020-04-14T14:10:00.001-04:002020-05-02T21:55:50.853-04:00Hungry?<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you want to minimize your COVID-19 risk, the best way to buy groceries is online. Instacart allows you to buy groceries from a variety of nearby stores and have them delivered to your home. All you need are a credit card and an internet connected device.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The cost of delivery varies based on how high demand is when you order and how soon you want your groceries. You’ll generally pay about $5.99 per delivery plus tips, but the company often offers deals and discounts. If you plan to use Instacart regularly, it may be worthwhile to invest in their Instacart Express service, which offers unlimited deliveries for a yearly fee. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Instacart doesn’t deliver from all stores in your area. Some larger chains, like Walmart, offer their own delivery services. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These steps assume you are shopping on a laptop or desktop computer. If you’re shopping on a tablet (such as an iPad) or phone, the process is similar, but the position of the fields and buttons on the screen will be different.</span><br />
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<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Open a Web browser, and type Instacart.com in the <b>Search</b> bar. The Instacart main page appears.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Type your zip code in the <b>Address or zip code</b> field and click <b>Continue</b>. If Instacart service is available in your area, an <b>Available in [your area]</b> message appears, and you are prompted to create an account.</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If Instacart isn’t available in your area yet, a message appears stating <b>We aren’t in [your area]</b> yet. </span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the <b>Email</b> field, type your email address, and then click <b>Sign up with email</b>. An account is created and a <b>Select Store for Delivery</b> page appears.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Click a store name. The page for that store appears.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Find the items you need by typing their names into the Search bar and then pressing <b>Enter</b>.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When you find an item you need, click on it, and then click <b>Add to Cart</b> to add it to your virtual shopping cart.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When you’re finished adding items, look for the Cart button near the upper right of the screen and click it. The contents of your cart appear.</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you want to, you can change the quantity of an item by typing a new number in the field next to the price.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you want to remove the item from your cart, click the trash can icon below the product name.</span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Click <b>Go to checkout</b>. A checkout screen appears.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the <b>Add delivery address</b> section, enter the information requested. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the <b>Choose delivery time</b> section, select a time and date for your delivery.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the <b>Delivery instructions </b>section, enter any special instructions, like “Please leave groceries on doorstep,” or “Please use side door.”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the<b> Mobile number</b> section field, enter your mobile phone number. Your delivery person will text you at this number if they have questions about your order. If you don’t have a mobile phone, or would prefer not to communicate via text, use your landline number.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the <b>Contact Name</b> section, enter your first and last name. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the <b>Payment</b> section, enter your credit card number.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you want to add a tip, click the <b>Add tip</b> button on the upper right side of the screen. <b>Note</b>: A large portion of Instacart employees’ income comes from tips.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If the store doesn’t have one or more of your selected items on the day of your delivery, your Instacart shopper will call or text you and ask if you want to substitute something else.</span></li>
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-85928360516886878662020-04-10T12:42:00.000-04:002020-04-10T12:42:03.852-04:00Achtung baby<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The news about COVID is encouraging - projected deaths are now much lower than they were initially, social distancing is working. Still, people are dying, and a whole lot more people will be dead before this is over. The whole world is upside down and the fact that we can't leave our houses serves as a constant reminder of how friggin terrifying everything is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Public health officials keep reminding us of the stuff we can do to avoid getting sick - hand washing and staying home and all that. But they don't talk about one of the most important methods for fortifying the immune system: managing stress.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I know that the idea of trying to manage stress while trapped in your house with a superflu in the air and unemployment looming and screaming demon children tearing your house apart sounds absurd. But the fact is that the stress we're all under is killing us - some of us literally. Stress is the reason we're exhausted even though we never leave the house and it's the reason we can't stop shoving Fritos in our faces. Stress is why my fibromyalgia's flaring and it's likely why your asthma or acid reflux or IBS is acting up. And most importantly, stress is kryptonite for our immune systems. But at least there are some things we can do about it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, before I go on, I want to make it clear what I'm not saying. I'm not minimizing this crisis or telling you that your fear isn't valid. I'm not telling you to stop worrying and learn to love the plague. This post is about finding moments of calm in the terrifying chaos of this crisis, about caring for our bodies by tending to our minds. It's about taking what control we can of our health and giving our immune systems a fighting chance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, we've all heard about mindfulness meditation a hundred times, and adult coloring, and journaling and bubble baths. But here are some science-based stress reduction methods you might not have heard of. No one of these are going to work for everybody, but I hope I'll have included enough that there's something for everyone. </span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Commune with nature:<br />Research shows that just 20 minutes out among the trees, even if you're just sitting on a park bench the whole time, c<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190404074915.htm">an significantly lower your levels</a> of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol <a href="https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-happens-when-your-immune-system-gets-stressed-out/">does all kinds of nasty stuff</a> to your body, including chowing down on your white blood cells.<br />Bonus, sunlight boosts your levels of vitamin D, which is necessary for immune function.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Consider fostering a pet:<br />Okay, if your life is already a steaming pile of chaos, this is a terrible idea and you should move along. However, shelters are badly in need to folks to shelter their critters (so that they can have as few humans working at the adoption center as possible). And as it turns out, <a href="https://www.everydayhealth.com/news/weird-ways-beat-stress/">petting a cat or dog</a> can actually lower depression, anxiety, and blood pressure. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.menshealth.com/uk/health/a754879/8-weird-ways-to-de-stress/">Play Tetris</a>, of all things. The game distracts the part of your brain that deals in "narrative conceptual thinking," essentially cutting off your ability to fixate on whether you remembered to Lysol the doorknobs or how much time you let the kids play on the iPad today. I suspect this isn't limited to Tetris. I've got this game called Merge Dragons on my phone that accomplishes what years of trying to force myself to meditate couldn't. I Love Hue is a good one for people who don't especially like video games. <a href="https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-relaxing-online-games-help-chill-you-out.html">Here's a list</a> of mobile games that other folks have found useful in managing stress.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress-relief/art-20044456">Laugh</a>: The list of health benefits from laughter is so long it sounds made up. It releases endorphins which relieve pain, chase away stress, and may have a positive effect on anxiety and depression. Laughter stimulates circulation and relieves muscle tension. It even causes the release of neuropeptides that help your body fight disease. And what on earth are you supposed to laugh at in this epoch of despair? I don't know. Cats?</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Friends, take care of yourselves as well as you can. Try to remember that, as scary as things are, even if you get this thing, and even if you're in a high risk group, your odds of beating it are better than your odds of not. Remember that I love you. I'm staying home for you. I hope you're staying home for me too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can find more information about the impact of stress on your health in Richard Sapolski's wonderful book <i>Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers</i>.</span></div>
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-51814808047740839612018-10-25T21:30:00.001-04:002018-10-25T21:30:21.873-04:00De-escalate <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every day it seems like we hit a new bottom in the world of politics, a new "holy shit how is this even happening?" Couple weeks ago Brett Kavanaugh seemed like a travesty, but now we got the White House openly blaming the victims of pipe bomb attacks, despite, like, Trump's frequent endorsement of violence against reporters, the latest one a few days ago. And almost as awful, in my opinion, is the barely contained glee that liberals on social media seem to be expressing over the situation, the seeming victory lap they're running over everything they were warning about coming to fruition. These pipe bombs have just become the latest tool with which to bludgeon the other guy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, one of these bombs could go off at any time. Meanwhile a copycat somewhere could see the havoc and decide they want in on the game. Some maniac's gonna decide to retaliate. And those theoretical pipe bombs aren't going to explode anywhere in the vicinity of a Clinton or a Trump, they're going to kill some poor lady in a USPS processing facility who has three grandchildren and is a week away from retirement. They're gonna dismember a kid walking past a mail truck. They're going to blow up some hero cop who puts herself in harm's way to protect others. And still the right will shriek "Lock her up" and still the left with post memes of Trump and Putin kissing, and still the right will blame the left and the left will blame the right and not one of those twats is gonna acknowledge their own role in fanning the flames of hatred and discord and violence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't mistake this for a "blame on both sides" sort of argument. We're not the side with the Nazis and the Klan and openly racist rhetoric. This is a "someone has to be the rational adult" argument, and it's sure as hell not gonna be them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So anyway, I was just thinking about some stuff I learned working at a group home for people with mental illness. And while I'm not diagnosing anybody with anything, you can't really deny that people who spend all day reposting wildly inaccurate memes and unsupported conspiracy theories aren't at least a little delusional. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They say you should never argue with a delusion, because it only serves to make the delusion more entrenched and makes the person think you're part of the conspiracy. But you should also never indulge a delusion, for obvious reasons. A shrink once told me that his strategy was to ask questions that would help them discover the holes in their own logic. So like "It must be really scary to hear demon voices from your sink. I can't hear them though. Can your roommate hear them? What do you think it means if you're the only one who can hear them?" I don't know how that translates to convincing people who believe that George Soros and a migrant caravan did 9/11 and turned the frogs gay, I'll let you figure that out on your own.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So another thing I figured out working with troubled folk is that it is not possible to de-escalate a conflict by shouting louder than the person who is acting out. I guess the far right bad guys are already incredibly pissed - that's how they got so entrenched in this mentality in the first place. I know the fact that they're pissed isn't our problem and it sounds a lot like I'm saying that abused women should avoid abuse by being better wives, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that my plan going forward, when I try to engage hateful people, is to go in with a genuine desire to change their mind a little, rather than to be right. Because I'd prefer not to find out the next new bottom.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's see, what else did I learn working in group homes and such? If someone bites you, push into the bite rather than pulling away... that probably doesn't apply here. Nothing helps you find common ground like music and food. Kindness can be surprisingly contagious. Don't let people off the hook for being shitty to you, but also never let them see they got to you. Recognize the sacred in others, no matter how ensconced they are in profane. </span><br />
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-30617957076775467132018-10-13T11:04:00.000-04:002018-10-13T12:36:36.239-04:00On Wednesdays we wear blue<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've got a beef about liberals for once. And since I'm only preaching to the choir anyway, here it is: stop acting like god damn playground bullies. Now I'm not talking about real, passionate acts of protest - I firmly believe the world needs more people brave enough to shout at senators in elevators, not fewer. I'm not talking about things like kneeling during the anthem either - if you can't see this gesture as the reverent form of peaceful protest that it is intended to be, then I don't know what to say to you. Climbing statues and confronting elected officials in public and committing acts of civil disobedience are all, to me, not just brave, but necessary if we're to bring about change, if we're to draw attention to the real folks being hurt every day by the toxic policies of the people in power. That's not what I'm talking about when I'm talking about bullying.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No. I'm talking about this sort of nonsense that liberals on social media post in every political argument and in response to every Trump tweet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Like, just stop. After 2 years in office, we've all heard allll the Trump tiny dick jokes. They're not making anyone laugh, they're not convincing anyone of anything, they're just making us look childish and dumb and inarticulate and like we're unable to support our opinions with sound reasoning and logic. Personal attacks, name calling, all that, they're like big neon signs announcing "I have nothing of substance to say." That's not helpful. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And for god's sake stop it with this horseshit:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Joking about how homophobes are secretly gay is not only infantile, the joke is built around the notion that being gay is fundamentally shameful, so that in attempting to scold someone for homophobia, you are, in fact, spreading homophobia. Members of the gay community have repeatedly asked straight "allies" - including Handler specifically - repeatedly to stop it with this lame punchline. Dude, if you're straight, freaking <i>listen</i> to the people you're supposedly allies with and just don't. If not because it perpetuates shame then because IT IS A VERY TIRED OLD JOKE AND NOT FUNNY TO ANYONE FOR GOD'S SAKE WRITE SOME NEW MATERIAL.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Y'all, we're supposed to be the good guys, and yet the "r" word gets tossed around freely by liberals in every big Twitter debate I happen upon. The other day someone on a local activism group I belong to used the word "republitard." Dude, that is so wrong. 1, because it's deeply offensive, and 2. because it's the stupidest sounding insult I've ever heard. What the hell is even wrong with you? Do your mommy and daddy know you're playing with the computer? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To the liberals who are contributing to public debates with tired memes and grade school insults, I say please, please stop making us look like idiots. Just, go yell at people on a Twilight fan site or something. Social media offers us an opportunity unprecedented in the history of the world to have real, substantive discourse with people we'd never meet or interact with otherwise, people we have a chance of reaching an understanding with. But we can't do that with a bunch of bozos jumping up and down screaming stupid insults and seeing who can post the most offensive picture with text on it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What I'm saying is: quiet down now. The grown ups are trying to have a conversation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yes, this was triggered by the whole Kanye West thing. I don't have any special affection for the dude, except that his crazy speaks to my crazy. Like, I'm not qualified to diagnose what's going on with Kanye specifically, but I can say that people with mania often get to where they just can't stop talking, but they can't form a coherent sentence, and they jump from subject to subject, and it's near impossible to follow what they're saying. It's so frustrating and scary to feel this incredible urgency to communicate something and to have no one understand a word you're saying, and it makes me feel really sad that Kanye seems to be doing exactly that while all of society points and laughs and calls him stupid and uneducated and a minstrel and an uncle tom and worse. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It doesn't make me sad for Kanye, so much as it makes me sad for all the people like me, who are getting to hear loud and clear what society really thinks of people like us.</span><br />
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-23642384007830333372018-09-21T20:59:00.000-04:002018-09-24T21:02:30.222-04:00Kyrie eleison<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I admit I fit the angry feminist stereotype a little too well (though in my defense, I wouldn't be nearly so angry if men would just stop pissing me off). I'm not quite angry, enough, however, to be turning cartwheels over the fact that New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma lost his job after publishing the<a href="http://technicallyawriter.blogspot.com/2018/09/beyond-hashtag.html"> drooling train wreck of an essay</a> that was Jian Ghomeshi's <i>Reflections from a Hashtag</i> or whatever it was called. But then Buruma gave an interview where he complained that he'd been "publicly pilloried without due process," rather ironically. And then I stopped feeling remotely bad for dude at all. What I find especially astounding about the statement is that, in drawing, albeit indirectly, a comparison between Ghomeshi and himself, he's still clearly got no understanding of the severity of Ghomeshi's crimes. <i>Oh, poor me, I'm just like that guy who almost certainly beat women about the head during sex and defended myself by showing my boss a video of me breaking a woman's rib.</i> But that's not what this post is about. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But Ghomeshi's poorly-written literary enema of an essay has me thinking whether the misdeeds of monstrous men preclude them from ever having a voice again. Is there a path to redemption, forgiveness? Is there an essay that a hashtag could write that I'd have any interest in reading?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yeah. Yeah, I think there is. Louis CK revolutionized comedy with this self-aware, introspective style. He used humor to point out flaws in himself and flaws in society that maybe changed our perspectives for the better, a bit. Which is why it's baffling to know that he was having those insights while actively engaging in sexually predatory behavior behind the scenes. I don't know that he deserves to ever show his face in public again. But if he wrote an introspective and honest essay about trying to re-earn the love and respect of his daughters in the face of what he'd done, I'd read it. If there were no lies or obfuscations or excuses, if he made genuine public and private apologies to his victims, if he said what he was doing to atone, it wouldn't earn back my respect and I'd certainly never pay to watch anything he was in, but I'd read the essay. I wouldn't be mad at whoever published it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If Roman Polanski came back to the States and turned himself over to the authorities, served the prison term he was sentenced to before he left the country, if after doing that he wrote an essay about his rape of Samantha Geimer, I might read it. If he talked without making himself seem like a hero about why he chose to come home and face the music, if he talked about how he now understands how evil he was in drugging and raping a grade-schooler, I wouldn't be angry that it was published. If he spoke, without excuses, about the forces that make men feel entitled to the bodies of unwilling women and girls, and how we can combat that sort of evil, I'd be okay with that. I still wouldn't watch any of his movies, but I'd read the essay.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If Sherman Alexi wanted to spend some years working behind the scenes at a charity that addresses the quiet epidemic of rape and sexual assault against Native women that made his own crimes so nefarious - the same number of years he got away with sexually assaulting Native women, for instance - and then maybe personally bankrolled a collection of work from the Native women who he himself harassed or assaulted, then I'd be okay with someone publishing another of his books. I wouldn't read it, certainly, but I wouldn't boycott the publisher. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">People keep talking about how there needs to be a path to redemption for men who do evil things. That it isn't fair for men who commit sex crimes to be punished forever. I'm not sure that's true. If a guy has a job at a bank and gets caught stealing money, he's never going to get a job at a bank again and nobody's going to cry for him over it. If an ordinary person commits an act of serious malfeasance at their job, they can expect to have a hell of a hard time finding work in their field, or possibly in any other, for a long time. If we're not crying over the lady who can't get a job as a fry cook because she mugged somebody ten years ago, why are we crying over Louis CK, who will probably be able to scrape by for a while on the $52,000,000 he earned in 2017 alone? Or the CBC radio host who was replaced by someone with a resume just as impressive as his who had also managed to never show their employer a video of themselves beating the living shit out of someone?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe these guys do deserve a shot at redemption, do deserve to not lose everything. I don't know. But I do know this: forgiveness must be earned, and it can't be earned with a half-assed apology and a self-serving essay. To be redeemed, a person must, at the very least, demonstrate that they understand that what they have done was wrong, that they are making amends to their victims, that they are making amends to their public. Forgiveness should ideally follow the words that so few of these men - not Louis, not Ghomeshi, have actually said: "I'm sorry." </span><br />
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-28692444099741268072018-09-18T21:41:00.002-04:002018-09-19T08:01:48.925-04:00Beyond the hashtag<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Recently, Sean Penn said that the purpose of the #MeToo movement is to divide men and women, because for some reason a reporter thought that the man who <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/sean-penns-horrifying-history-of-alleged-abuse">almost certainly beat Madonna in the head with a baseball bat</a> gets a say in any of this. Penn went on to say that the movement is "shouldered by a receptacle of the salacious," whatever in the holy hell that's supposed to mean - but I guess Penn would know from salacious, considering he almost certainly also tied Madonna to a chair, beat her for several hours, left her alone bound and gagged while he went out to get more booze, then came back and beat her some more, before she finally escaped out a bathroom window. Madonna has remained protective of Penn for reasons passing understanding, but there are police reports, hospital records, first-hand accounts, and a criminal conviction. If Penn is innocent, Madonna went to a hell of a lot of trouble to frame him, only to un-frame him later.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Serial abuser Jian Ghomeshi recently slithered out from whatever pit he's been hiding in since losing his job at the CBC a few years back, and the New York Review of Books inexplicably decided that anybody on earth needed to hear this guy's story. The essay is a weepy and maudlin woe-is-me where he claims to have learned his lesson, despite not actually admitting to or apologizing for anything. The piece was <a href="http://www.canadalandshow.com/fact-checking-jian-ghomeshis-comeback-essay/">filled with obvious lies and obfuscations </a>that the NYRB would have discovered with nothing more than a Google search. Of course, in order to fact-check the story, one would have to be even passingly familiar with the crimes with which Ghomeshi was charged - in <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/jian-ghomeshi-new-york-review-of-books-essay.html">an interview with Slate</a>, NYRB editor Ian Buruma makes it clear that he didn't even know that much. Cliff notes version: Jian got off on beating women in the head and choking them unconscious. He says all of the head beating and choking was consensual - the women whose heads he beat beg to differ. He attempted to "prove his innocence" to officials at the CCB by showing them a sexually explicit video of him beating a woman so hard he cracked her rib - which he says is okay because it was consensual. So, you know, just your friendly neighborhood misunderstood totally innocent dude.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You may have heard Louis CK gave a surprise performance at a comedy club, receiving a standing ovation and praise from alleged #MeToo supporters like Michael Ian Black, who is dead to me. And to the rest of the world, honestly. Who even knew that guy still existed? Days after CBS announced it was ousting chairman Les Moonves over sexual assault allegations, the network admitted he <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/09/the-phantom-reckoning/570217/">wasn't all the way gone</a>, he'd be staying on in an advisory role during the transition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It seems like the #MeToo backlash is in full swing. It seems like some men in positions of power are suspiciously eager to put this whole ugly reckoning business behind us.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But it isn't just powerful men who grow weary of the movement. I've heard lots of people, including lots of women, say the movement has "gone too far." Lots of otherwise kind, compassionate women are saying that half the time these women are making things up for attention. But as I've said before, false accusations of rape are really rare, and actually, less than half of all false rape claims even name a specific person. <a href="https://qz.com/980766/the-truth-about-false-rape-accusations/">In big studies of false rape allegations</a>, the motivations are rarely things like attention (Like why in the hell would people choose a fake rape, of all things, to get attention? "Ooh, I know, I'm going to do a thing that's going to make a bunch of crazed fans threaten me and call me a liar all over social media and my name is going to be associated with this whole thing forever, this is the best plan, way better than getting attention by learning to tap dance or something"). Lots of false claims come from young women who don't want to tell their parents how they <i>really</i> got pregnant. Or from men and women with severe psychosis who honestly believe they've been raped. Or from, in a whole lot of cases, parents who can't deal with the fact that their daughters had consensual sex and want to make the boy pay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But statistics tell me that statistics don't convince people of things. So instead I'll remind you what Me Too is really about, why Me Too is vitally important, and why we cannot and must not let the movement go gently into that good night. The phrase "me too" was picked up in 2017 by Alyssa Milano, one of the founders of the Hollywood #MeToo movement. But the expression didn't start with Milano, and it predates the hashtag.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The seeds for the movement were sewn back in 1997 when Tarana Burke, a civil rights activist who has dedicated her life to improving the lives of young girls who belong to marginalized communities, sat across the table listening to a 13-year-old rape survivor tell her story. “I didn’t have a response or a way to help her in that moment," she said later, "and I couldn’t even say ‘me too,’ ” She says the moment "sat in [her] spirit" for a long time, and led her to found "Just Be," a nonprofit aimed at helping teen girls achieve "empowerment through empathy." Soon after, she began using the phrase "Me Too" to raise awareness of sexual assault in society.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We must never forget that a huge portion of victims of rape and sexual abuse victims are children. We must never forget that most feel so much guilt and shame over their abuse that they do not tell anyone about what they've experienced. We must never forget how very often children are disbelieved when they report abuse. In addition to PTSD, kids who experience sexual assault are more likely to contemplate suicide later in life, use drugs, have problems at work or in school. Kids in marginalized communities are especially vulnerable, as are LGBT kids, in OR out of the closet. And here's what's important:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Every time we say "She's just making it up for attention" within earshot of a child, we're making it less likely that the child will come forward should he or she be sexually assaulted. Every time we say that "me too" has gone too far, we are teaching vulnerable people that society will condemn them if they speak up. Every time we choose to side with a celebrity we like over a woman we don't know, we're teaching victims that they shouldn't come forward to anyone who considers the perpetrator a friend. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now, personally, I don't believe in believing all accusers unconditionally. What I believe is that every woman should be heard and taken seriously, that we need to do away with the societal default of presuming every accuser a liar until he or she produces a high-definition video and a signed affidavit proving otherwise. I believe no woman or girl should be bullied or condemned for coming forward, and that every time we mistreat a woman for making an accusation we frighten an untold number of victims into silence. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I believe that evidence should be evaluated thoroughly and objectively, and that men should not be made to suffer consequences without corroborating evidence. But that can be done without treating the accuser like a worthless, lying sack of shit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jian Ghomeshi and Sean Penn, however, should absolutely be treated like the worthless, lying sacks of shit they are.</span>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-25668499318537018302018-09-10T21:24:00.001-04:002018-09-10T21:35:22.689-04:00Do not go gentle - in honor of World Suicide Prevention Day<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Today, social media is full of affirmations: <i>stay strong</i> and <i>life is precious</i> and <i>never give up</i> and all of that. Admonitions to check on your depressed friends abound. And though the sentiment is kind, platitudes don't do shit in the face of this disease. A text or a social media ping to your favorite depressive is kind, but hardly an adequate aid to someone facing down demons as vast and magnificent as those of depression; are whispers barely heard over the call of the void. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One of my go-to depression songs, and</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've spent more of my life desperately lashing myself to the mast of life with the siren songs of oblivion blasting through my brain than I like to think about. Spent so much of my life with thoughts of my death swarming through my head like the most intractable earworm. And so I can say, if you really want to help, if you really want to make a difference in the life of someone with a mental illness, here's what you can do.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Call us. Visit us. Invite us to spend time with you even if you know the answer will be no.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ask us when we see our therapist next. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Offer to call and set up an appointment for us - sometimes the act of picking up a phone is to great a burden to bear. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ask us if we need help paying for our meds this month. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Need a ride to the doctor. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Need company in a waiting room. Leave a casserole</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> on our porch even if we refuse to answer the door. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Call us, even when you know we won't answer, and remind us why you're glad we're alive. Be specific. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you see us start to spiral, offer to breathe with us. Ask us whether we've worked out a crisis plan with our therapists, and help us walk through it. Gently ask if we need to go to the Emergency Room, and remind us there's no shame in it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Offer to come water our plants or walk the dog or watch the kids; the simplest tasks often feel impossible, and the piling up of things we can't do contributes to our anxiety and guilt and shame.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And, um, if you've got an opinion on "happy pills" and how we shouldn't depend on medicine and all of that, maybe keep it to yourself, like, all the time, not just around depressed people. That kind of talk gets under our skin and into the collective unconscious until it convinces people not to get the help they need. Convinces people on meds to go off them. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Don't perpetuate the uninformed notion that all mental health professionals do is push drugs these days. Most therapists, the good ones, absolutely respect their clients' pharmacological decisions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Stop using words like "loony bin" and "nut house" to refer to inpatient mental health services. The stigma associated with inpatient care leads so many to refuse it when they need it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Stop using "get help" as an insult.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Stop calling suicide a selfish choice. Our mental illness bombards us with the message that our loved ones are so much better off without us, that suicide is the most unselfish choice. Don't make us feel guilty for thoughts we can't control.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Don't post scare-mongering news articles about the hidden dangers of anti-depressants. They're almost always inaccurate. Leave the weighing of the risks of treatment to the actual mental health professionals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Be nice to people who are LGBTQ, even if you don't approve. Suicide rates are way higher among this population. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Consider donating to the <a href="https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/donate/">Suicide Prevention Hotline</a>, check out <a href="http://makeitokay.org/">MakeItOkay.org</a> for more practical advice about helping people who need it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And, just, remind us that you love us. Be a broken record about it. It's not advice or social media posts we need; we need to know that we are capable of being loved.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfWge4MFqhe6VveVmaJtMUjxTnTemJMds3VlLQJeFac3vvE8UaHjWWXyN2wsk2EA6IvLziKYIyM-dLBgJIHXjjY70jBJ-wAOTR8ukmDdAAcXLnEvmQVYQm52SrEi4IaMdRAFJtR151B-Lf/s1600/frankl.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="519" data-original-width="482" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfWge4MFqhe6VveVmaJtMUjxTnTemJMds3VlLQJeFac3vvE8UaHjWWXyN2wsk2EA6IvLziKYIyM-dLBgJIHXjjY70jBJ-wAOTR8ukmDdAAcXLnEvmQVYQm52SrEi4IaMdRAFJtR151B-Lf/s320/frankl.PNG" width="297" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My favorite platitude. </td></tr>
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-60597908991973203082018-09-06T21:52:00.003-04:002018-09-06T22:05:08.916-04:00Even educated fleas do it<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is super weird that Americans refer to "the sex talk" as "the birds and the bees." As I've mentioned before, bee mating is kind of like the Hunger Games of reproduction. A virgin queen goes on a little flyabout, a male bee buzzes by, mounts her, puts his endophallus (tiny bee weenie) inside her, gets busy for a minute, then ejaculates so hard his freaking penis explodes, part of his abdomen gets ripped off, and he falls to his death. <i>Then</i>, mate #2, apparently having learned nothing from mate #1, flies up, mounts the queen, sucks out all the previous bee's sperm, and then repeats the whole exploding penis procedure. Finally, the queen, I don't know, gets bored with all the phallic pyrotechnics and heads back to the hive with about a hundred million sperm stored in her oviducts, and then she just makes babies at her leisure. Eventually she'll lay a new queen, whose first order of business is to eat all her siblings before, I don't know, beheading her mother and wearing her head as a hat to teach all the other bees who's in charge? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm just saying, there's not much in there that's analogous to human reproduction. Unless you're in Westeros, I guess.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Bird sex is, I guess, a little bit closer to how humans get it on in that it doesn't involve exploding penises. Actually, for most bird species, there's no penis involved at all. Most boy birdies don't have anything resembling a penis, instead they've got a cloaca that's externally identical to the cloaca of the ladies. To mate, they kind of smoosh their cloacae together. And then there are waterfowl, who do tend to have penises and vaginas, but like, really freakishly weird ones. Lady ducks, for instance, have corkscrew shaped vaginas to go along with gentlemen ducks' long, twisty, noodly man meat. And when I say long, I don't mean that it's long for a duck, no. That sucker can grow to seventeen inches and twice the length of the duck's actual body. Oh, and it's got spikes. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rubber Ducky I'm awfully fond of--<br />
oh for the love of god put that thing away<br />
what in the hell is wrong with you<br />
do do be do.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So again, not really all that analogous to human sex. Although it would be pretty freaking hilarious to try and convince your kid that his penis is gonna explode the first time he has sex.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's a reason I don't have kids.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Oh, and I'm just gonna let this video of mating bald eagles speak for itself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Speaking of reasons it's good I don't have kids, the point of this post, yes, it has a point, is that I want to talk to you about sex. Or anyway, I want to talk to you about a woman who is striving to change the way we talk about sex when we talk about sex with kids. The author is my professor, my mentor, my kinda hero, <a href="https://www.bonniejrough.com/">Bonnie J. Rough</a>. The book is called Beyond Birds and Bees (you should NOT confuse it with "Beyond THE Birds and THE Bees," by Greg and Lisa Popcak), and if you've got kids, or you're a teacher, or if you just want to learn about bodies and sex divorced from shame, this is a must freaking read.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Birds-Bees-Bringing-Equality-ebook/dp/B077Y3VHBM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536283971&sr=8-1&keywords=beyond+birds+and+bees"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeVSav8QJU5KeVcMFVK1UrAVoUk1j1dShNxXTP-m4ECR_9ETLH5ymWlDIkvQA_tPDtrhX5mxMeUSiMRmQSRRmqtU5goYA6f_L6L0ftN9us_xeIB2wot5ZJW4NjDzg0rB11YZTczmB0-wit/s200/beyond.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Birds-Bees-Bringing-Equality-ebook/dp/B077Y3VHBM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536283971&sr=8-1&keywords=beyond+birds+and+bees"><br /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I didn't really think I was the right audience for this book, what with the fact that I don't have kids. But then I discovered that actually, the book helped me think of my own body differently. Bonnie talks about how in The Netherlands, people are way less weird about teaching their kids about sex. They're frank and open, using correct terminology and explaining without euphemism or moralizing. Dutch parents are less likely to pull an after-school-special on their kids, describing all the ways their children will get pregnant and die if they even think of bumping cloacae. Sex ed starts in kindergarten there, and parents of young kids think nothing of letting the munchkins run around naked in the park. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And probably not coincidentally, The Netherlands have some of the lowest rates of teen pregnancy, abortion, and STIs in the world. Are The Netherlands some kind of sex utopia? Bonnie says no - there are problems there, just as there are here. But wouldn't it be good, wouldn't it be better to raise children unashamed of their bodies, unafraid to talk about them, willing to assert their agency? That's the question Bonnie explores in this <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Birds-Bees-Bringing-Equality-ebook/dp/B077Y3VHBM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536283971&sr=8-1&keywords=beyond+birds+and+bees">amazing book</a> that you should absolutely freaking read right now. </span>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-8623513550483866942018-08-26T08:48:00.001-04:002018-08-26T08:48:50.967-04:00The time I held a human brain<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of my friends and I periodically go to events called Oddmall: The emporium of the weird. It's like a traveling craft fair, but for freaks and geeks and weirdos. There you'll find geek-themed craft items, cosplay accessories, vintage toys and comics, and various preserved dead animals. So many preserved dead animals. </span><div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At one of the Oddmalls there was a huge stall selling all manner of taxidermied, preserved, and mummified animals, and then, right in the middle, a booth with a preserved human brain just floating around in a giant fishbowl - and a sign inviting people to touch and hold it. This was both incredibly bizarre and incredibly... incredible. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wrote this just after:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Joey is balding, but a fluffy brown beard hangs around his face like an aura. It may be</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">my imagination, but I think he has the second kindest eyes I’ve ever seen on a stranger.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Top five at least. Which is somewhat odd considering Joey and his eyes are surrounded by</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">various bits of dead animals, behind a hand-lettered sign that says “Hold a human</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">brain.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My two friends and I walk up to his booth halfway through his explaining how he came</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to be possession of the back half of a human brain, which floats in front of him in a</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">fish bowl full of rubbing alcohol. “…and once the doctor is in possession of the brain,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he’s legally free to loan it out, if he wants,” is all I hear. And I’m too preoccupied to ask</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">him to start over, thinking about the logistics of schlepping a human brain along with</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a menagerie of dead beasts from Pennsylvania, where their studio is, to Ohio, where we</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">are. On the back wall of the booth are hanging skulls, deer and ram, mostly"Is that an ostrich?” I ask.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Emu,” Joey says. “I got a friend with an emu farm. They sell the meat and the leather</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and stuff, but nobody wants the heads,” Joey says, seeming confounded by the fact</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that others would pass on this valuable commodity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One table holds wet specimens in bottles. There are bottles filled with every size and</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">color of octopus tentacle, little vials of grasshoppers and honeybees, various hearts</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and eyes and limbs, and snakes, including a hypnotically arranged corn snake that I</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">can’t seem to take my eyes off of. “All sustainably sourced,” says a woman I take to be</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Joey’s wife or girlfriend. She’s got nerdy glasses and silver studs through her dimples.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“They either died naturally or were hunted legally. We’ve got suppliers all over the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">world.” My head drifts back to logistics again, this time the logistics of shipping all or</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">part of a dead animal carcass across continents. I wonder how they stay fresh. Or are </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">they preserved already? In which case, is there a special procedure for mailing dead</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">animals packed in fluid? I imagine the poor postal worker who fails to heed the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Fragile” warning on the outside of a box of dead snakes in brine. I want to ask but I’m</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">distracted by the bones and mummies table.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A couple of mummified piglets curl up in glass boxes behind a cardboard sign</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">proclaiming them “bacon seeds.” There are mummified bats shadow boxes and tiny</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">decorative coffins. A bat skeleton sprawls mounted to a frame. There are a few frogs</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">mounted on colorful backgrounds behind panes of glass, and a display of death’s head</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">moths in a circle around a painting of the tree of life. There are bugs and butterflies</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">too – a big blue one with half a wing missing catches my eye, mounted against a</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">background inscribed with the words “beautiful not broken.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wait my turn in line to hold the brain. Before a human brain is preserved, it's more or less jelly, the consistency of runny eggs. After a soak, it is firmer, a bit like gummy candy, though wetter and more jiggly. “This is the thing that makes humans human,” I say as I wonder if my eyes are as wide</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as they feel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Kind of,” Joey says, "it's only half a brain. It's missing the frontal lobe."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The frontal lobe is the part of the brain right behind your forehead, and it controls learning and behavior and morality. It seems to be more developed in humans than other mammals, and it governs things like social skills, shame, and embarrassment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We leave, but for days I can’t stop thinking about that brain and who it had once</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">belonged to. I wonder how its owner would feel if she knew (I am inexplicably certain</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">she is a she) that her essence, the epicenter of her mortal coil, would spend the beginning of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">her afterlife travelling around the Midwest in the custody of a couple of tattooed</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">weirdos, to be fondled by crafty geeks and costumed freaks. I’ve decided to imagine</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that she’s tickled pink by it. That she was a little old lady who clucked her tongue at</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">kids with strange piercings but secretly always wished she’d had the guts to dye her</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hair purple and wear a dog collar in public. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Divested of her sensible, rational forebrain, absent the moral compass and social</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">inhibitions it forced upon her, is she freer? Or without her frontal lobe to govern the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">emotional responses her amygdala sends forth, is she an explosion of emotions, too</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">bright and too strong and too big? Is her frontal lobe in another state, floating in its</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">own fishbowl, cringing and mortified with the indignities visited upon its lesser half? </span></div>
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-90935386061011909212018-08-18T09:32:00.002-04:002018-08-18T09:33:24.342-04:00A Valediction: Promoting Mourning<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">During one of the luncheon cry-fests at residency, my friends and I were sharing the worst things people had ever said to us in the name of consoling us after a tragedy. Things like telling a mother who is mourning her miscarriage not to be sad because she's young yet, and can just try again. That sort of thing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You've probably heard some of these yourself. If you've had one of your siblings die, someone has probably told you that "at least you still have your other siblings," as if the volume of siblings were the problem, as if the other siblings were simply going to expand to fill the permanent void where your dead sibling used to be. People who mourn a parent long after they are gone are often told to stop dwelling, that they should get over it and move on. Parents who lose their children say they often hear things like "I know how you feel. I lost my grandmother when I was ten," as if losing a child isn't the worst thing that could ever happen to a parent, as if anyone who hasn't lived through it could possibly imagine the hell, the grief. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Here is where I must say that I am absolutely certain that I have, on more than one occasion, said something perfectly appalling to a person who was grieving. In emotional situations, when I know I'm supposed to say something and I don't know what to say, my mouth tends to spit out words without running them by my brain for approval first. I think nobody knows what to say to a person who is grieving, so we resort to cliches that do not comfort. We say things like "she's in a better place" or "everything happens for a reason" that we mean as comfort but in reality are kind of dismissive. "He's in a better place" to a mourner might feel like "it is selfish of you to be sad that your loved one is no longer here." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So recently, a friend whom I love experienced a loss so awful I can't even fathom how she keeps on putting one foot in front of the other. And some people have responded to her loss in some truly awful ways, ways that grind salt into a gaping wound. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Which makes me want to share with everyone the rules I use when talking to a grieving person, compiled over a lifetime of learning from my mistakes. I thought I'd share it, so all of you can learn from my failure too. Here goes.</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No looking on the bright side. Do not say the words "at least." No "He's in a better place"; no "at least now you don't have to walk that dog every day anymore"; no "that disease is very treatable these days." I can't turn someone's grief to hope by shoving rose-colored glasses on to their face. Say instead "I'll never forget how proud she was of you the day you graduated college" or "You took such good care of him and gave him such a happy life" or "I will help in any way I can."</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Never say "I know how you feel." I've got no business taking another's grief and making it about me and what I've suffered. Everybody's grief is different, and saying I know how someone else feels is like saying "you're nothing special," Instead say "my heart aches for you," say "I love you and I'm here for you and I'm thinking of you always." </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Do not minimize. Never say it's "just a dog." Never say "your arthritis is bad, but cancer is worse." Victor Frankl said that suffering is like a vessel - some people's vessels are big and some are small, but a full vessel is a full vessel. Grief is grief. Honor the grief of others, no matter how it compares to what losses others have grieved. Instead say "I know how much you loved him," say "You must be so afraid, but I'm here to help you get through it." </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Say "I can't imagine how you feel," but do not leave it at that. As a good friend with MS often says, "no, you can't imagine, but you could try." Instead say "do you want to talk about it?" say "you can tell me all about it, if you want to," say "I'm listening. Help me understand." </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Do not assume a person wants to be left alone. Do not assume a person wants me all up in their grill about it either. Do not avoid but do not pester, do not ignore the elephant in the room, but don't pry into the whys and wherefores and logistics of said elephant. Acknowledge the elephant, but let the elephant alone.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So anyway, those are my rules. I try hard not to say the things above, which challenges me to find new and innovative ways to stick my foot into my mouth. By the time I die I'll probably have mastered the art of always finding a new wrong thing to say. And then, other people can say awful things to whomever is left to mourn me.</span></div>
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-16220550196802582092018-08-12T10:50:00.002-04:002018-08-12T10:50:59.312-04:00Two-faced<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recently, The Nation published a poem by Anders Carlson-Wee</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> called </span><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/how-to/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How-To</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that caused a stir. See, the poem's written by a white guy, but the narrator of the poem is a black guy speaking something like African American Vernacular English (AAVE). To hear the news headlines, the reason that the "PC police" are offended by the poem is that the author is a white guy who wrote from the point of view of a Black guy. To hear most tell it, the literary world will come to a screeching halt if we keep accusing people who write across cultures of cultural appropriation. The famously liberal Stephen King tweeted: "what next? Apologies for women who write from the male point of view, or vice-versa?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This last quote from Stephen King really made me cringe, and not just because it called to mind all of Stephen King's many and various crimes against AAVE. It's because he missed the point entirely.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See, the "PC police" weren't <i>only</i> upset about the author's use of AAVE. Obviously writers have to write across cultures. Obviously, when we write a character, she should speak in a manner consistent with her culture and upbringing. If anyone's arguing that white folks should only write about other white folks, I'm up to throw down about it. The problem is the whole package of the poem. So in the poem, the speaker, using <i>really </i>poorly rendered Black dialect, is a homeless guy giving another homeless person tips on how to lie and manipulate people when panhandling. "If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl/ </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">say you’re pregnant," the poem says. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">isn't</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that the author used Black dialect, it's that the author used a cartoonishly bad take on Black dialect to create a Black character who is a poor, shiftless, lying grifter. That's not "writing across cultures," that's minstrelry. See, back in the day, up until the the 1970s, there used to be minstrel shows, where white actors would cover their face in black makeup, paint their lips bright red, and perform variety shows in which their Black characters were painted as poor, stupid, lazy, and shiftless. And they did all this while appropriating Black music and dance. Wikipedia quite eloquently explains why these shows were so insidious: "minstrelsy made [harmful stereotypes about Blacks] palatable to a wide audience by couching it in the guise of well-intentioned paternalism."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sound familiar?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The poem <i>How To</i> brings the tropes from minstrel shows roaring back. Why does the lying hobo character got to be black? Does Lee write other poems in bad AAVE where the narrator <i>isn't</i> just a collection of harmful stereotypes? And the poem, even if it weren't for the blackface buffoonery just <i>isn't that good</i>. I'm sure <i>The Nation</i> is drowning in submissions from talented Black poets who actually write authentically, and yet they chose to elevate this white dude who clearly has no idea of what he speaks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My view on writing across cultures, and there are those who disagree, is that we should 100% absolutely do it. But we should do our homework. If you want to write a Black character who is homeless, you read about AAVE, you read other poems in AAVE. You - and this is a hard one - <i>listen</i> to Black people when they talk. You read about homelessness, you read work by homeless and formerly homeless people. You - another big challenge - <i>listen</i> to homeless people when they talk to you. And if that all seems like too much work, then sorry, you're too lazy to have a poem published in <i>The Nation</i>.</span><br />
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-59564751445996429752018-08-07T20:33:00.003-04:002018-08-07T20:33:55.851-04:00Burning up my fuse up here alone<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's the weirdest thing, the song Rocket Man suddenly popping into my head as I sit down to write about my last residency in the Ashland MFA program. Ashland's summer residencies are these intense two-week writing boot camps with long days of lectures, readings, and workshops. They're grueling and exhausting and you'd think I'd be relieved to finally be done, but after I'm home a day or two, there's this crash. And I've realized just now that it's because I kind of get to be a different person at residency. Surrounded by other assorted freaks, geeks, and weirdos, I'm free to stop trying to rein in all my strangeness. I'm not the only one who has to stop in the middle of a walk across campus to plop down and pull out a notebook. I'm not the only one who fixates on weird trivia, who has a Google history that would make me look like a raving lunatic. I'm not the only one who bursts into tears at the drop of a word, or who bursts out laughing at the most inappropriate times, or spends an entire lunch hour alternately laughing and sobbing in public (That literally happened. Like, an <i>entire</i> lunch hour).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not the girl they think I am at home. (I'm so freaking much weirder.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And this residency was especially - magic is a horrible cliche of a word to use, but that's the only word I can think of. Magic. Like, you wouldn't think that spending an hour with your thesis committee going over all the things that need fixing would be a source of rapturous inspiration, but I walked out of that thesis defense (which I passed - yay) thinking "I can't freaking wait to start revising."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I know I'm usually more structured and coherent, but I'm kind of in this post-graduation haze, hung over and thrumming with words I can't type fast enough to keep up with. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway, you'll be seeing more of this here blog now that I don't have to spend most of my waking moments reading and/or writing. Any requests on future content?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways, in summary, here is a picture of my kitten.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-72651320020071709132018-06-23T18:39:00.001-04:002018-06-23T18:39:41.430-04:00True or false: the one-step-closer-to-genocide edition<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It feels wrong, I have to say, make a reasonable, fact-based argument against shoving people from a certain ethnic group into concentration camps because</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> for the love of Jesus and all that is holy we shouldn't need to make the case that CONCENTRATION CAMPS are an abomination and PUTTING CHILDREN IN CAGES is an inexcusable atrocity. I don't know how to have a reasonable conversation with a person who isn't horrified by the fact that our own government is rounding up brown people (some who crossed the border illegal and <a href="http://thehill.com/latino/385261-ice-wrongly-arrested-over-1000-us-citizens-in-recent-years-report">a great many who actually <i>are</i> citizens</a>) and putting them in tent cities, with or without their children.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But of course, I'm going to go ahead and make that logical and fact-based argument because that's what I do. And I think there are a lot of massive misconceptions and outright lies that maybe have people so terrified that their moral compass broke horribly? </span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">And because I know someone's going to accuse me of using biased sources, all the data below comes from either our own government, the conservative Cato Institute, and the right-of-center Brookings Institute. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Illegal immigrants are dangerous</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is the most alarming lie going around, one that the Trump administration reinforced on Friday in a bizarre event in which they trotted out a bunch of people with giant pictures of dead relatives who were killed by illegal immigrants, and Trump signed all their pictures, said that one of the victims looked like Tom Selleck, and then said a bunch of stuff that would make one believe that illegal immigrants are just a human crime wave. But then there are the facts. <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/14-most-common-arguments-against-immigration-why-theyre-wrong">The Cato Institute says</a> that studies going back over a hundred years have found that immigrants, whether they're here legally or not, are significantly <i>less</i> likely to commit crimes. Communities with high immigrant populations usually<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9125.12175"> have significantly <i>lower</i> crime rates</a> than cities where the majority of the population is native born. There's this notion that all illegal immigrants are rapists, but Cato says that people here illegally are 12% less likely to commit rape than natural born citizens. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Illegal immigration is on the rise</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nope. According to <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/media-resources/stats">US Customs and Border Protection</a>, illegal border crossings are at a historic low, and have been since well before Trump took office. In the year 2000, there were over 1.6 million illegal border crossings. Illegal crossings hovered around a million a year for most of the time George W. Bush was in office, and by the time Trump took office, illegal border crossings were the lowest they'd been in something like half a century, with fewer than half a million crossings all but the first year Obama was in office.*</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>We have to lock up migrants because catch and release doesn't work</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also nope. First of all, stop talking about humans like they're wild game. They aren't rats, they aren't cockroaches, and they don't breed and they don't infest and they aren't fucking fish either. And no, we don't need universal detention to hang on to people caught illegally crossing the border. According to the conservative think tank Cato Institute, universal detention is not only ungodly expensive to the American taxpayer, <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/alternatives-detention-are-cheaper-indefinite-detention">it's not necessary</a>. If the apprehended person isn't deemed dangerous, electronic monitoring, bonds, and family case worker programs are far cheaper and nearly as effective as universal detention. The Cato Institute concludes "If past experience is any guide, these... programs could ensure that 90 percent of immigration court orders are carried out. That is less than perfect compliance, but it is far cheaper, more humanitarian, and less of a political disaster for this administration."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Immigrants steal our jobs</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Not that job security is an acceptable justification for concentration camps, no, immigrants aren't going to steal your job. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2017/08/24/do-immigrants-steal-jobs-from-american-workers/">The Brookings Institute</a> cites comprehensive research from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, who have found that immigration doesn't affect the job prospects of native-born workers. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/essay/the-wall-the-real-costs-of-a-barrier-between-the-united-states-and-mexico/">Brookings fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown says</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Undocumented workers often work the unpleasant, back–breaking jobs that native–born workers are not willing to do. Sectors with large numbers of undocumented workers include agriculture, construction, manufacturing, hospitality services, and seafood processing. The fish–cutting industry, for example, is unable to recruit a sufficient number of legal workers and therefore is overwhelmingly dependent on an undocumented workforce. Skinning, deboning, and cutting fish is a smelly, slimy, grimy, chilly, monotonous, and exacting job... It can be a dangerous job, with machinery for cutting off fish heads and deboning knives everywhere frequently leading to amputated fingers.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So unless your dream job involves getting paid less than nothing to get your fingers sliced off slopping around in fish guts, your job is probably not going anywhere. And according to the <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/14-most-common-arguments-against-immigration-why-theyre-wrong">Cato Institute</a>, "immigrants likely compete most directly against other immigrants so the effects on less-skilled native-born Americans might be very small or even positive." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">And those are just the biggest of the lies that bad guys want you to believe about illegal immigration. There's also the fact that, while people are accusing the media of taking immigrants' sides, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00353.x">the American Journal of Political Science</a> finds that news stories are actually twice as likely to report on the costs of immigration as opposed to the benefits. We have a myth that illegal immigrants don't pay taxes, and that they take advantage of social welfare programs. Yet illegal immigrants aren't eligible for any social welfare benefits, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/seven-myths-that-cloud-immigration-debate/">even though a recent study found that immigrants who are in the country illegally pay</a> $162 billion annually in federal, state and local taxes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The most absurd lie of all is one I've been seeing all over the place: that Democrats oppose concentration camps not because "oh my sweet Jesus it's wrong to put people in concentration camps" but because they want illegal immigrants to vote for them. Dude, non-citizens can't vote: as for the notion that illegal immigrants are running some super secret voter fraud ring... why would a group of people whose ability to remain in the country depends on their flying under the radar go to the polling place, where they are certain to run across law enforcement officers, just to publicly commit a felony that benefits them in no way?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Y'all, immigrants aren't more likely to commit crimes: not violent crimes, not non-violent crimes, not voter fraud. They don't take American jobs. They don't drain the economy or take advantage of welfare. They aren't a growing menace, and in fact illegal border crossings have been historically low for years now. And even if not one single one of those things is true, IT IS WRONG TO PUT PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS HOW IS THIS A THING I EVEN NEED TO SAY?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you agree with any of what I've got to say, or if you disagree with everything I've said but still don't want to be part of the generation that sat by and did nothing while our country spiraled toward genocide, please, please donate to <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/groups/raices-refugee-and-immigrant-center-for-education-and-legal-services">RAICES</a>. Call your representatives. Act up. Speak up. Don't give up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">*Actually, even though it is completely misleading to claim that the Obama administration also made regular practice of separating children from parents at the border, Obama was cold-hearted and ruthless when it came to immigration. Democrats should have challenged him more on it but we didn't and I don't have a time machine. The atrocities at the border are happening here and now and I could not care less whether we blame Trump or Obama or the man in the damn moon, I only care about ending this insanity.</span>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-8169027062535169612018-05-04T23:49:00.000-04:002018-05-05T06:31:57.688-04:00Four dead in Ohio<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Forty-eight years ago today if my math is right (and it probably isn't), the Ohio National Guard opened fire into a crowd of peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders, killing four and wounding nine. Some of those killed and wounded were participating in the protest, but some were simply walking to class. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I came across an interesting statistic reading about the shooting today. It turns out that at the time, a Gallup poll found that only 11% of Americans at the time thought the National Guard to blame for the four lives they took. 58% blamed the students, and the rest had no opinion. Nixon was silent on the issue, but his press secretary had this to say: "when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The following month, Nixon created the Scranton Commission, to "study the dissent, disorder, and violence breaking out on college and university campuses across the nation." None of the guardsmen were brought to justice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The state of Ohio settled a lawsuit brought by the families of the dead and injured, $600,000, give or take, to be split between all plaintiffs. The state issued an "apology," saying in part "In retrospect, the tragedy of May 4, 1970, should not have occurred. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Cambodian invasion, even though this protest followed the posting and reading by the university of an order to ban rallies and an order to disperse."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">History tends to forget the reason the National Guard was at the school in the first place - students had been rioting all weekend, had burned down the ROTC building and slashed the fire hoses as local firefighters tried to keep the blaze from spreading. Students, a handful of agitators in a sea of peaceful students, threw rocks. In the midst of the protest, a guardsman suddenly and without an order to do so opened fire into the crowd and his fellow soldiers followed suit without question. Those guardsmen were kids themselves, sleep-deprived and scared. But their fear doesn't bring those dead kids back. Their fear cannot possibly justify the deaths of those innocents. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's hard not to draw parallels between that incident and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, or the movement started by the Parkland students. In 48 years, will we look back in amazement that we were ever so prejudiced, so primitive? </span>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-2226646953946319492018-05-02T20:06:00.001-04:002018-05-02T20:06:14.228-04:00Coming soon...<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well hello, stranger. It turns out writing a thesis and finishing grad school are kind of a time suck. There's so much good stuff to come, so don't give up on me yet!</span>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-20973754353578392272018-02-18T09:42:00.000-05:002018-02-18T09:42:17.789-05:00A plea: please exclude people with mental illness from the mass shooter narrative<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Another school shooter. Another flurry of social media thoughts and prayers. Another seventeen funerals. Another raft of quotes from Mister Rogers, another war of pointed fingers, another synod of politicians and talking heads proclaiming <i>not the time</i> and <i>not the time</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And another squirming moment where all heads turn toward us, toward people with mental illness; we may agree on little, the people of this nation, but we can all agree we'd be better off with fewer crazies in our midst. Drug 'em, hospitalize 'em, send 'em off, or lock 'em up - humanely, of course, always humanly. It's not the mentally ill's faults, those poor unfortunate souls, that they're hard wired for mass murder; they need protecting from themselves just as much as we need protection from them. And the one in five of us who might disagree, the one in five Americans who lives with a mental illness, well, we most of us keep quiet when these calls come, keeping our symptoms locked away inside us, if we're lucky enough to be able to do so, in a secret prison of our own shame. Those of us with the resources to manage our illness to the point we can keep it under wraps, well, we hear what y'all say about "the mentally ill," how we're weak and lazy, unreliable, untrustworthy, other, less-than. Violent. Dangerous. We're not stupid, most of us, we have a sense of self preservation. So we keep our diagnoses to ourselves and thank our lucky stars we're able to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is not a post about guns. This post doesn't endorse a position on the left or right. This post is about people with mental illness; about how we do not belong in this mass shooting narrative. And I'm writing this post because unlike most people with mental illness, I don't have the good sense to be quiet about having one, and I think that lack of good sense obligates me to speak up in defense of the people who don't or can't speak up for themselves. I'm speaking up because every damn time someone slaughters school full of children, this narrative starts, left right and center, about helping the mentally ill, as if we're the ones responsible. Well we're not.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But how can I say we're not violent when we all know that people with mental illness are dangerous on some level? How can I say that when the man who murdered seventeen at a high school in Florida this week does, in fact, have a history of mental illness? I can say it because one in five Americans is living with a mental illness, and the vast, vast majority of us are <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/mental-illness-and-violence">as peaceful and law-abiding as anyone else</a>. We haven't done anything to be lumped in with mass murderers, and we don't deserve to be further stigmatized and isolated every time someone who isn't us commits unspeakable evil.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now, when I say "mental illness" I'm referring to a diagnosable disorder characterized by patterns in thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that impair a person's ability to function in their daily life. These disorders include depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and PTSD, among others. This is probably the definition we should <i>all </i>be using for mental illness - I've heard a lot of people say "oh well clearly if you want to murder people you're mentally ill," but that doesn't really compute. Mental illness is a medical diagnosis. Evil is not a medical diagnosis, nor is hatred, nor is desire to kill. Certainly there are evil people who have mental illness, but there are evil people who have asthma too, and we don't go stigmatizing asthmatics every time we find out a mass murderer used an inhaler. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now it's really important to note that I'm <i>not</i> saying mental illness can't cause people to behave violently. It absolutely can, in certain cases, but probably not in the ways you think. Most people with mental illness, especially those, like me, whose symptoms are well controlled with medication and healthy lifestyle, are as peaceful and law-abiding as people without mental illness. I think we're about 1% more likely to behave violently? But by "behave violently," I mean we're about 1% more likely to punch a guy in a bar fight or shove the person in line in front of us at Target. That's a far cry from mass murder. According to a study from the American Journal of psychiatry, <a href="https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=96905">only one in every twenty violent crimes</a> is perpetrated by someone with a mental illness, and since one in every five of us is someone with a mental illness... well, you do the math, I'm just a writer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now, our likelihood of becoming seriously violent <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/mentilln.pdf">does increase</a> if we're abusing drugs or actively psychotic. And here I want to take a moment with the word "psychotic." Psychosis happens a lot with people who have schizophrenia, but can also happen with other disorders, like bipolar disorder. Not everybody who has a mental illness will ever experience psychosis, though. "Psychosis" refers to a state in which a person is incapable of telling what's real from what isn't. A psychotic person might hear sounds other people can't hear, see things others can't see, or be absolutely convinced of things that aren't true. For instance, a psychotic person might have a conversation with an empty chair, convinced their long dead mother is sitting in it. They might also believe they work for the CIA, that they're secretly William Shakespeare, or that Jesus Christ is standing at the end of the bed telling them their winning lotto numbers. Psychotic symptoms vary greatly in severity, and while psychosis always causes suffering to the people who have it, it's not actually terribly common for psychosis to lead to violence. It might, in fact, lead a person to send their entire Medicaid check to a televangelist because God spoke to them through the television and told them to. That happened at a group home I used to work at more than once. Psychosis might also lead a person to douse themselves in bleach because they believe they're covered in bugs, or to write a 10,000 page manifesto that's utter gibberish, or to wear the same filthy clothes every day because it wards off the warlock that's after them. Those behaviors might seem weird and scary, but they're not as likely to lead to violence as you might think. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21208783">35% of people with schizophrenia</a> have had at least one violent episode in their life, which seems like a lot. But the vast majority of those violent episodes have been minor things - slaps and shoves and the like; only 1% of people with schizophrenia have ever hurt somebody so badly that they even had to go to the emergency room. ONE percent of people with ONE form of mental illness (a relatively rare form at that) and now everybody with ANY mental illness gets implicated in EVERY mass murder, whether the murderer happened to have a mental illness or not? That's pretty unfair. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One might go so far as to call it ignorant bigotry. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You know what else is really ignorant? The notion that the drugs people like me take, that allow us to function in society and have meaningful lives, those drug are the cause of mass shootings. Mass shootings happen because of Ritalin and Prozac and all those nasty happy pills we crazies delude ourselves into needing. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I first started seeing this notion pedaled on far right wing conspiracy-theory type blogs a few years back. Every mass shooter in the past twenty years, they say, was on SSRI drugs at the time of their crime. Those articles cite sources to "prove" their assertions, but those sources are all other conspiracy websites. No actual evidence at all. Lack of proof notwithstanding, those notions found their way into the Internet slip-stream, onto more mainstream conservative platforms, then onto the mommy blogs where they exploded, and now the notion that psych meds cause murder seems to be all but common knowledge online. Nobody checks the sources anymore - they've heard it so much it must be true. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But actually, psychiatric drugs, even SSRIs, though very common, do come with <i>huge</i> side effect risks. That's why we make psychiatrists go to school for fourteen years before we give them leave to write these prescriptions. The amount we don't know about the human brain is staggering, and our understanding of how these drugs affect the brain is in its infancy. The brain, y'all, is a barely solid and impossibly fragile mass of grey snot and with all the things we don't know, all the variables that factor into the equation, medicating a mental illness is a minefield. That's why scientists dedicate their entire lives to locating those mines and helping patients steer clear of them. With, it can't be overstated, incredible success.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Back in the 1800s, most people with severe mental illness could expect no quality of life whatsoever. Having a mental illness meant restraints and prisons, experimentation, forced sterilization, stigmatization, isolation, torture, starvation. Later mental illness meant lobotomies - ice picks shoved through the eyeball straight into the brain. It meant writhing in one's own filth alone in a padded room for days on end. It meant abuse, neglect, it meant being disowned by families and locked away for life. Later it meant drugs that made one a living corpse devoid of free will - suffering still, but suffering slowly now, and quietly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally though, we're developing drugs that have powerful impact with far fewer risks than previous generations of drugs. These new meds are nothing to be taken lightly - there are serious risks that need to be weighed, and anybody who takes them needs to have a long talk with a doctor or two and read every word of those package inserts before they take the plunge. But the fact is people with mental illness deserve lives without constant suicidal thoughts, without self-injury, without constant panic attacks, without delusions, without invisible voices screaming in their ears, without being forced to spend our lives trapped inside a mind bent on its own destruction. We have treatments now that let us hold down jobs, live peacefully with our own families, live independently and make our own decisions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And now people are trying to say these drugs that let so many of us participate in life rather than spending it locked away or dead or worse can turn us into murderers. Without evidence. Without expertise. Without any regard for the suffering of people who have a mental illness and need help. Yes, there have absolutely been cases in which a bad response to a psych med has had devastating consequences; but no, the drugs we use to deal with the symptoms of mental illness are <i>not</i> going to turn us into mass murderers. Anyone who tells you otherwise is unforgivably ignorant</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Y'all, having a mental illness really, really sucks; having the world think that your mental illness makes you a serial killer is really rubbing salt in the wound. And now people want to claim that the medication that helps make life bearable turns us into murder machines? How much insult do you really need to heap on top of all this injury? We already make less money than people without mental illness. We're already more likely to be homeless. Discrimination against people with mental illness is so rampant that most sufferers are terrified to let the people closest to them know about their diagnosis; you've probably got a friend or a coworker or a family member going through mental health hell right now, suffering in silence to avoid others' judgement. Our care is stupid expensive, and we generally have to fight an uphill battle to get our insurance to cover it - even though there are laws on the books saying that they have to. We've got enough to deal with already.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Here's the bottom line, cats and kittens. People with mental illness are not, no matter how you measure it, more likely to go on a shooting rampage than people without. Bringing us up every damn time someone commits mass murder is ignorant, discriminatory, and just plain wrong - factually and morally. People with mental illness are fighting an uphill battle just trying to make it through the day and live our best lives; it is wrong to heap stigma and discrimination on top of that. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And we need you. We need you to speak up on our behalf - when the folks around you talk about people with mental illness being dangerous, we need you to call them out. We need you to pass the word on that we've done nothing to deserve to be held responsible for mass shootings that we had nothing to do with. We need you to ask your friends to stop running their mouth whenever they bring up false claims that people with mental illness, or the drugs they take, are responsible for mass shooting deaths. We're tired. We're scared. We're grieving these horrific shootings like everybody else, but we're doing that grieving while a bunch of ignorant bigots on cable news give us the side eye and try to make us take the blame. Please, just stop making people with mental illness part of the mass shooter narrative. We've had enough.</span><br />
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-89422736991414081772018-01-30T20:39:00.000-05:002018-01-30T20:39:05.753-05:00The time has come, the walrus said<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Cleveland Indians have finally decided to remove the team mascot, Chief Wahoo, from the team jersey. And if social media is to be believed, this is literally the end of life on earth. The seventh seal has opened, and there's a pale horse and the man who sat on it was Political Correctness, with the downfall of civilization following close behind him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Look, I've been a Clevelander long enough to know how these debates go and I'm just gonna drop some facts here for you to pick up if you want 'em, and then I'm going to bar my door and pray the mob with the pitch forks doesn't find me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So there are some fairy tales Clevelanders grow up believing, and as it turns out they're not true. I grew up believing that the Cleveland Indians were named for the great Cleveland player Louis Sockalexis, a Native American from the Penobscot tribe, who was the first Native American major leaguer. And there was indeed a Native American player named Louis Sockalexis who played just 96 games over three seasons for the team then known as the Cleveland Spiders. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sockalexis was an incredible athlete, but an ankle injury part way through his first season severely impacted his game, and that, combined with worsening alcoholism, caused his star to fall fast, and he was sent down to the minors in 1899. He died in obscurity in 1913 while working as a logger in Maine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So when, during all that, was the team renamed in his honor? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Cleveland baseball team went through a lot of names between the Spiders and the Indians - they were the Lake Shores for a minute, then the Bluebirds, the Broncos, then the Naps (after star player Napoléon "Nap" Lajoie). When Lajoie left the team back in 1915, the team needed a new name, and sportswriters at the time decided on the Indians. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But in honor of Sockalexis? Not so much. Sockalexis was <a href="https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2017/05/09/louis-sockalexis-tribe-angry-about-chief-wahoo-logo-obviously-does-not-honor-his-legacy">scorned</a> in the press for his inherent "Indian weakness." He faced mockery and war whoops (you know, those noises Indians fans make in his "honor" at games?) from fans. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Cleveland Leader said of the team being renamed "In place of the Naps, we'll have the Indians, on the warpath all the time, and eager for scalps to dangle at their belts," never mentioning Sockalexis - none of the other papers mentioned Sockalexis as the reason for the name change either. None of the team's promotional materials mention Sockalexis either... not until 1968, <i>after</i> Native Americans began protesting the team name and mascot.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And speaking of the mascot. Like a lot of Clevelanders, I always believed that Chief Wahoo was a loving caricature of Sockalexis made by a Cleveland cartoonist to honor him. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Wahoo">Turns out </a>the first incarnation of Wahoo, then called "The Little Indian" appeared in 1932, decades after Sockalexis' death. The cartoonist never said that "The Little Indian" was the long-dead Sockalexis. Walter Goldbach, the logo designer who created the current incarnation of the mascot back in 1947, never mentioned honoring Sockalexis either. Goldbach said only that he had difficulty "figuring out how to make an Indian look like a cartoon." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, the facts do not support the idea that the team was named for Sockalexis. The facts directly refute the assertion that Wahoo was created in honor of Sockalexis. But what about the claim that the mascot is meant to honor Native Americans?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Native Americans have pretty unequivocally let the Indians club know where they can shove their "honor." The </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2017/05/09/louis-sockalexis-tribe-angry-about-chief-wahoo-logo-obviously-does-not-honor-his-legacy">Penobscot</a> tribe to which Sockalexis belonged has petitioned the Cleveland team to do away with the mascot. Sockalexis' surviving family members call the mascot an insult, <a href="https://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/the-curse-of-chief-wahoo/Content?oid=2954423&showFullText=true">comparing it to blackface</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So if the mascot was never intended to honor a Native American player, and Sockalexis' family say they aren't honored, and Native Americans all over the country including those in Sockalexis' tribe say they aren't honored, how can we say that Wahoo honors anybody? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll reiterate that I know I'm not changing anybody's mind about whether Wahoo's got to go. And I'm just as averse as anyone to the world ending in a blinding lake of fire, as it is sure to do, as a result of a ball team removing some logos from some shirts. But what I am saying is this: that team is not named in honor of a Native American, that caricature was not created in honor of a Native American, and Native Americans do not consider that caricature an honor. Clevelanders have been lead to believe one thing, but the facts are the facts, and the fact is that this mascot does not and was never intended to honor any Native American.</span><br />
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-26763299896086591612018-01-07T19:24:00.002-05:002018-01-07T19:24:42.317-05:00The blacklist<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you haven't heard already, you'll be seeing a lot of black on the red carpet at the Golden Globes tonight. Tons of Hollywood elites have committed to wearing black in solidarity with the #MeToo movement started by activist Tarana Burke. What's more, a bunch of celebrity women will be bringing activists, including Tarana Burke, as their plus ones. And that's important because those women dedicated their lives to fighting the fight long before the whole movement was a blip on Hollywood's radar. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not pictured: woman who started the damn movement.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few people have called the act of wearing black an empty gesture, a symbolic act that looks good but doesn't <i>do</i> good. And I'd be inclined to agree, if not for the money.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See, wearing black isn't just a symbolic gesture. It's a gesture that's probably going to cost people some money, and that, my friends, is hitting 'em where it hurts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The red carpet won't be a rainbow of showy gowns tonight. Though celebrities will naturally be wearing the most expensive of designer black gowns, the drab color palate will probably mean fewer people tuning in for the preshow, costing probably costing some advertisers some money. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Magazines, I'd wager, won't sell quite as many best dressed lists, fashion pundits on TV will actually have to acknowledge the movement, at the very least. Fashion houses will lose an opportunity to display their brightly-colored show-stoppers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All this sends a clear message: keep harboring abusers and we will cost you money. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The monochrome might push the journalists covering the event to ask women questions more substantive than "who are you wearing?" Women, seeing all the people whose clothing choices declare them allies, might feel more empowered not to humor interviewers asking condescending questions about jewels and shoes and underwear. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those dresses might inspire winners to dedicate at least some of their acceptance speeches to the movement. Surely every winner will feel compelled to acknowledge the movement. There will be a whole lot of shout-outs to the <a href="https://www.timesupnow.com/">Time's Up</a> nonprofit, started by celebrities and activists dedicated to ending workplace harassment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And that's a whole lot more than an empty gesture. </span>Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682036990627515116.post-79090082120870947722017-11-28T20:51:00.001-05:002017-11-28T20:56:28.340-05:00On every street<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm supposed to be working on my last school assignment of the semester, but there's this thing I can't stop thinking about, and maybe if I write it down it'll leave. Or it'll never leave. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A couple weeks ago I was having a debate with some dude online who was complaining how we don't need feminism, how it's too divisive. I responded, not terribly politely, that we need feminism because we're all we got and we're fighting for each other's survival.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He said that I was being "hilariously overdramatic."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We can cite facts and statistics, share gruesome pictures harrowing personal stories, and some guys are going to get indignant as if our personal stories are personal attacks on them. We can tell you that one in four women has been raped and that 20,000 calls are placed to domestic violence hotlines on an average day, and some guys will respond with a "not all men" or a "well men get beaten too," as if the one negates the other.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And if all that doesn't make a difference then this probably won't either, but I've got to try. Please, men, do me a solid and hear me out. If you've ever typed the words "not all men" or you take personal offense when a woman says that she's afraid of men, please just give me a minute of your time. We need you to understand the experiences behind our words because maybe if you got it, you'd understand why we've got a hard time being fair or diplomatic. Just a couple minutes of your time. Please.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Imagine you're twenty one years old or so, and this has been the worst year of your life. You got dumped, you dropped out of school, you felt so disgusting and worthless and unlovable that you wanted to die. And imagine you're just coming out from all under that when you meet a guy in a bar. Friend of a friend. And maybe he's a tiny bit creepy and off. But he likes you and he thinks you're pretty and you really need a win, so you ignore a red flag or two. Imagine you start dating, and before too long he's getting moody and controlling. He gets mad when you spend time studying instead of with him, and he seems like he really doesn't like it that you have friends who aren't him. And imagine you put up with that for a while, four weeks to be exact, and then you realize this is getting out of control.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Imagine you tell him you want to see other people, because you're afraid what he might do if you break it off entirely. And imagine he says that if he sees you with another man, it will be "a bloodbath." Imagine you get away as fast as you can and cut off contact.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Imagine he doesn't like that very much. Imagine you're home the next day, and your dad has just left for work and imagine the phone rings and you pick it up because caller ID isn't yet a thing. Imagine it's him. And imagine he says something that makes you look out the front window to see his van slowly rolling past your house. Imagine you realizing he has probably been circling your house until he saw you were home alone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So you call the cops and fill out a report, and they say they'll look into it and you know of course they won't. And you stop answering your parents' phone when it rings, and it rings and it rings. It rings when you're home alone during the day and it rings at three o'clock in the morning and it keeps ringing even after your dad gets on the phone with him and tells him you've moved out of state.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Imagine you start avoiding your folks' house because you're worried he might go after your family. You stay at friends' houses, and when you stay with your folks you park your car a ways down the street in hopes he doesn't notice it outside should he roll past again. Imagine how guilty you feel for bringing this down on your folks. How guilty you still feel for being so foolish.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Imagine that for months you get anxious whenever you see a white van. Imagine one day a year later you're in a parking lot and you think you see him and you don't go back to that part of town again for years. Imagine when you talk about it to people they ask if you said anything to lead him on, or imply this is your fault for ignoring the red flags for four whole weeks. Imagine hearing guys say that they're pretty sure women get into bad relationships because they <i>like</i> being mistreated, and imagine not arguing back because you're afraid. Afraid of them, afraid it's true, afraid because you're always afraid anymore.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Imagine you absolutely know you're one of the lucky ones. Imagine you know a hundred women, at least, who have a story far more horrible than yours. Imagine you don't know a single woman who has never experienced this kind of fear. Imagine you look back on that experience with a shudder of overwhelming relief at coming out unscathed. Imagine that a whole hell of a lot of women who have been through far worse consider themselves the lucky ones too. At least they're alive, after all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And now imagine you're nearly forty, and even though this all happened twenty years ago, your finger's hovering over the delete key because you know he might be watching. You know he watches because ten years ago he tracked you down on MySpace and sent you a message telling you what a bitch you were for leading him on and then breaking his heart. A couple years later he sent you a friend request on Facebook, and when you blocked him he created a new account. Imagine it's only been a year or two since he last tried to contact you online and you're not sure you're out of the woods. Imagine you're worried that he'll harass your parents if you click Publish. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Imagine you still feel like a sucker, an asshole, an absolute idiot for that four-week lapse in judgement twenty years ago. Imagine you still feel so horribly guilty for the fact he harassed your folks. Imagine you don't answer the door when you're home alone to this day. Imagine this isn't the only time a man made you afraid for your life. Imagine this was only one of a thousand times a man did something to make you feel afraid. Imagine this isn't even the worst of it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And then imagine what it feels like when you try to tell your story and some guy online takes personal offense to your sharing your story, like you talking about a time a man made you feel afraid is an attack on all men everywhere. Imagine guys who think that your fear makes you "hilariously overdramatic." Imagine having to remind yourself that he's wrong.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Just, try to imagine, and remember to imagine, and have some sympathy and have some empathy. We're telling you our stories. We need you to hear them. We need you to stop defending dudes you don't even know and start helping us defend ourselves. We need you to take all that righteous anger you feel when a woman says she's afraid of men, and channel it toward the men who made us feel that way. We need you to be allies. We need you to be the good guys you insist you are.</span><br />
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Brigid Daull Brockwayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06808132338148865533noreply@blogger.com1