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Open Book Journal
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merely a collection of musings... on nothing in particular....
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July 2, 2008
I believe in going green, believe that we, as a global society, can save our planet. I read the articles and have put into practice many of the tenets of the green lifestyle. I make green choices when purchasing food and clothing and cleaning products. My family and I conserve water and keep our air conditioner and furnace running at peak efficiency. We use solar power whenever possible. I consolidate my errands to reduce my drive time to help reduce erosion to the ozone, reduce greenhouse emissions, and reduce all the pollutants produced by driving. I read the articles, the how to articles and the ones with lists: Seven easy tips to reduce your heating bill and save the planet; Five household cleaners that are destroying the planet; How to reduce the cost of going green; How going green can save you money. I follow as many recommendations as possible, and research alternative energies we may be able to implement in our home. I am going green. But there are some things I refuse to do. Let me list them for you.
Like I said, I believe in going green. But I think the planet would have a better chance at being saved if SUVs were outlawed, if farms were owned by farmers and not corporations, and shower stalls were limited to one showerhead. |
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June 25, 2008
Is Barak Obama a Muslim? Or does he subscribe to one of the available Christian options? Is his wife a bigot? I wouldn’t care if he were Muslim except I think the Muslim men are misogynistic. I wouldn’t care if he were of the Christian variety except Christians can be terribly right wing when it suits them. Is his wife a bigot? That one bothers me. During a campaign, rumors and muckraking are standard fare. And spouses are fair game. But Michelle Obama seems to leave a trail of extreme dislike for the white folk. I’m not sure I want her hanging around any policy makers. But I’m also certain she won’t have the impact that Hillary Clinton had when husband Bill occupied the Presidency. If Barak is a Muslim, he won’t value her opinion, bigoted or not. It’s unlikely she’d be allowed the latitude Hillary acquired. So, me being a white woman, you can see where I may be a little more than nervous that Barak Obama and his wife may be occupying the White House. If Barak is a Muslim, he hates woman. And if his wife is a bigot, she hates white people. I’m 2 for 2.
So? Vote for McCain, you say. After all, he is one your homies, coming from Arizona and all, you answer. Well, McCain makes me a little nervous as well. His political stances are as substantial as quicksand and he’s so very much like George W. Now, I’m a card carrying Republican, but George W. has sent me to the fence and leaning over to the democratic side. Had Hillary Clinton been nominated, I would have jumped right over. But Barak and his questionable religious affiliations and his wife’s animosity toward whites makes me back away and turn once again to the elephant in the room. And the real elephant in the room is McCain’s health. He’s hanging in there now, but he is up there, and he has had some serious health problems. I really want to know who his vice president is going to be. At least Cindy McCain seems nice. |
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June 18, 2008
Why did the Mexican cross the border? Living in Phoenix, Arizona, I am acutely aware of immigration as a political issue. The logistics of having a continual flow of illegal immigrants into the state can be mind-boggling. Of course, any discussion of the situation includes the cost to the state of providing support services to illegal immigrants. The Mexican people who leave their homeland for America do so because there is no money to be had in Mexico. The peso is greatly devalued, and there are no jobs. The Mexican people come here and look for work. They will do darn near anything to make a few dollars. Generally speaking, their work ethic is excellent. But they are here illegally, and that’s a problem. I have a solution. Let’s adopt Mexico as our manufacturing center. A good many of the products that need manufacturing in factories can be made in Mexico. We’ll build factories there and this will create jobs, lots of them. For them and for us. America and Mexico will have a symbiotic relationship. We will trade with Mexico, instead of China, a country in which quality control is a foreign concept. Americans are great at establishing manufacturing systems. We’ll set up factories – that’s jobs for us. The Mexican people can then take control of them through employee stock options over an extended period of time. What happens when industry comes to an area? People come to work there. Those employees need housing, and schools and hospitals. They need grocery stores and car lots and doctors and lawyers and libraries. Then everybody is working and we have the birth of a healthy economy. The Mexican people will no longer be driven from their own country to make a few dollars. No more illegal immigration.
Why did the Mexican cross the border? |
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August 10, 2007
My mother - God rest her soul- referred to Tiger Woods as 'that colored boy'. My father referred to Asians as nips, Italians as wops, Hispanics ( a word unknown to him) as wetbacks, and Germans as krauts. Anyone from middle Europe was a pollack and the Irish were micks. He was Irish and didn't think anything of using such a word in reference to his own kind. He didn't discriminate; every nationality had a slur. Women were girls, gals, dames, or broads and men were men. Imagine growing up with that kind of vocabulary. I knew all about kikes and spics and niggers and frogs. But my parents could not be classified as white supremacists. They condemned the Ku Klux Klan as silly fools wearing bedsheets. They did not believe themselves superior simply because of their skin color. They believed that education and ambition made for superiority, and when a black person or brown person or middle European person was well educated, well, that nigger or spic or pollack was a credit to mankind. Their vocabulary was what it was. They, and those of their generation (think depression era and WWII) were not politically correct nor were they motivated to be. My father served in WWII in the Philippines for four years. For four years the Japanese tried to kill him. Though I cringe to say it, he may have earned the right to call them nips. As for the rest of his, and my mother's, colorful language, all the adults during my childhood spoke in such terms. This was the 1950's and 1960's. There was money to be made and the standard of living reflected the American Dream. Opportunity was knocking and anyone with ambition could climb up the social and corporate ladders and live life at the top of the world. That the upper tiers of society were primarily comprised of white people seemed quite natural to them. After all, hadn't they survived the Great Depression? Hadn't they defeated Hitler and the Japanese and weren't they showing those communist Ruskies who was the Super Power on this earth? My mother repeatedly told my father that nigger wasn't a good word to use in front of us kids, that he should say colored. My father did try, but since childhood these words were used, and to teach an old dog new tricks... well, that just couldn't happen. But I say again, he rarely used these words in a derogatory tone (with the exception of nips) and referred to his own self as a mick. These folks vocabulary reflected simple habit, not anger or hatred or bigotry. It was simply the language of their time. But most people do not use such language today, at least not in public. There is a stigma attached to such words, and the politcal correctness in describing racial and national origins has all but squashed the language of my elders. But there were those who did use those terms to express bigotry, and there are those that do now use such terms, but do so privately. But not all bigotry is behind closed doors. I know a young woman whose family is Armenian. This young woman has been in America all of her life. Shortly after the attacks on September 11, she was taunted and harrassed at school. What did the kids call her? Terrorist. Towel head. Bin Laden. The new vocabulary is here. |
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June 18, 2007
It's getting really hot here in Phoenix, so hot even the devil doesn't come to call. The desert wind is spiked with dust, and its heat scrapes your skin. But that's okay, it's only for a couple of months that the heat forces a kind of hibernation on us all. Soon it will be warm and balmy. With the heat, and the hibernation, there is a sense of quietude in the valley of the sun. The snowbirds take flight, winabagoing back to lands east of the rockies, east of the Mississippi. Residents see a great deal of transient behavior here, and we've become accustomed to the shift in population. For those who stay, though, Phoenix, and the valley in general, has a certain kind of 'haven' feel to it. So many people I meet came from somewhere else, a long time ago. They left behind whole lives that were filled with emptiness, filled with dissatisfaction, filled with anger. They say, "Back there..." instead of "Back home...". The heat makes me drowsy, makes me feel hazy around the edges. I begin to think of living, and life, in broader, more ephemeral terms. I sometimes think our lives are little vignettes a Supreme Being is writing for his/her own amusement. He/She put her more unruly, more out-of-step characters here in Phoenix. And here we are, bringing forth a whole generation of Arizona natives. And I wonder if they will leave, or if their roots will run deep here, in this desert place with the spiked wind. |
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January 21, 2007
Here in Phoenix we don't get much rain. We are desert dwellers, living with cacti and dust, searing summers and serene winters, drought and deluge. Arizona is a place of environmental extremism, with the north cold and wet, the south hot, dry, dusty. But lest you get the impression that the sonoran desert resembles the sahara, let me say that this valley and state are diverse in plant and animal life, and the foliage and fauna abound.
Where the hell did all these people come from? And did they have to come here? One of the reasons we came to this city was because it wasn't run by corporations, by bureaucrats, by welfare, by the trades unions, by nepotism, by backroom politics. When we first came here, the biggest scandel was the governor had borrowed money to fund his campaign - borrowed it from himself and paid it back. To our then Chitown mentality, this wasn't a scandel, it was three paragraph story on page six. Here, though, the poor schmuck lost his job. Now, we have large corporations, and plenty of bureaucratic red tape. The unions still don't control everyone's livelihood, but they're trying. Nepotism is still frowned on, but is on the rise. Backroom politics are now the norm. Pollution is increasing; urban sprawl is eating up the land. Why, oh why, did all these people come here and bring with them the east coast and midwest crap? Why didn't they, like us early migrants, settle into the city and adapt its quaint ways? I'd still rather be in Phoenix than anywhere else. And perhaps I just feel a little out of sorts due to the rain. But the rain has stopped now, and the sun is shining on the orange tree outside my office window, and warming the cold soil in my winter garden. The oranges are ready for picking and soon it will be time to plant. And I will try to tolerate those from New York and New Jersey and Connecticut, from Illinois and Indiana, and try to embue in them the attitude that once was small city Phoenix - that of the laid back, sun loving, environmentally compatible resident. |
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November 22, 2006
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. When I was young, Thanksgiving was all about food and learning how pilgrims and Indians became friends. Now, it's all about how the pilgrims were evil invaders who ultimately were the root cause of the ruin of the whole Native American way of life. Now, I don't deny that the pilgrims did encroach on Indian territory, or that maybe Indians weren't always kind and gracious hosts. Whatever. This is like the 15th or 16th century; no one behaved in what we would call a civilized fashion. Everyone was trying to take over someone else's territory, by raising armies or by marriage or by simply moving in, so to speak. I say, get over it. No matter how accurate the historical accountings are today of events at the first Thanksgiving, this holiday in contemporary times represents family time, represents cultural consciousness, represents historical awareness. I think historical accuracy is a good thing, and in these times of video cameras and laptops and other cool hi-tech toys, recording events with precision for posterity will leave little room for future myth. Such devices as journals and legal documents often are used to piece together how certain events came to pass. Journals, however, can be colored by perception and legal documents can contain so little "humanity" that they don't reflect the human factor. But with our level of technology today, it is possible to capture both accuracy and humanity. But someone is sure to edit the piece, and that changes the story, and before you know it, history is made up of sound bytes and blogs, and perhaps there will continue to be myths, myths of people coming together to share food simply because it was something good to do. |
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September 15, 2005
After the Twin Towers were demolished by religious terrorists, and so many lives were lost, it was inevitable that the USA would go to war. I couldn't entirely disagree with that reaction, much as I find war to be the ultimate waste of human life. George Bush the Second had to mobilize the troops, had to play war lord to regain national pride. But has he played the part too long? Other war lords are not held accountable to the masses over which they rule. But George the Second is. Isn't he? Let's take a look at that. Gail Sheehy can protest, and others can support the war, but George can't be president again so he can send troops to Iraq - or not. He can listen to protestors - or not. He can thank supporters - or not. He can work toward a healthier economy - or not. He can work to improve educational systems - or not. He can do this or that or nothing at all and it really doesn't matter. George the Second has nothing more to gain and nothing to lose. He can leave the troops in Iraq, blow off the war against terrorism, screw the working man and woman, and leave every child behind. What's the worst that can happen to him? Political pundits will broadcast his lack of leadership. Ooohh.. that will hurt.
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August 22, 2005
... and then Hunter Thompson, the founder of Gonzo journalism shoots himself. At first I was amazed that he would give it up to a gun. I felt certain that he would overdose or die in a fiery crash, that his exit would be something sudden... something where death actually had to take him by surprise, lest the old mumbler talk the Grim Reaper into swinging his scythe in another direction. But then again, is it really unexpected? Could Hunter Thompson have gone on to live to a ripe old age? A doddering gonzo journalist? Was 67 years enough for this eccentric being to have spent on this planet? I guess Mr. Thompson wanted to decide for himself when he was ready to go. And February 21st, 2005, was when he was ready. Good luck, Hunter.... |
What makes me want to say all this is the last few days we have had a portion of our winter rains and snows here in Arizona. While the east end of the USA freezes, we are merely chilled. I am grateful for our decision all those years ago to leave Chicago and come to this valley of the sun. We have been here so long, my husband and I, that we are very nearly considered natives. Our children are natives, born and bred in this land of mountains and sandy soils. When we first came, the city of Phoenix was a small city, the population around one million -if that. Now, in 2007, the population numbers more than five million.
Good or bad, the pilgrims did settle here in America. Good or bad, the Europeans and the Native Americans struggled, fought, shared, fought, struggled, etc. etc. Good or bad, it all belongs to history. I say, stop trying to make the white guy the bad guy, the red guy the victim. And vica versa. Let's promote Thanksgiving as an evolved holiday, aware that the history surrounding the original event may not be all apples and yams, but that the spirit, the sharing that brought it all about, is what has survived and evolved into a day of feasting.
Frankly, I think George the Second could care less. And his wife Laura.... well, I ask you; was there ever a more boring, bland, lackluster first lady that Laura Bush? What a slice of white bread this woman is. Who would have thought we could miss the Clintons! I hope Hillary runs for president. I think she would be the perfect choice for the the first woman president. She's smart, she's politically savvy, and she's got way bigger cojones than any republican out there. And, this is the best part, it would really piss off those religious extremist that think women are on this earth only to reproduce more male religious extremists. I think it's about time to get a woman in the White House. Problem is, what will we call her husband?