green

boycott whole foods

This is why the Whole Foods boycott is interesting: Whole Foods' customers are educated people with time and money on their hands. That's why they shop at the stores to begin with; they make choices. They are more likely to bother with finding alternatives than someone who is pressed for time and money.

I'm invested in health care reform. The words "pre-existing condition" carry more weight when they apply to you, I can assure you that.

I will not spend my money at a store whose CEO is out to make it harder for the bill to pass. In his Wall Street Journal piece he says,

While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

I happen to think that food and shelter are rights too, in a decent society. But, then again, I don't make my money selling one or the other.

metallica

leningrad cowboys

I just remembered this band... and half an hour of youtubing later, I found another gem. Watch it.

In my mind Leningrad Cowboys are linked to this song by Sting. I hate it. Of course Russians love their children. I can't handle Sting, and I can't handle Bono. Sorry.

"the funeral parlor of the gods"

Very funny story in Vanity Fair about Larry King as 'America's grief counselor'.

sorry whole foods, I'll get my organic milk elsewhere

John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc., quotes Margaret Thatcher and speaks out against Obama's health care reform. Here is his op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. And here is an LA Times write-up. And one from The Huffington Post that's pretty funny. And mad.

Of course there is a Facebook group: Boycott Whole Foods. I've joined.

There are discussion forums on the Whole Foods site. One person writes: I'm a long time customer who has been shopping at your original Austin store since the '80s.
From this day forward I'll take my business elsewhere. Suck it Mr. Mackey.

breakthrough

I just figured out that you have to be a talker before you can be a writer. Thanks, 10 years of teaching.

eunice kennedy shriver

The legacy of a sister to the president. Doesn't it cross your mind how the world might have been different had we had gender equality?

what took me so long?

Yesterday we ground up some green cardamom pods with the coffee beans and put in the low-tech espresso maker. Wow.

yeah

I know someone who is trapped in his own body in a horrific and heartbreaking way. This is his favorite song:

norway

Here it is, Julia Child cooking in "Oslo":

warm night

old favorite: davenport, calif.

love that box of farm fresh veggies

Cherry tomatoes=candy.

hybrid culture

So, yeah, Julie & Julia is lovely. Meryl Streep is fantastic as Julia Child, and Stanley Tucci is great as her husband Paul Child.

Paul Child was a foreign-service officer, stationed in Paris, where Julia took up cooking. Later they leave Paris for a post in Marseille, and some time after that they move on to Oslo.

The scenes from Oslo jumped out at me. In case you're wondering, 'Oslo' in an American movie is white painted wood panels in a kitchen, a light wood coffee table, and a wooden bowl. And it was funny to me that even though it's supposed to be Norway, the first thing I see is something Swedish (a print on the wall that I recognize from my grandparent's kitchen).

It doesn't matter, unless we decide that details do matter. (The Norwegian traditional painting style rosemaling is different from the Swedish kurbits.)

But, to speak semiotics, it's not Norway. It's signs for Norway.

Or, as Dan pointed out, it looked like IKEA.

twitteresque tease

Loved Julie & Julia. More to follow.

speechless

In several classes that I have taught there have been moments when students have shocked, offended, and disrespected each other. A male student used the n-word (yeah, the actual word) sitting opposite an African American young woman this past spring. A female student called a Chinese immigrant young woman "ranting and raving" when she expressed understandable frustration with dominant culture. I could give more examples, but the pattern is always the same: Strong emotions, a heated discussion, and, usually, apologies made, and apologies accepted. True learning moments - I bet the students remember them.

One time a student said something that made me react with the same kind of fierce emotion. I had asked a class, all sitting in a big circle, to identify their cultural belongings: white, black, Mexican-American, Chinese, Vietnamese, however they wanted to label themselves. It so happened that a few students in a row identified as 'white'. Upon hearing that, the next student, before he spoke, raised his fist and said jokingly, "White power!".

To me that wasn't a joke. I heard those words, and I went cold. A couple of the students jerked. A couple of the students who were not white really jerked. A black guy looked scared.

When you are the teacher you cannot start yelling at a student in the middle of class, so I didn't do that. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I pointed out that what he had said was inappropriate, and I think we moved on.

Before meeting the class again I spoke with a few colleagues. I needed help tempering my emotions, and guidance in how to handle the situation.

The only person I talked to who really understood how I felt was a black sociologist. He told me that naturally a reference to white power would stir up emotions in someone from northern Europe. I hadn't been able to pinpoint it myself, but he was right. Obviously I had reacted strongly because of my own cultural background.

As a white person I don't use the n-word. I can't feel the pain associated with the word, but I know it's there, so I don't use it.

As a foreigner in the US I don't make jokes about 9/11. I can't feel the pain associated with the events of that day the way an American feels it, but I respect the feelings of others.

I think of this when I see the images where President Obama has been made to resemble Adolf Hitler. I think of it when I hear Rush Limbaugh talk about the Democrats using Nazi symbols. It makes me sick to my stomach. It's mind boggling to me that anyone in a democracy would say something so outrageous, with a straight face. The only explanation I can come up with is that if you say it, that proves that you have no idea what you are saying.

And you also have no sense of what it may mean to others. How is that even possible?

it never rains in california

I actually never rains where I live between April and October. Except for today. It just started, and when it started the rain pulled with it down across town the cloud of bacon fumes that had been lingering since people fried their breakfasts this morning. I have no other explanation for what just happened: rain, with the smell of bacon.

sage advice from robyn

She is quoting Charlie Brown: Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."

charlottakratz.com

I've redesigned my homepage. Use Internet Explorer if you look at it... Firefox makes it look randomly weird. (Hear that, Firefox?)

aloha

Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

We laughed at Susan Boyle:

- How old are you?
- I am almost 48.
- Hahahahaha!

Will we laugh at a man turning 48?

we all have our own stories to tell

So I was reading this sordid piece about Ryan O'Neal hitting on his daughter Tatum at Farah Fawcett's funeral. Interviewed about the incident in Vanity Fair he says:

"I had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me. I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car?' She said, 'Daddy, it's me — Tatum!' I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it's my daughter. It's so sick."

So, yeah, obviously the word 'Swedish' jumps out at me. That explains a thing or two.

the president is black (III): you're better than this, america

I taught a course earlier this summer that discussed relationships between media, underrepresented groups, and dominant culture. Knowledge and power were important concepts, as were Michel Foucault's observations about situated knowledge, and truth regimes.

The idea is that in a hierarchical society, the world looks different to you depending on where you are standing. The world is different to you depending on where you are standing.

The term 'situated knowledge' points out that knowledge is produced in local social settings, and that there is no objectivity.

But: The more symbolic power you enjoy (=the closer you are to the top of the hierarchy), the more likely it is that your ideas about "truth" coincide with the official version of the truth that is broadcast and printed in commercial media.

So, we learn that there are parallel truths in the world, but that only certain truths will get elevated to be perceived as truths for an entire society, country, or social setting.

Enter Professor Gates, Sergeant Crowley, and President Obama. And Lucia Whalen, and the Beer Summit for Three. (You do the math.)

The twist is this: Even though Barack Obama is the president of the United States, he is also a black man in the US. He knows what the world looks like from the point of enormous privilege, but he also knows what the world looks like from the perspective of black men. He knows what you can do as a black man, what you can't do, and when you will get questioned because you look out of place.

The majority in the US do not have this first hand experience. The majority live by a different set of truths. They often think that there is no difference between people based on race. (Because in their experience there isn't.) They think that if something happens to you, it's because of something you did, not because of who you are, where you are, or what you look like. (Because in their experience, it is.)

Every time someone voices an experience that is not shared by dominant culture, the majority, that act challenges the status quo.

I've seen it a hundred times in my classes. It takes guts, it makes people uncomfortable, and it makes them mad.

Attorney General Eric Holder did it.

And President Obama did it. People have spent a lot of time this past week saying that he shouldn't have said what he said. He shouldn't have weighed in on the side of Henry Gates. They have said that up until now he has avoided divisiveness in racial matters, he has proven that he is 'beyond race'.

It seems to me he had been waiting for this moment. It seemed to me that he was eloquent, speaking freely without notes, for exactly that reason. He had been preparing for it for a long time. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, what hidden truth he thought needed to be lifted up: Racial profiling exists. The world looks different to a black man than it does to someone who is white.

White people, dominant culture people, often think that talking about race makes it worse. That if we don't talk about differences they don't exist. What they fail to see is that that is their truth. It's true for them that if we don't talk about differences they don't exist because they don't exist in their lives. But that is not true for anyone of color, any LBGTQ person, any woman, or anyone with a disability.

So if we don't talk, the only thing we accomplish is more of the same. We continue to buy into the "truth" that is produced by the dominant group, for their own benefit.

I think it's great that the United States has a president who is willing, and prepared, to challenge that.

No, that's an understatement. It make me teary, that's what it does.

And then it makes me mad that the fact that a black president says that "race remains a factor in society" can cause controversy.

blame google

I can't help but do this. And this.

dr's orders

Last time I had a concussion I was 13 and fell off a horse. This time I was 48, and bumped my head on a tree.

That was on Thursday. Whenever I tell someone that the doctor told me to take it easy for three weeks they respond the same way, "THREE WEEKS???"

The same doctor recently told someone else, who is not all that overweight, to loose 50 pounds.

I think it's fair to say this physician exaggerates.

from martha

Obama después de visitar al doctor de Michael Jackson. (Get it?)

"the first in American history guilty of being p.w.b., president while black"

Stanley Fish's column in The New York Times on the Gates scandal ends like this:

Gates and Obama are not only friends; they are in the same position, suspected of occupying a majestic residence under false pretenses. And Obama is a double offender. Not only is he guilty of being Housed While Black; he is the first in American history guilty of being P.W.B., President While Black.

But you really need to read it all.

funniest freudian slip

Someone said 'Nancy Reagan' this week on MSNBC when they meant... Hillary Clinton.

from gregorio

like I said, if it wasn't for jon stewart

Jon Stewart is America's most trusted newsman, according to a new Time Magazine poll.

The Huffington Post: Matched up against Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, Stewart prevailed with 44 percent of the vote.

the president is black (II)

LA Times today: The measured and cautious Obama that Americans have come to know might have demurred when, at the end of his prime-time press conference, he was asked about the arrest last week of Henry Louis Gates Jr., a prominent African American-studies scholar and friend of the president's.

But Obama was surprisingly emotive and unequivocal when answering the question and concluding that the Cambridge, Mass., police had "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates, who is black, after he tried to pry open a stuck door to gain entry to his own home.

Obama said he did not know what role if any race played in the matter. But he also seemed to welcome the opportunity to teach a larger racial lesson. Obama used the question to recall his sponsorship as an Illinois state legislator of legislation to crack down on racial profiling, noting that "there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped" disproportionately by police. (Read more.)

but where is john oliver?

For a bunch of different reasons I have a hard time listening to arguments against national health care. And as if that's not enough, in an attempt to take the edge of the president's efforts the right wing crazies have started up the Obama birth certificate issue again. There is a lot of yelling, and there is a lot of stupidity.

I am just saying. If it wasn't for Jon Stewart you'd think the world was mad.

from mayka

A woman's struggle with breast cancer:

twitters

Unfollowing John Cleese made me feel I live in the 21st century. Following Sarah Palin makes me feel like I just took a big step backwards again.

ignorami

My friend Babs blogs about the senate hearings with Sonia Sotomayor last week. This is the part that got to me:

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham suggested to Sotomayor that she had “a temperament problem” and advised that “maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection.”

And Coburn not only lectured Sotomayor on the “proper role” of judges, but read her the oath of office.

It reminded me of a party I was at once, for someone who had just become an American citizen. There were balloons, apple pie, champagne, and little American flags. We each brought gifts: My friend and I gave the food snob new American a box of Twinkies.

Someone else gave him a pay stub, and said, "Now you'll have to start paying tax!".

It baffled me. He thought only citizens pay tax?

What kind of lives do they think other people have? Ones where judges don't know their own oaths? Where green card holders don't pay tax? Where Latina judges have attitude problems and need to calm down, and be lectured?

please explain

Someone had, in all seriousness, posted this quote on their Facebook status:

Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. - Proverbs 31:30

WHAT?

catie made me look this up

salsa

When Dan's aunt Gloria decided not to be helpful I realized I was on my own when it came to figuring out how to make a good salsa. Four batches later I can tell you this:

1. Roma tomatoes.
2. Use a variety of peppers.
3. Cut tomatoes and peppers in half. Seed peppers. Place everything skin side up in a roasting pan, and drizzle olive oil on top. Put under the broiler and burn the heck out of it.
4. When it's almost done (=black and bubbly), add cloves of garlic, and red onion. You don't want to burn the garlic and onion.
5. When it's done, put all veggies in the food processor, and pulse.
6. Add cumin, salt, lime juice, and cilantro.
7. Pulse a tiny bit more.
8. Let cool.

you can put a man on the moon but you can't fix... this.

Prom Night In Mississippi: Nothing changes until you do.

boy, oh boy

Watch for the moment when Walter Cronkite is speechless, and takes off his glasses:

July 20, 1969. It was after 3 in the morning in Sweden and I was asleep at my grandparents' country house. My brother who had better stamina than I was awake with the grownups. He came to get me. It was a light Scandinavian summer night. We ran across the courtyard between the house where we slept and the main house, sharp stones hurting our feet.

And then, in my memory, it happened.

hell is other people

Don't (I): Shop at Whole Foods in Los Gatos on the weekend. People just stand around and chat and you can't get to anything.
Don't (II): Hike the Los Gatos mountain trail on the weekend. People just stand around and chat and you can't get anywhere.

the president is black

she lets him have it

Watch Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan debating Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, and affirmative action, on the Rachel Maddow Show.

what we claim

I've taught a class that discusses media images of underrepresented groups this summer. To add perspective I've invited as guest graduates of the department, former students who a few years out of school are eager to come back and talk. They even admit to missing school...

Erika, one of the young women who came in last week, reminded me of something that had happened in one of her classes a couple of years ago.

I often ask students how they identify - how they choose to label themselves. There is a pattern: Very few white Americans identify as "American" when they're in the US. Instead they refer to their countries of origin, and may say that they are Irish and Italian, Irish and German, French, or Portuguese, even if they have never visited any of those countries and their families have been American citizens for generations. It's an interesting phenomenon, and often the focus of several class discussions. It is odd that white people, who in many ways feel the most ownership of the country, and who enjoy privilege and positions of symbolic power, do not talk about themselves as American.

Erika remembered that she had been the only one in her class of 30 or so students, a predominantly white group, to use the word "American". She referred to herself as Mexican-American. Her parents are both immigrants from Mexico, but, she says, "I was born here, I am American".

it's true

President Obama's pick for Surgeon General is a woman. A black woman. Her name is Dr. Regina Benjamin.

Some people think she is too fat to be top doc.

I am not even going to comment.

update

Whole bunch of new photos on my smugmug site. Current favorite: this one.

the charles m. schultz museum, santa rosa, calif.

sonoma co coast, july 4 2009

bench

somewhere in sonoma

quatorze juillet

Happy Birthday, France.

from sofia

Watch the short film Chicken a la Carte. It's not going to be what you think, and it might make you cry.

quite possibly the best omelette ever

Brie, smoked salmon, and capers, at Cape Fear Cafe, in Duncans Mills, Calif.

on our way up mount hamilton, boy am I getting car sick

lick observatory, mount hamilton, san jose, calif.

refracting telescope from 1888 on mount hamilton

contrasts

Around 10AM on Thursday I had an email from an old friend who is battling depression. She says she finds it hard to enjoy life.

Around 2PM on Thursday I was sitting in a room listening to a 24 year old soon-to-be ex US Marine talking about his seven years of service, including the one year tour in Iraq he finished this past March.

This guy doesn't find it hard to enjoy life. On the contrary: he said these past few months have been the best months of his life. He loves his country, he loves to be alive, and he is looking forward to the rest of his life.

I am not saying that my depressed friend should just snap out of it. It's not that simple. But I am saying that we would all do better service to the world if we woke up each morning with gratitude, where ever we are, and where ever we have been before.

from erik

from dan

A New York Times writeup on studies on interracial college roommates.

and here is the link

Todd S. Purdum has a long article about Sarah Palin in the August issue of Vanity Fair. It's a good read.

off to read the vanity fair article

Sally Quinn in the Washington Post, on Palin's Peculiar Family Values.

I am just saying

It takes a lot of restraint not to be cracking Sarah Palin jokes right now.

very funny, and sad

Maureen Dowd's Practical Guide to Help Spurned Political Wives Survive Old Problems in the Era of New Technology.

My favorite: When there’s an Associated Press bulletin quoting your husband saying that he has found his soul mate but he’s going to try to fall back in love with you, change the locks. (At your second home, too.)

and the cover is pretty too

I just finished The Sorrows of An American by Siri Hustvedt. It's a really good book. But if I start explaining why I think it's good I'll go on for ever. Read it already.

undecided?

Babs and Shannon Kelley have a new blog: undecidedthebook.wordpress.com.

Here is part of their blurb:

This is a blog for anyone who has ever been overwhelmed by choice. And who hasn’t been? For the first time for women, all the doors are open. We can do whatever we want with our lives.

And yet. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns.

Far from it. And we’re out to explore why the generation of women who have more options than our mothers ever dreamed possible suffers from a terminal case of grass-is-greener syndrome, perpetually distracted by what we’re not doing. We’re stressed. Restless. Constantly second-guessing ourselves. Always wondering what we left behind Door Number Two. And we can’t figure out why.

walking on water

rocks

yellow and gray

point lobo state reserve, carmel, calif.

from the deep

rocks&waves

tiny people

yellow flower, turquoise water

monterey, ca

monterey bay aquarium

jelly fish looking like old lamps upside down

jelly fish

sea nettle (get it?)

facebook status update

I just made a portobello, spinach, and raspberry salad with Irish cheddar. Very tasty stuff.

ever had that happen to you?

Dan's aunt makes the best salsa. She is also practicing an age old tradition:

-This is so good Gloria, how do you make it?
-Oh, it's easy, you just put whatever you want!

remember?

The Today Show just did a little story on how President Obama plays golf to get out of the White House. They interviewed an old friend in Illinois who said that when Obama played, there was no cheating. If the ball ended up behind a tree, Obama would hit it from behind a tree.

There is something called a mulligan in golf. A do-over. According to The Today Show President Clinton was notorious for those. They cut to an interview by Tim Russert, where he asked Bill Clinton that question. 'How many mulligans do you take per game?'. Clinton's answer: 'One, now.'

Unexpected downside of all of those hours of broadcast testimony in the Lewinsky scandal? That we all know what Clinton looks like when he lies.

that was a whole day of vacation between grading and starting all over again

Me: Summer school starts tomorrow.
Dan: Tomorrow? Didn't you say it was starting next week?
Me: This is next week.

hydrangea

another mexican girl making my day

I've lost quite a bit of weight lately, and I've happily thrown out a lot of my fat-clothes. But my regular size things don't fit yet... so, a problem.

I went to the mall today thinking I would be able to find something on sale.

I did. Two dresses.

On my way back to my car I ran into a former student. We chatted for a second, and then she said, "I will always remember your class, it was the only one where I felt comfortable speaking."

Imagine that.

no irony

I've read two novels recently, People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks, and America America by Ethan Canin. Both are excellent. Well worth the time spent away from the computer.