September 01, 2006

1) “Taxi!”
I’m waiting at a cabstand. I meet Jack. He looks about 45. We laugh about how he, a Palestinian, has a Western name and I, an American have an Arabic name. Early on he asks, “Do you know anything about lymphoma?” I don’t, why does he want to know. He has lymphoma. A cab comes. We’re traveling to the same part of town and share it. Jack’s wife has multiple sclerosis. She’s in a wheelchair. They have two kids, 15 and 11. Three times he’s applied for and gotten medical permits to take his wife to see specialists in Jerusalem. He wants to see a Jerusalem specialist himself. But he doesn’t have the physical strength anymore to stand hours in line in the sun to apply for a permit at the IDF command center. And in the last 5 years most permits are denied anyway. Plus he doesn’t have money for medical care. He pays for the cab and won’t let me pay. I insist. After much cajoling, he takes my money. His parting words are that he expects to be in a cemetery shortly.

In 2001, 25% of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories lived in poverty. The UN definition of poverty is living under US $2.20/day per person. In 2006, 75% of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories live in poverty.

In the West Bank, people must travel to Jerusalem for specialty medical care. My interview with the Director of the local Palestinian office that serves as liaison to the Israeli Army (the IDF) for permits indicates that for the last 6 months about 95% of medical permits to enter Israel are denied (in the past 50-70% were granted). When permits are granted, they are time limited (e.g., from 5 a.m. until 10 p.m. on a specific date). To apply, an Israeli hospital (that has never seen you) has to fax the IDF information on your case and justify why you need care in Israel. Information from a Palestinian hospital (where you have actually been seen) is not acceptable. To travel to Jerusalem, the sick have to wait in the sun at checkpoints, sometimes for hours. Sometimes the soldiers don’t let them through even with a permit. And sometimes the lines are so long that the permit expires during the waiting. Or by the time they get through, getting to Jerusalem and back before the expiration time is impossible. No matter the reason, if you don’t use your permit, you have to reapply from scratch for another one.

2) “Charles”
Another day I interview Charles, brother of a 24-year-old Palestinian prisoner. Charles’s brother is 4 years into a 396-year sentence in an Israeli prison. The brother was a member of the armed resistance and committed violent acts against the occupation. The family is Catholic and Charles’s brother was in the Nativity Church in Bethlehem during the siege a few years ago. Charles isn’t allowed to visit his brother because Israel doesn’t allow brothers of prisoners to visit if the brother is between the ages of 16 and 35. Charles is 30. He hasn’t seen his brother in 4 years. Their parents are dead. The only family member allowed to visit is their 87-year-old grandmother who walks with a cane. Each visit involves a 12-hour journey and some walking. This journey is becoming impossible for her. She has seen her grandson 4 times so far for 20 minutes each visit. At the last visit the prison authorities allowed her to take photos. I look at the photos. They are sweet and sad. Later, almost parenthetically, Charles happens to mention that a few years ago he was standing in front of his house when the IDF arrived and asked who owned the house. Worried, he said the owners were abroad. The IDF sent him to the top of the street to tell people not to come down the street. While he did this, they blew up his house. The next year the UN rebuilt the house. My interview with him is in the rebuilt house. Later I see a UN plaque on the outside wall saying building funds were donated by Canada but not mentioning why the house needed rebuilding.

I read about a girl of 15 who pushed and then ran away from a male soldier who wanted to body search her as she entered a mosque. He shot her. This put her in a coma. After she came out of the coma, she was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

There are about 10,000 Palestinians prisoners in Israeli prisons. They are not petty criminals. They are political prisoners who have acted in resistance against the occupation, some violently, many non-violently. Many committed “crimes” we would not consider crimes (e.g., holding a Palestinian flag, being in a nonviolent demonstration, being in any political party). A few have been in prison 30+ years. About 4% of prisoners are children (i.e., 450 kids). Israel arrests children 12 and over. It charges and convicts children 14 and over. Being tortured in prison is standard. Random mass arrests of men are common (e.g., all males between ages 16 and 40 in a particular village). Almost every man I meet has been arrested or in prison. Often people are released from jail after many days and don’t ever learn why they were arrested. There is a military order called “administrative detention” that allows Palestinians to be held 6 months without the prisoner or his lawyer being told the charge (only the judge and prosecutor know the charge). This military order allows infinite 6-month extensions of the detention. There are about 600 prisoners held this way now. Some have been in prison for 8 years.

To visit a prisoner, you must be a first degree relative (except for brothers who are restricted as noted above). First, you apply for a permit to enter Israel. The Red Cross serves as liaison to the IDF for this. The Red Cross staff person I interviewed told me that about 40% of permit applicants are denied for reasons of “security” and another 10% to 15% are denied because of IDF difficulty establishing kinship (i.e., the info isn’t on their computers). The journey to see a prisoner can take 5 to 12 hours/each way because of movement restrictions in the Occupied Territories. Many visitors are strip searched at each checkpoint along the way and then again at the prison itself. Visits with prisoners are 30 minutes long. To get there, first visitors take Palestinian transportation to the Green Line and then get on an Israeli bus. Israeli police or military escorts accompany visitor buses from the Green Line (1967 border) to the prison. Because of these restrictions, prisoners have few visitors.

3) “Jenin”
In Jenin I meet Ibrahim, a sensitive, smart, sweet young man of 22. He’s a university student, the oldest in a family of 7 kids. He’s our host for our stay in Jenin. He looks after us in the most loving and caring way. I like him. He’s real and deep and he’s in touch with what he feels. The conditions of his life have not taken away his humanity. One night over fruit and conversation, he tells us about a time his village was under curfew for 15 days without a break. He was 18 then. There was no electricity because the IDF had cut it for cover to move around at night. The villagers were out of food. The mayor of the village pleaded by cell phone with the IDF commander for a break in curfew so people could get food. The commander refused. Soon after, Ibrahim was moving quietly from house to house at night to get food and take it to people. Neighbors were helping him (saying things like, “Go away, the soldiers are right there,” “Come now,” “Move quickly this way,” etc.). As he was making deliveries, a sniper saw him and began shooting. He dropped his bag and ran as fast as he could. He remembers the feeling of the wind rushing against his face. For a moment he thought of stopping and letting himself just get shot. By the end of the story, he was crying in this painful, quiet way. He told us other stories too, one about being used as a human shield by two soldiers who invaded his dorm and kept a gun in his back as they walked him over to another dorm. This is his life.

We are walking down the hill into Jenin Refugee Camp. About 14,000 people live in the camp. In 2002 the camp was under siege by the IDF for weeks. The first part involved shelling and shooting out the roof water tanks so people ran out of water fast as they hid in as many layers of concrete as they could find in their homes. The second part involved IDF invasion with troops and bulldozers and then hand-to-hand killing, demolition of 400 homes, and serious damage to another 200. What happened in Jenin is considered a massacre by the international community but not by the governments of Israel and the U.S. On the hill walking down into the camp, we pass a man in his 50’s who chats with us briefly. Later, our host tells us this man has six children. Three are in Israeli prisons. Two were killed by the IDF in the 2002 invasion. His sixth child is wanted by the IDF and is now in hiding. This is his life.

Later that day I meet a university student whose family used to live in one of the 400 houses in the camp demolished by bulldozers in the invasion. Unlike many, she was not killed in her house during this mass demolition by giant bulldozers without adequate warning to residents. Walking around the camp, the buildings that are still there are just covered in bullet marks and other damage from the invasion. A local tells our host (who grew up there) that IDF were just there a few weeks previously dressed in civilian clothes. Then they opened fire, killed three, wounded 11, and fled. Our host tells us this is why people are avoiding our group---they don’t know if we mean them harm and just look harmless.

Our host tells us that his niece, who is 3 and lives in the camp, runs into a corner and starts shaking whenever she hears a helicopter overhead.

4) “Security”
I see a beautiful antique urn in a shop window in the Old City of Jerusalem and walk into the shop to ask about it. The shopkeeper Ziad and I hit it off and he starts hanging out with us. Ziad works with a foundation that brings Western doctors to the West Bank to perform specialized surgeries on children. A 3-year-old girl in Gaza needed a back operation that the doctors in Gaza weren’t trained to do. The Swiss doctor was willing to perform the surgery in Israel or Egypt. Ziad arranged things and tried to get permits for the child and one family member to travel into Israel. Permit denied. And then into Egypt. Permit Denied. The reason: “Security.”

Ziad also told me about a young boy who had the first in a series of eye operations. When the surgeon called to schedule the next operation, Ziad tried to locate the boy and his family and learned they’d all been killed in an IDF invasion of their refugee camp home.

You encounter the word “security” a lot here. Just about everything done by the IDF is done for reasons of “security.” This includes land confiscations, curfews, closures of towns and villages, group arrests, denial of entry into West Bank towns, denial of entry for Palestinians into Israel, the uprooting of olive trees, all the movement restrictions, the permit system, restrictions on visits to prisoners. The list goes on and on

5) “Family Values”
I meet Rebecca, an Israeli activist married to a Palestinian and living in the West Bank. They have two toddlers. To visit their grandmother, Rebecca’s children need a hard-to-get permit to enter Israel. So Grandma comes to them. She has to get IDF permission to do this as Israelis are not allowed in the West Bank but it’s easier for her than for the grandkids. Rebecca herself cannot travel around the West Bank because she is an Israeli and isn’t supposed to be there. So, to visit paternal family, her husband and the children take a servis van through the checkpoints. But Rebecca has to walk through remote countryside and over mountains to avoid checkpoints and soldiers. And then she has to do the same thing to get back home. This involves hours and hours of walking.

Ayesha, my translator, is one of the 50,000 Palestinians who don’t have a Palestinian ID card at all. You need one of these to go anywhere at all because of the checkpoints and the random soldier checks. People don’t ever leave home without theirs. Officially, Ayesha doesn’t exist. She can’t travel at all outside of Bethlehem without doing it by walking through remote countryside or trying to convince soldiers to let her through without the ID she claims she forgot at home (a very dangerous game that risks arrest). Her six siblings are all in the same situation as she is.

6) “Why is it good to study History?”
I’m waiting for the secretary to come in and unlock the office at the university where I’m doing research. I’m sitting on a bench outside in the cool morning air. I strike up a conversation with a young blonde next to me. She’s styling in a skirt, long hair, and high heels. She looks like she could be from anywhere in the world. Her name is Melissa. She’s 18 and here to take a university entrance exam. We chat about getting together in Jerusalem that weekend. I ask her where she lives there. She says unfortunately she lives right behind the Wailing Wall (one of Judaism’s holiest sites) in East Jerusalem. I ask what’s unfortunate about that. She says that on Friday evenings, she and her family, especially her mother who wears hijab, can’t go out onto their street because religious Jewish men going to the Wailing Wall attack them on their way to prayer because they are Palestinian.

Later that week, I hear I’d just missed a demonstration of rightwing religious fundamentalists chanting slogans like, “Kill the Arabs” and “Arabs to the Gas Chambers.” They walked through the Old City protected by a contingent of IDF.

The thing about all the above stories is that they are so typical. You hear things like this over and over. Everyone has a million stories like these. These stories are not exceptional. They are the norm. These kinds of experiences are parts of everyday life for the people I meet on the street, people I meet in shops, people I interview, just about everyone.

I’m really starting to get that above and beyond everything else, this is a situation of human rights abuses by an occupying army.

7) “The Endgame”
At the airport in Tel Aviv, I’m in a shop buying a paper and snack. At the counter, a map of Israel is for sale. I open it and see that the borders of Israel include all of the West Bank and Gaza. There is no West Bank on the map at all. Much of what is the West Bank is labeled “Judea” and “Samaria.” There are tiny little zones within Judea and Samaria that have stripes on them. You can hardly see these zones. I look at the legend. It tells me these miniscule striped areas are “Autonomous Areas.” I think of how the Chinese call Tibet an “Autonomous Region.” And I think of Native American reservations in the west of the U.S.

Thanks for reading and my best to you all,
Ruppat Rani

Ruppat Rani is the pseudonym of a U.S.-based psychologist currently in the West Bank. She is a member of an education and solidarity mission. The goal of the mission is to return to the U.S. to raise public awareness about life under military occupation so that Americans will lobby their government to end its suport of Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Please distribute this email as widely as possible, but do not reveal Ruppat Rani's true identity to others so that she can return to the West Bank in the future without difficulty from the Israeli authorities. It is through direct first-person reports such as this that the world can learn about what life is actually like in the Occupied Territories for the Palestinians.

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July 21, 2006

A friend of mine sent this report from Palestine where she is learning about conditions as part of a world watch on the situation there. Her report is precise, detailed, observant. Reading it raised my awareness about the depth and longevity of oppression and suffering in Palestine as a result of the Israeli military. What a terrible cost for the psychological development of both sides.

Her report:

Hello All,

First off, I am safe and away from the hotspots. I've meant to write but what I've seen has been so overwhelming and demoralizing it's been hard to begin. I wake up at night thinking about this place and am frightened about the future. This is far worse than I imagined. I thought I was prepared and informed--but to really see it is another thing. I've been here 11 days travelling, meeting people, and reading a lot but to keep you close to the ground, I will try to describe just my first days so you can have your own experience of wading into occupation. FYI, everything I say, I've heard multiple versions of from many sources---Israeli activisits, Palestinians, and foreigners. Every single Palestinian I've met is filled with terrible stories covering similar themes that speak to a pattern of control and repression by a powerful military machine that controls just about everything. Soldiers are everywhere. I've had several interactions with soldiers myself. They are in charge, many of them 18 or 19 and all with large guns. I've been at a loss to come up with words to capture things but I'll try to give you just a little bit (yes, the tip of the iceberg).

On arrival at Tel Aviv airport, I was held for 2 hours of mostly sitting but also answering questions and being treated semi-aggressively at moments. I've heard terrible entry stories from Palestinian Americans I've met (who have U.S. Passports) of being held 8 to 14 hours (sometimes without water or food) and interrogated aggressively. One college student told me he was held alone in a room that got hotter and hotter so he stripped to his boxers. Then the air conditioning went on and he froze. After 10 hours, he was interrogated and taunted for several more hours.

On Day Two, I wandered around the Old City of Jerusalem, which is in East Jerusalem. Scine 1967, East Jerusalem has been under occupation by the Israeli Defense Forces (hereafter IDF). I walked through the walled Old City and saw the holiest sites of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I also saw IDF soldiers with guns everywhere and many surveillance cameras on the Old City's walls.

The next day our delegation left East Jerusalem to enter the West Bank. The West Bank makes up the majority of the Palestinian Occupied Territories and has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, is 10 kilometers south of Jerusalem and was our first stop in the West Bank. It is a majority Christian city.

The checkpoint to enter Bethlehem is 1.5 kilometers into the boundaries of Bethlehem. This was my first viewing of the 26-foot high concrete separation wall, which extends from both sides of the checkpoint. This is called "the wall" but it is really a series of walls and walls within walls that snake through the West Bank, sometimes in convoluted configurations enclosing whole Palestinian villages or slicing through the center of villages or even entirely enclosing individual Palestinian homes (I've now seen two of these). Anyway, the wall around Bethlehem is placed so that Bethlehem�^�^�s open land and olive groves (owned by citizens of the town) are on the Israeli side of the wall/checkpoint (which is actually still Bethlehem really but is effectively being annexed into Israel by this wall). 's residential and commercial areas are on the other side of the wall. Given this set up, the citizens of Bethlehem can no longer access their land because West Bank residents can only enter Israel with permits that are hard to obtain and don't allow multiple entry and exit.

The Bethlehem checkpoint is a large cattle processing plant-like place which you enter without seeing what you are going into. It is a militarized zone with surveillance towers, barbed wire, and metal fences within fences not visible from outside it. In the checkpoint you walk through a turnstile-like gate and show your identification to IDF soldiers in enclosed glass booths. As an international, I pass through most checkpoints quickly. As you exit, you see a sign saying the �^�^�Israeli Ministry of Tourism welcomes you to Bethlehem.�^�^� This is strange because Bethlehem is not a part of Israel but is a part of the Occupied Territories and thus the Israeli Ministry of Tourism does not have domain to bid you welcome. When you leave the checkpoint on the other side headed towards Jerusalem, there is a sign which says �^�^�Welcome to Jerusalem.�^�^� Again, this is strange because the checkpoint is in Bethlehem. Jerusalem, including occupied East Jerusalem, is actually still 8 or 9 kilometers away. This is my first experience of the manipulation of language, boundary, and framing to assert ownership.

In the last 11 days, I've seen the wall from a height in various towns and villages. There is a visually recognizable pattern to its placement. Palestinians towns are built with clustered population centers with agricultural land surrounding the centers. This makes much of the countryside open land. In looking at the wall from a height, you see that Palestinian population centers are enclosed by the wall and the open land and olive groves belonging to these communities are on the Israeli side of the wall (still really the West Bank but effectively being taken). I've been told by Israelis and Palestinians that there is an unspoken Israeli state policy of taking maximal land and minimal Palestininans and the wall is designed accordingly. This shows when you just look at the walls around the West Bank and also when you compare where these walls are placed in relation to the 1967 borders.

Palestinians from the West Bank have different license plates than Israelis and East Jerusalem residents so IDF easily identify who is who. And mostly Israelis can no longer easily enter the West Bank areas where there are Palestinians. From UN literature, I've learned there are about 650 obstacles to movement in the West Bank created and controlled by IDF. Many of these obstacles shift location from day to day. These obstacles include roadblocks (with 1-meter square concrete blocks in the middle of the road), trenches dug so cars can't pass, checkpoints, large terminals like in Bethlehem, and others. Some are manned by soldiers. Some are not. These 650 obstacles are in an area about 1/5 the size of New Jersey. Our delegation leaders who've been coming here several years say Palestinians are now moving around little because of the obstacles to movement (which are also strangling the economy). Journeys that used to take 30 minutes can now take 2 to 6 hours because of circuitousness and checkpoints.

Many Palestinian towns are under curfew from the evening through the night so if a medical emergency occurs then, you cannot get to the hospital. I've been told stories of women giving birth at checkpoints on the street as they try to get through to a hospital. I've also heard of people dying in ambulances at checkpoints as people try to convince soldiers to allow the ambulance through. A student I met up north told me of seeing a man die of a heart attack at a checkpoint. She also told me about a friend who was in a car with friends when soldiers stopped the car, told them to roll up the windows, and as the windows were close to rolled up, threw a tear gas cannister into the car. A man in a wheelchair who is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by a soldier 3 years ago told me he was recently made to sit in the sun at a checkpoint without food or water for 5 hours.

Okay, back to Bethlehem, we went to Deheisheh Refugee camp and talked with Nidal and others, all born here. Deheisheh is one of 59 refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. Deheisheh has 11,000 people (6,000 of whom are children). In 1948, Nidal's mother and sibs fled their home in Zakaria (a village now in Israel) for the hills because Zionist gangs were bombing Palestinian villages. She thought she return soon after things quieted (as had happened before) and left everything in her house. She never saw Zakaria again and ended up in Deheisheh. At first people lived in tents. Then the UN built 9' by 9' rooms for each family (for about 6 people/room). There were 25 rooms/building, 2 outside toilets (for 150 people), no electricity, and little water. Later, more cement block structures were built. Today Deheisheh is a tightly packed community extending up a hill. I expected a "Refugee Camp" to look more temporary----this looks permanent. After spending 1948 to 1967 under Jordanian rule, in 1967 Deheisheh (and the rest of the West Bank) came under Israeli military occupation. In 1967 about 1/3 of Deheisheh fled and went abroad, having become refugees now a second time.

Nidal says that with the Israeli occupation curfews began and continue today. In curfews, people are forbidden to leave their homes and sometimes forbidden to open windows. You cannot leave your home to go to the toilet outside. People sit in their cramped homes for days to weeks, sometimes in the dark. There are snipers up high and troops on the ground. If soldiers see anyone outside buildings they shoot to kill. Nidal knows many killed during curfews, including a 60-year-old man killed bringing food to his family (via 30 bullets from a tank) and a 12-year-old boy. Nidal's cousin was killed as he jumped a fence from his house to his sister's next door. Curfews last days to weeks. The longest curfew was 49 days. For many years (based on a study Deheisheh did), they have been under curfew for about 4 months/year. Curfew is lifted 2 hours every several days. However, curfew in Bethlehem (the place to buy food and supplies) is lifted during different hours than Deheisheh's. So to get food you must leave your home when Bethlehem's curfew is lifted but Deheisheh's is not (so you could well get shot).

Nidal also told us that the local Arabic paper is censored by the military (to varying degrees from year to year). Terms like "occupation," "Palestine," "Palestinians," or mention of the curfew system have been forbidden. (As an aside, an international I met told me that the Palestinian Counseling Center in East Jerusalem has been told recently by the Israeli authorities that they will lose their permit to operate unless they change their name to the "Arab Counseling Center" and so they are changing their name). The Deheisheh library must submit the list of books they want to order and the military has to approve the list (i.e., the military forbids some books, including a book by Franz Fanon, an Algerian psychiatrist who wrote about colonialism and oppression).

Today, IDF soldiers come into Deheisheh regularly at night in jeeps with weapons, search homes, and sometimes take young men. An American psychologist visiting here told me that 90% of Deheisheh children have nightmares. Most understand death and prison by age 7. I met a young man who was beaten by soldiers at age 10. He has never been to Jerusalem (6 miles away) and cannot go without a permit (which is very hard to get). Because they cannot enter Israel, many in Deheisheh (and the West Bank in general) have never seen the villages their parents and grandparents fled in 1948 (often no more than 10 or 20 miles away). Walking around I was reminded of Native American reservations: it's poor, crowded, lacking in basic amenities, with narrow alleys, rubble and garbage in the open, no greenery, and nowhere for children to play. The young man who gave us a tour said there is one UN-provided doctor for 11,000 people and she sees 280 patients/day.

I stayed two nights at Deheisheh with a family. Water is scarce. There is running water 1 day/week in the winter and 1 day every 3 weeks in the summer. I didn't take a shower. At night, I heard shots and strange loud booms.

On a tour of Deheisheh, we walked by a rubble-filled site and were told that a 5-story building had been there. The entire building was demolished by the IDF because a relative of one of the 7 families that lived in the building was convicted of a crime and serving time in an Israeli prison. This type of house demolition and collective punishment is common in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions estimates that more than 12,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed this way, typically to punish the family of a prisoner.

A Deheisheh schoolteacher told one of our delegation he hasn't been paid for 5 months because of the international boycott. His four children cry everyday because they are starving.

Many in the West Bank have told me that military orders control all aspects of life for Palestinians, including getting a driver's license, getting married, building or adding on to a house, permission to leave the West Bank, permission to go from one West Bank town to another, being able to have your mother/father/whoever in your car if you each hold different residency permits, etc. My own reading indicates an arcane, bureaucratic, and nearly impossible catch-22 system of permits to do almost anything here if you are Palestinian. For example, Palestinians in East Jerusalem must pay US$30,000 to apply for a home renovation permit and are almost always denied (leading to a lot of "illegal" construction, which is then demolished by Israel and then the people whose home was demolished have to pay the state for the costs of the demolition).

Nidal (at Deheisheh) and others said their message for Americans and for those outside is that they appreciate the humanitarian aid foreigners provide but more than anything else, they want to be treated as human beings. They want basic human rights and justice for their people. Nidal believes that a 2-state solution is no longer viable (more and more Palestinians are saying this now) because of the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank (450,000), the walls, and the ways the West Bank is now discontiguous (and therefore not governable or viable as one entity because the IDF controls all borders and all movement).

Back to my personal responses for a moment, beyond the humanitarian crisis here (which is huge), I have been shocked by the issues of control and power over Palestinians. This has been really staggering to take in. The IDF control so many aspects of daily life, from movement to physical safety to language and even thought. And life here is truly dangerous for
Palestinians who live (I am really not exaggerating) each day at great risk. Though I don't live here and I know I can leave anytime, I have felt tense, fearful, and have a sense of confinement and helplessness that is hard to describe.

There is much more to say. I'll save that for future emails. I'll try to keep those shorter (figuring out what to leave out is really hard).

Thanks for reading and my best to all of you,
Ruppat Rani

Ruppat Rani is the pseudonym of a U.S.-based psychologist currently in the West Bank. She is a member of an education and solidarity mission. The goal of the mission is to return to the U.S. to raise public awareness about life under military occupation so that Americans will lobby their government to end its suport of Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Please distribute this email as widely as possible, but do not reveal Ruppat Rani's true identity to others so that she can return to the West Bank in the future without difficulty from the Israeli authorities. It is through direct first-person reports such as this that the world can learn about what life is actually like in the Occupied Territories for the Palestinians.

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July 07, 2006

By Ashley Asmus

In Epistemology of the Closet, queer theorist Eve Sedgwick asserts that the phenomenon of the closet is not limited to sexuality. In something like an aside, she mentions a lecture she gave to the MLA postulating that one could come out of the closet as a fat woman (72). Possibly hoping to encourage discourse that applies queer theory to more than just sexual identity, Sedgwick leaves her remark open-ended and largely unexplained. I needed no explanation when I read her comment. In fact, the fat closet, and more generally, the closet of negative self-image, is a familiar phenomenon to many young women.

The fat closet is four walls of denial. The closeted fat person refuses to accept fatness, instead convincing herself that being thin is the only way she can claim her life or her "real" self. Thus, she lives in a constant state of inauthentic being. Self-loathing corrodes her relationship with her food, body, and friends: she is perpetually on a diet, stubbornly trying to fit into clothes that are too small for her, and undoubtedly sequestering herself from social and physical activities that she thinks her body "can't" do. She will do all this quietly, avoiding the topic of her body except to disown, degrade, or chastise it even though she is actually obsessed. She lives in of stifling silence.

This is all because she believes her body does not reflect what she thinks is the "real"--a synonym for "ideal," "perfect," or "beautiful"--her.

This devastating pattern of self-hate often hangs the fat person's life in a metaphorical glass closet. In queer culture, a queer person lives in a glass closet when she does not know that she is queer, does not wish to admit to herself or her family that she is queer—even while everyone around her knows of her sexual preference. She may choose to stay in the closet because she is conscious that silence from her friends does not always imply acceptance. At "Coming Out Stories," an annual "Coming Out Week" event at Middlebury College, one man told us that although his mother phrased an interrogation of his sexuality as a rhetorical question, asking, "but you are 'that way,' aren't you?", his mother disowned him when he said yes. Fat people may face the same kind of separation should they "come out" to their friends, proclaiming, "this is my body, I own it and will not work to change it into something it is not meant to be." The closeted fat person's friends may actually enjoy the self-destructive patterns they see in their friend: it may reinforce their sense of normalcy, or it may make them feel less lonely if they are in similar patterns of low self-esteem and are not ready to change.

Fat liberationist Marilyn Wann, author of the fat-postitive zine, website, and book Fat!So? is dedicated to bringing fat people out of the closet of destructive dieting, dressing room drama, and medical myths about fatness into the supportive fat community of her dreams. Wann asserts that those who work all their lives to lose weight should accept their body at any size it is or may become. To her, lying about one's weight to doctors and BMV workers, avoiding "the f-word" (a reference to the movement for reclaiming the label "queer"), and dieting in the hopes that the thin woman inside you will one day emerge are practices that not only hurt your self-esteem, but also the fat community and "fat pride" (121). Drawing even more parallels between the GLBTQ community's work against oppression and her own work, Wann writes:
[...]the closet is no safer or happier a place for fat people than it was for gays and lesbians. The fat closet, like any closet, holds the dangers of unlived life, self-hatred, teen suicide, and brutalizing, futile 'cures.' Despite these very real dangers, fat people are staying in the closet because they cling to the false hope of one day passing for thin and because there is not yet a fat culture to welcome them home, to welcome us home. (122)
Wann's book is all the stronger because she borrows language and strategies from the GLBTQ activist community. It adds to the ongoing discourse between oppressed groups, with the ultimate goal of creating a just society for all.

Unfortunately, the mainstream culture to which the fat person comes out is unlikely to be supportive and affirming. Chances are, the only support group available to her will be a weight loss circle; the only literature about her will be diet books and medical studies; the only voices of fat people in her life will be part of the media culture that portrays fat people as slobs or worse. She might not come across Marilyn Wann's work. She might not know that her doctor, television, and family tell her lies. Some well-meaning feminists might tell her that her fat is a shield against the memories of some kind of messed-up childhood or patriarchal oppression. She is messed up, they'll tell her, and can lose the weight following their plan.

She might not know that she has a voice to shout against all of the crap, that she can say, "I am beautiful, fat and loud." I want to shatter her four walls of glass oppression before her spirit suffocates. The glass shards will fly like arrows--no, like bullets--to the heart of fat oppression.

There's More... "Fat Liberation Takes a Cue from GLBTQ"
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April 14, 2006

On Hooking-up

by Eugene Lee

 

“Yo, you seen [some girl] last night?  She was in there looking bad.”

 

I only just got to the table, but I know where this conversation is headed.

 

“Oh, yeah, I seen her.  She was at KDR, right?  I was about to run up to her real quick and be like ‘Hey girl, why don’t come back to my room?’”

 

“She was in there with her boyfriend.”

 

“So what?  Forget him, man.  I’d’ve just been like, ‘Yo, who’s that guy with you?  Is he your little brother or something?’”

 

I laugh, too.  I would participate in the conversation, but I didn’t go out last night[1] and I usually don’t have a lot to say on the topic, so I just sit and eat my eggs and toast.

 

“Yo, I heard…”

 

You know, guys gossip just as much as girls do.  I tune them out for a while and I return just in time for this little gem:

 

“You know, sometimes, you just gotta take the—”

 

Okay.  I’m going to stop there[2].  But that’s the typical Saturday brunch with my friends.  We usually talk about who hooked up with whom (or wanted to).  And the pervasive attitude at the table is that hooking up is the norm and depending on who you hooked up with, it’s also something to be proud of (or, let’s face it, ashamed of).  The problem for me is that I’ve never hooked up with anyone on this campus.  It’s not that I consider myself to be above it all—because the idea of a messy, sloppy groping session with someone I met after having my standards lowered significantly by consuming copious amounts of alcohol sounds as appealing to me as it does to you—it’s just that I have none of what guys call “game.”  I mean, it’s not that I’m awkward around girls; it’s just that I can’t carry a compelling conversation with anyone, much less with girls, for more than three minutes.  So it sounds something like this:

 

Me:  “So, how’re you doing?”

Her:  “Good.”

Me:  “Cool.  Um, how’re your classes?”

Her:  “Okay.  And you?”

Me:  “Not bad… A lot of work, though.”

Her:  “Yeah…”

Me:  “Yeah, uh, see you later.”

 

But she doesn’t hear that last part because she was distracted by something more interesting, like the little bubbles in her drink.  I guess that’s the risk you run when you get two eggs over-easy and two pieces of toast every week at the omelet line.  So, I don’t go out to parties.  I’ve gone to a couple, and I just didn’t have a good time.  I don’t drink and (the thing that makes me feel real real old) the music’s too loud.  And honestly, not having hooked-up makes me feel like I’ve missed out on a big chunk of college, and more importantly, makes me feel like a loser (hey man, all the cool kids are doing it).  But what bothers me most is that I feel left out of the mainstream culture at this college, yet the culture is one that encourages meaningless physical encounters with no real emotional significance and it is so pervasive that it drove one girl in one of my classes to bemoan, “There’s no dating here.”[3]

 

When the professor asked her to explain, she responded, “Well, nobody asks anybody out on dates anymore, you know, the guys don’t ask the girls to movies or dinner.”  Our professor was confused.  How, then, do relationships begin?  From what she explained, and what I heard[4] in conversations with my friends (a topic they are usually happy to share), this is how relationships begin: a group of friends spend a lot of time together, going to dinner, sometimes watching movies, and going to parties together.  Eventually, at one party or another, a guy and a girl, who do know each other fairly well, get sufficiently drunk enough to say, “What the hell,” and end up hooking up.  Out of these hook-ups, if they liked the experience and like each other enough to be exclusive, then that is how two friends become a couple.  That sounds innocent enough, and some might even argue, “Well, hey, you go to dinner and watch movies, sounds like dating to me.”  But what’s missing in this process isn’t the time spent together, but more the one-on-one interactions during which you connect with another person emotionally first.  That is, the first thing that comes in a relationship based on hooking up is the physical intimacy rather than emotional intimacy.

 

Obviously, this isn’t the only way two people become a couple, and I’m sure there are more traditional couples on campus in which two people spend a lot of time together (though not necessarily through dating) and come to establish emotional intimacy before going any further, because if that were not the case, and all relationships began by hooking-up, then I think 1. I’d see a lot less couples on campus and 2. People would be a lot less happier in their relationships.  Because here’s the thing: there are dangers to hooking-up, especially with someone you just met because it’s hard to know, in the heat of passion and desire (you know, when you’re horny), just where the boundaries should be or would be and it becomes very easy, especially when you’re drunk enough to engage in this activity in the first place, to make a very serious mistake.  The mistakes can range from harmless (you hooked up with someone you normally wouldn’t even give the time of day to), to very serious (you went too far).

 

Also, since there is no process when you hook up first, you might become locked into a relationship with someone you might regret being with.  But, since it’s easier to be with someone on this campus than to be alone, you find yourself just treading water with someone you don’t want to be with while everybody around you wonders how that guy ended up with that girl.

 

I know, I know, it’s not all like that.  “It’s not always that serious.  We’re just having a good time.”  And I believe you.  I believe it’s a hell of a fun experience to hook up with someone and that’s mostly why I regret not doing it, but here’s the thing: guys talk about this stuff all the time.  In fact, when you get three or four guys in a room together, the two things they are most likely to talk about are sports and hooking-up.  And when we talk about it, we’re never serious, and we know hooking-up is not that big a deal.  Because of that, guys tend to say some outlandish shit.  Really, I’ve heard some real ignorant stuff come out my friends’ mouths—things I won’t repeat here for your sake and theirs because it is really inappropriate.  Suffice to say that even in joking, it’s far from romantic and unbelievably disrespectful to women[5].  And while all of this is said in joking, and just between the guys, and would never be said to any women (my friends, happily, have at least that much sense), I wonder if it’s not the mentality that guys have, subconsciously even, that sex is a thing to be won, and time spent with a girl without having sex is time wasted.

 

The implications of this mentality are clear and unfortunate.  Unfortunate that after all this talk about feminism and the progress we thought we made as a society (and now we’re talking beyond the college community), men still think of women as objects—just a means to an end.  Unfortunate that I, too, am a guy, and it’s embarrassing for me to admit this about my friends, and even more embarrassing for me to admit that the only reason I haven’t hooked up is because I’ve not had the opportunity, and should the chance reveal itself, I would take it in heart beat.  Unfortunate that some women are willing to be a part of this, too, knowing that this is what is happening.

 

But again, it’s not all bad.  Maybe, and I would hope, most guys don’t think this way about women and hooking-up, and most girls have the dignity to not hook up with any guy who would think like this.  Hooking up is just a way to chase away the loneliness, because Middlebury is a cold and lonely place sometimes, and it’s nice to just curl up with someone and share an intimate moment, if only for one drunken night.

 

And I think that’s indicative of the general funk we’re in here in the college community.  We work so hard, setting ourselves up for positions with Liemann Brothers, and in this tiny college, there’s really no escape, and the viciously cold winters don’t help, and we’re all trying to dance and drink away the grim truth that we busted our asses for four years so we can work 60 hour weeks at some investment firm when we graduate—if we’re lucky.  So, it’s easy to feel lonely and just bone-tired here.  But I’m not sure that hooking-up is the best way to alleviate general malaise.  If it is just meaningless whatever with just someone you know or feel comfortable with, then how does that help solve anything?  Won’t you just feel lonelier afterwards?  And what does it say about us that the best way we have to escape loneliness is to get drunk in a social house with a mass of people that exceeds fire safety limitations, with the music turned up too loud, ‘cuz God forbid you should actually try to have a conversation with someone, while everyone grabs the nearest person and, what—what is that you’re trying to do?  I mean, I don’t dance, but what y’all do ain’t dancing either.  Then what?  You go back to your room—or hers or his—with someone who you found attractive in the dim-lit corner of whatever social house you got drunk at.

 

I know I sound too critical, and no doubt, that has something to do with my own bitterness about not being a part of this, but there is some truth to what I’m saying.  I’ve grown up believing that physical intimacy is a result of emotional intimacy.  Not a reward.  Nor is emotional intimacy a consequence of physical intimacy.  But it’s backwards here.  And I feel like (and I know this isn’t everyone, and might not even be the majority of the campus) too many of us look for that immediate gratification without appreciating the remarkable experience of taking someone out to dinner or buying two tickets at the movie theater (instead of just popping in a DVD in your room with the lights down and crowding a bit to close on the bed), and really sharing an evening with someone, talking and finding out all the things about that other person that makes you want him or her so badly.  The obvious solution, of course, is that we should all date more[6], as the girl in my class once suggested.

There's More... "On Hooking Up"
Eugene at 11:24 PM :: Sex and Gender :: Comments (0) :: TrackBack (0)
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April 10, 2006

 

By Gorret Namuli

However different all creatures on earth claim to be, we are mostly similar and can be traced back to the same ancestry. Through the lens of divergent evolution, there are differences in our behaviors and appearances due to a variety of adaptations to the environment over time. This makes us forget that when we take away these differences, human beings actually share characteristics with other animals. Human beings, however, have a craving for personal identification in areas such as sexuality and race. These areas dominate a big portion of our existence and are worth talking about.

I believe talking about the differences can have both a positive and negative impact on our lives. It is a fact of life- we are different and we concentrate on these differences and identities as the sole foundations of our existence. It is good for us to talk about them because they represent us as individuals, they single us out from a whole cluster of human beings hence creating our own space. In the USA, the people of the white race feel good when they can be differentiated as the “normal” race, and the rich feel good to be pointed out from the rest; however, what of the Black and the poor? Their situation has been ignored. They remain in the shadows of the “loved” kind, that is, the rich and white are the prevalently favored forms of existence. The presence of the minorities should also be acknowledged. Talking about differences emphasizes their existence, brings them to everyone’s knowledge and makes finding solutions to them easier. If we know about a certain problem caused by not feeling like the rest, then we can solve it better. The differences would not be a source of dissatisfaction, if they were not discussed and categorized under the wings of “good or bad, desirable or unwanted” which brings about hegemony where the desirable group becomes the dominant group. This reminds me of Baldwin’s opening to his “Here Be Dragons”. He wonders if this portrayal of hegemony is an element of Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory. Is being heterosexual the better adaptation to sexuality? This kind of confusion arises from talking about our differences, yet it is necessary to talk about them in order to sort them out and bring freedom and innate human rights for all people to pursue happiness.

Acknowledging and talking about our differences can drive us into devising means to tolerate each other’s differences without judging if one is good and the other bad. When we are aware of these differences and the impacts they have on our ways of living and viewing things, we may decide to ignore their negative implications and live with the positive. For instance, accepting each other identities; whether black or white, Christian or Jewish, homosexual or heterosexual, can help us live in a less critical world hence get rid of hegemony. Knowing that we were all created equal in God’s image can make us appreciate our differences. Antonio Gramsci argues that hegemony is only possible if the “subordinated groups accept the ideas, values and leadership of the dominant groups”. So, one group does not have to accept the other’s value but appreciate the difference present and live with it.

Once we have discovered the diversity of our existence through talking about our differences, we can try to understand and for example not paint everyone white and hate those who reject the paint. Just like plants are diverse, I have learned to accept that human beings are not only diverse in intelligence but also in appearance, sexuality and beliefs. For example, however much the Black people try to be like whites, they will never be white by skin color and however much we force homosexuals to be heterosexual, they will never feel the same, so we should just try to accept the diversity of Mother Nature, hug each other and accept our differences. We should not have a homogenous society. We are all different.

Nevertheless, talking about differences can have negative connotations, for instance, the awareness created here in Middlebury College has made me more aware of the differences that exist among human beings. In the beginning, I was fighting so hard to keep those differences in that I was unknowingly hurt in the process because I mistook small common gestures towards me for being racist remarks, I was overreacting. This is one of the negative impacts of talking about differences. I tried to create a division between “them” and I which can insinuate the buried emotions we have towards the “others” that are different from us.  

It deepens the scorn on one side of the debate and deepens the shame on the other side. For instance, when Baldwin came out of the closet as a homosexual, he was ridiculed by his own people, on the other hand, Adrienne Rich in her article “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” does not disclose that she is lesbian because of the negative attitude and beliefs her community have about homosexuality.

Talking about our differences through mediums like deliberative dialogues can help us live with each other’s differences meaning that we do not have to change each other’s mind but talk about our differences and work with them to make us feel better. Forcing our identities on others should not be the way to talk and manifest our differences. This world is symbiotic in nature- our differences compliment each other.

There's More... "Identity and difference"
Catharine Wright at 01:47 PM :: Editorials :: Comments (0) :: TrackBack (0)
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February 18, 2006

There are all sorts of wonderful new writers flooding up against the back of the dis.course site. There's Christine Ettienne, a sophomore who was away for two semesters who has returned wearing a fashionable cap. She has been WRITING while away, keeping a livejournal blog (we're not fussy here--not everything has to be Movable Type), and it's a high-powered read. Check out her latest entry on her "black bag," an entry that uses her literal handbag as a way to illustrate her changing relationship to her sexuality and its intersection with the world, and that raises interesting questions about what has authority over us. Here blog is HERE.

Sheena James came to us recommended by Barbara Ganley based on Sheena's powerful poems about her identity as a young Mormon woman at Middlebury College. Sheena's experience as a poet shows through in her prose, which is beautifully sparse, showing off her crisp images and her precisely articulated experience of watching the world react, or not, to her religious, spiritual identity, in its private and public dimensions. There's a purity and disarming honesty to Sheena's work, and her choice to bring it into the dis.course community reveals a personal courage and commitment to bridging differences that is inspiring. Look at how her latest entry, which directly addresses our everyday Middlebury College interactions, is openly, vulnerably, making connections ACROSS identities:

"He called me out.

'...and I'm a senior, psych major.'

'Are you a Mormon?'

Right there, first day of discussion class. So now, my statements will be tempered with, 'Oh, so that's what a Mormon thinks.'

Which is especially cruel since today, we are discussing Genesis 1-4, a religious text. And secondly, because I am so shy, silent, hating discussion classes because the entire time I am on edge, trying to force myself to make some sort of coherent comment while my tongue blocks my air passage.
And maybe now I have a glimpse at what those two Black girls may have felt who were in my History of Modern Africa discussion class."

We have many more writers behind the scenes ready to make their debut. In the meantime, we have a few technological challenges to work out. Excuse, for example, the annoying symbols on the test run of the memoirs of the mythical Francois Clemmons, Middlebury's own Twilight Artist in Residence (below). We will introduce and post more of Francois' memoirs when we get this "bug" worked out.

There's More... "New Writers"
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February 10, 2006

Preface:

I now spend my quiet summer evenings in Vermont. It's nothing like New York City where I lived for 30 years. I know how to be quiet. My GrandDaddySaul, who showed me how to pick my teeth after dinner with a broom straw or some loose hay, also taught me how to be quiet .He and I used to walk down by Crab Creek to fish in the woods and not say a word. On sunny days, we'd listen to the birds and follow the honey bees, and try to keep up with the grasshoppers. But that was before the Sanders/Scarborough Clan left the south and people started talking without moving their mouths, and kept their hands at their sides, and mostly forgot to lower their eyes when they talked to older folks. GreatGrandMommaLauraMae, whom I once saw spank my mother, InezDelois, for not coming straight home after running errands, always said that if you moved your mouth too much and talked too loud, you were considered uneducated and not fit to sit at the table and eat with folks. Neighborpeoples would talk about you and ask, 'Who you kin to!? Where you come from? '. I always knew that GreatGrandMommaLauraMae, who cooked with her socks rolled down to her shoes, and seemed to always have on her flowered apron that covered her whole dress, was in charge. She said that talking like that wasn't good and I knew to min' her.
I now spend my quiet evenings singing bits of songs and remembering my youth. It has become important to write about what I remember. In the beginning I thought that it wasn't poetic or complicated living and writing here in Vermont because there are lots of farm people around. I was raised by farm peoples. Usually farm people are close to the land and easy to get to know. Now I know better.
Most people in Vermont leave you alone. They just seem to want to mind their own business and get on with their own lives. So now it's just lonely. I am lonely because I have no one to be intimate with in my life and because I am experiencing a life-crisis. A crisis of who I am and what I am. I always thought I knew. It was important to know. For 59 years I knew that I knew. To me this is not a 'mid-life crises'. I had that a long time ago. Perhaps this is a 'senior-life' crisis......a crisis which people my age are suppose to go through just like puberty and young adulthood. This is a time where one begins to speculate about retirement and one's legacy for future generations. In any case it is just as stressful and frustrating as anything I've ever experienced. At this age I'm simply supposed to know who I am.
To pass the time I've been singing...wondering if I'd be happier singing baritone role…a kind of second debut. I've looked at Mendelssohn's Elijah, Marcello in La Boheme, the Faure Requiem. It's seems meaningless to keep practicing and going over lyrics….and experimenting with my voice. I've been singing and practicing all my life. It used to bring me the deepest, most powerful satisfaction and comfort. Right now what I need most is comforting. I used to think of myself as a singer. I am a singer of accomplishment and substance. Now, at this time, I sing very well but with little or no spiritual or emotional satisfaction. I feel like a singer without a body, like there's no core, no passion to my existence. I'm flooded by thoughts to start over….. to begin again and again. What else can one do?????-----not one of those questions I'm really expecting an answer to......Only some reaction from me. Some knowing….some feeling….some gentle, definitive movement, like from 'a' to 'b'. That would be enough to satisfy me for now.

Lately, I've been practicing being a tourist and experiencing daytrips for sightseeing. I'd say that it's the only thing that I'm good at right now. I go to historical houses and scenic places and look at regional markers and take note of the quaint restorations. I read about Green Mountain Boys and conservative ex- presidents, and walk around and try to take it all in. What I remember most are not the things I see and rarely the places, but rather, the people I meet. I smile at older, silver-haired ladies, complaining of their tight shoes and tighter girdles, and rub the heads of little boys who seem fascinated by my shiny dark skin and winking eyes.
Lately I feel like I'm an extrovert condemned to communing with restored Victorian buildings and legendary Vermont sunsets amid quiet drives in the country. It's just not enough. So, I'm fashioning schemes to meet more people and have more meaningful encounters. I take my camera along now and ask strangers if I can take their photo. They almost never say 'no' and are sometimes eager to pose. They think I'm a professional photographer and sometimes ask me complicated questions about their cameras or different methods for developing film. Later as I look at the photos, I think about those people I meet. They're from all over the Americas and sometimes speak with foreign accents.
Seems like I've never met a stranger. The quality of the meeting is what I remember. My nature responds to the emotional memories I carry….the unexpected kindnesses, a word here and a word there…a gesture..…just one friendly look and my experience is complete. More often than not, strangers hold doors open for me, or offer me water on hot afternoons. I even had a man with sun-bleached hair and white bucks offer me a ride, and I had to insist that I had my own car. It felt fulfilling and warm….not how an old building or honored monument feels.
I'm encouraged. This is the first step towards a meaningful relationship. It's not cold and removed like some lost legacy someone is striving to regain….or trying to command me to remember. I allow myself to think deeply about these nameless, proud faces in the photos, and then my experience becomes meaningful and purposeful. I'm not limited by where people come from or if I'll ever see them again…as long as the experience is emotional to me, it is valid. Then, I feel like my purpose has been fulfilled and I can rest satisfied and not dwell on my loneliness. (Why I'm lonely.)


Chapter One: Early Childhood

I was born on a farm in Jefferson County, Alabama, in Birmingham, on April 23, 1945 to sharecropper, earthy people. My parents knew very little about crop management and farming and even less about raising children. Times were never easy and for years I blotted out most of the details of my youth. It seems important now to remember the details, the people, the circumstances, the mood and the times and to share them.

InezDelois Scarborough and WillieSon Clemmons who had gotten married August 25, 1942 seemed more like children playing house than parents planning the lives of their two infant sons. My brother WillieJr. was born February 23, 1944 and I was born a year later. In my eyes, he was my first protector and I remained close to him all the while I was growing up. Then he dropped out of school and went into the army at 15. WillieSon, my daddy, was tall and gangly and hadn't finished growing, while InezDelois was short and almost light-skinned. She had a pleasant enough face and you could see that she easily carried her pride in her coke bottle shape and generous bosom. At 18 and 15 neither one of them had spent much time in school and could barely write their own names.

Right from the beginning it was not a good match, but they were understandably under the influence of their youthful passions and went about oblivious to their growing problems. It was as if they were eager to let nature make up for what they didn't understand about each other or marriage. When all else failed they had each other and looked forward to their intimate time together. They didn't know that that wasn't enough to start a family or build a marriage on, but they would soon learn.

WillieSon courted InezDelois while he should have been working in the fields and setting an example for his 7 younger siblings. Big MommaRuth, Son's hand-ringing, doting mother, warned her husband over and over to 'Do something about that boy before it's too late!' But because of his wild, strapping agility and speed it was impossible for his daddy, FrançoisXavier to catch and punish him. So he let him be. Maybe as a way of paying some blood-tribute to his troubled daddy, my daddy, WillieSon, named me after GrandDaddyFrançoisXavier.

You can be sure that for the first 6 years of my life nobody ever called me by that name. I didn't even know it was my name until I went to school. It was easier to be Little ButterCup with my family and friends: I warmed to it natural like drinking well-water and bathing in the Delta sunlight. Little ButterCup was the voice that sang in me and was the sleepy little boy that sat on my GrandDaddySaul's lap.

In the beginning when somebody or my teachers would call me François, I would look around like I was confused. Then I'd turn back and answer. I was in the third grade with Miss Matern before I stopped turning around. She spoke with a gentle voice and wore lots of metal bracelets. Miss Matern liked that I liked the sound of her bracelets. She knew that every day I also watched for her different earrings. I liked the silver ones she wore the most. She told me that they were authentic Native American and were handmade with turquoise in them. During class she would call me François and ask me to sing. With Miss Matern it wasn't a problem. I knew that I could do that.

My mother, for most of her youth had been essentially abandoned by her mother, Minnie Green. She wouldn't say it that way, but it was true. She had been raised along with all the other brothers and sisters and cousins by her maternal grandmother LauraMae Sanders. The Sanders-Scarborough Clan had lived for several generations in Blackwater, Mississippi. This sprawling, blanched little town was just north of Meridian, Mississippi in the backwater region near the Okatibbee Reservoir and the Alabama border. If you weren't a cotton farmer or share-cropper, or smithy who worked mostly for white folks, there wasn't much else to do. Some folks got along raising chickens and guinea-fowls along with some light peanut, vegetable and berry farming. But nothing really prospered for them. Each year they did the same thing and fell further in debt.

There's More... "Francois Clemmons' Autobiography: Lawd, Just Gimme My Song!!!!!!"
Catharine Wright at 04:32 PM :: Spirituality :: Comments (0) :: TrackBack (0)
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January 04, 2006

Photo from Middlebury College website

The following piece-in-progress, a journal type entry written by Stephanie Morales,
Watson scholar, Middlebury College graduate, now documenting
women leaders in Argentina, is one of a series of pieces by her that capture the
political/social urgency of her work. Stephanie's terse, alive prose, her eye
for provocative details and her sensitivity towards her material, throw us into
the feeling of being on the streets in Argentina. This piece was written in late
October. She has just asked to have it posted, and is at work on a new piece.

A Month in Buenos Aires:

I contact the director of an international human rights film festival and he
connects me with a woman who works at a domestic violence center and knows every
single woman and activist involved with gender issues in Argentina. His daughter
is a documentary filmmaker and he was exiled during the military dictatorship
(1976-1983). My third day in Argentina I sit in his office with both the woman
and his daughter drinking coffee and set up interviews with many of the academics,
activists, and filmmakers that they collectively know and want me to meet. He,
the director of the film festival, becomes my unofficial mentor.

Two days later I am sitting in a car watching the sunrise with the woman at
the domestic violence center and three other women on our way to Mar Del Plata
to a national women's conference that brought together more than 30,000 women
from around the country. These women who had just met me and drove an hour out
of the way to pick me up, had already set up the hotel room for our stay and
were sharing their mate and cookies with me. Drinking mate, for those of you
who don't know, is one of those sacrosanct Argentinean customs along with soccer
and meat. It is Paraguayan tea drank from a container that is also called a
mate which is usually made of wood and sipped through a "bombilla"
which is like a metal straw. What differentiates the mate from regular tea drinking
is that it is a shared endeavor. One person makes the mate and then passes it
around in the group. Once the person is done drinking it is passed back to the
person holding the power of the thermal with warm (not boiling!) water and then
refills it for the next person to sip. Along our four-hour drive every two cars
we passed was engaged in this communal teatime. It was absolutely amazing. The
gas stations had water machines set up solely for refilling your thermal and
lines of people waiting while others dumped out the leaves which after about
3 or 4 rounds of sharing become tasteless and too soggy. There were signs in
the bathrooms that said, "Please do not throw out your mate in the toilets".
Any concerns of contracting illnesses by sharing the bombilla are nonsense when
it comes to drinking mate. I was sitting in one of the workshops during the
conference about Argentinean youth and someone behind me taps my shoulder and
passes the mate to me to drink. I had never seen her in my life but I had to
control my reaction, because my surprise at this gesture was completely out
of place- she was doing what came natural to her, you fill the mate and pass
it around. No questions asked. My grandmother (whose mother was Argentinean)
had a mate and I remember having to fill it for her and refusing her attempts
to share it with me because I used to think it was too bitter. But of
course there are Argentineans that do not like mate, do not listen to the tango,
and are not interested in soccer. Although I have not met anyone that lacks
all three of these.

Sitting in a room filled with womenall sorts of women. The workshop
is about indigenous women's rights.The acoustics are terriblea
young woman in the middle of the circle strains her voice but it does not seem
to go above a whisper. She is reading a declaration of rights from her Mapuche
community. Women begin to get agitated, they genuinely want to hear what she
is saying but what manifests is a series of angry and forceful "Shhhhhh!!!"
Over thirty women shushing each other. Chaos is about to break out.Then
a flute begins to play, a simple but loud and confident melody fills the room.
We all turn to see where this sound is coming from. A woman,puts the flute down
and says "Sisters, please. We have all fought to be here and be heard.
But let us remember to respect each other as well.Pachamama (Mother Goddess)
is with us, let us be calmed by this music and each one of us be quiet to hear
our fellow companera". The room falls silent. Suddenly the young girl is
yelling.

A night march to conclude the conference begins to form.it is a tradition
and a moment when all the different groups can come together and yell until
their throats are raw for the main struggles that they are involved in. This
year the placards and chants are split, almost evenly, between "Legalize
Abortion" and "Fuck off Bush"he is coming next week and,
well, people are not happy about it. I get an unofficial press pass to film
along with the other media and professional folk.I run to the front of
the marchin front of 30,000 womenthey begin to walk. Screamingmy
favorite: "Get your rosaries out of our ovaries!!!" They are a massive
force.I climb on trees, benches, light posts, under flags, legs, trying
to get the best shots, the best screams. Four hours later my arms are sore from
shooting. That night I sleep like a baby.

Back in Buenos Aires.

Walking on Avenida Corrientes...a main street, and "running into"
a huge protest march demanding higher salaries for health care workers
"Health care is a right. So is earning a living wage". Suddenly
traffic stops and a parade of nurses, doctors, psychologists walk to the sound
of drums and chants emanating from a truck with a megaphone attached to the
front window. No cops to direct the cars who are stuck waiting until the thousands
of people pass by them at snail's pace. No one seems to be in control yet nothing
terrible happens. They are becoming used to protests, strikes, and piqueteros
(usually unemployed workers demanding welfare, jobs, or higher paytheir
trademark strategy is to gather thousands of people to block the highway that
connects the city center of Buenos Aires to the province of Buenos Aires
the main artery of daily movement. Piqueteros were (at the beginning of the
economic crash in 2001) supported by people of all classes and there was a rare
kind of unity among people as Menem and the devaluation of the peso screwed
everyone

Sitting in a restaurant, dining alone. Shocked at how little I have to pay
for meat and wineglad I can treat myselfrecuperating from the
euro. I look out the window and see a bunch of guys waiting for the garbage
to be taken out. They begin to sift through itfinding the most valuable
items. Sometimes food sometimes cartons and bottles. They wait for horse drawn
carriages to come and pick them up to take them to recycling centers where they
will be paid around 10 cents for every pound of garbage they collect. My official
introduction to the "cartoneros" (literally: carton people)

Riding the traina little boy gets on. He is a "street kid".
Whatever the hell that means. He stands and reaches up to grab the handle as
the train pulls away...with his other hand he rubs his groin, shifting his testicles.
I am shocked at how well a child can imitate the gestures of a grown man. He
spits three phlegm balls onto a seat. No one really looks upalthough
some do and say nothing. Probably thinking how disrespectful that was
This child is ignored when he defaces "public property"but
he is also ignored when he reaches out his hand, wide open, to ask for money
or food. And I just watch.

Interviewing a famous tango dancer and teacher over a beer the other evening.
We discuss the current elections and the women that are running for office.
She tells me that she hates it when women in positions of leadership assume
male behavior and characteristics. I get excited because we are agreeing on
something I begin to tell her about how most of the women politicians
in the United States have to assume an aggressive, masculine behaviori.e.,
they cut their hair shortHilary anyone? She says I misunderstood her.
She thinks the worst part about women in politics is that they forget their
natural femininity. She wishes women would be gentler, seductive, elegant, tactfula
la tango dancing. I begin to feel so clumsy around hermy chewed fingernails....messy
hair.... She is graceful, her hair goes down past her waist, jet black and tied
up in a beautiful ponytailher lips are a deep redher eyes are
outlined with charcoal pencilthey way she holds her cigarette and cuts
her pizza is my secret feminine aspiration. I always feel like a wooly mammoth
around dancers. Hehe.

I visit a piquetero organization called MTD La Matanza in a neighborhood that
is outside of the capital about an hour away. Telling folks that I am going
there results in raised eyebrows and concerned questions. As soon as we pass
the highway, the famous Avenida General Paz, that divides the capital with the
province the "scenery" DRAMATICALLY changes. No more cafes, ritzy
restaurants, internet booths, malls, movie theaters, or impeccable looking people.
Marginalization personified. I arrive just in time for a community meetingI
am greeted by mothers with their many children, on their laps, suckling their
breasts, under chairs, rolling around the dirt floor, peeking from behind shapely
legsthe mothers who are breastfeeding have their shirts raised and I
see skinstretch marks, generous amounts of flesh on flesh.I feel
too proper and have to light a cigarette because I have nothing to do with my
hands or my breasts. Is this what "real Argentinean women" look like?
Have I been tricked for the past month? They are not wearing makeup, name brand
clothestheir children are not necessarily well behaved. The meeting starts
and at least three toddlers are having crying fits. No one seems to mind and
they just talk louder to be heard. Words like discipline and order are not part
of the vocabulary of this space. The children are doing what is natural and
it will be respected. I think about all the pinches I used to get underneath
the table at family dinnersCookies are passed out. One falls to the floora
mother simply blows it off and hands it back to her baby who has been sucking
on it. I think about all the times I ordered a coffee back in capital: the tray,
coffee plate, three packets of sugar as well as three of artificial sweetener,
a plastic spoon, a perfectly folded napkin, a little chocolate for after the
coffee and a small cup of seltzer water. Sometimes it's fresh squeezed orange
juice. Or I can just blow the dirt off the cookie. I thank someone for having
found this place.it will keep me sane. The revolution will not be televised
but it will be created in this tiny, dusty spota pre-school is created
a few years back. Women not only bring their children here but also are an integral
part of the curriculum. One day a mother attends the weekly education meeting
and shares her problem: The other day she went to smack her toddler for having
misbehaved and he looks at her and says "Mommy, why don't we sit down and
talk about this instead". The mother has no idea what to do! They are taught
to treat each other with respect and to communicate their feelings openly. A
group of 4 and 5 year olds staged a play about the history of slavery and learned
the words oppression and injustice. These are the piqueteros that the majority
of upper and middle class Argentineans are fed up with. These are the children
who hold they key to a better future. They operate a bakery that sells the cheapest
bread in towna clothes factory that is starting to sell their designsevery
worker makes the same amount of money, regardless of experience or ability.
They tell me that the socialist models and solidarity they aspire to is HARD.
It is by no means the easy way out, the lazy way. It takes an incredible amount
of commitment and discussion, trial and error, timeeffort. But see, the
secret is that they have higher expectations for humanity, they think we can
actually live like this. They don't write about it or criticize it, they are
doing it. They have hope. I begin to recover mine.

I set up an interview with an Abuela de la Plaza de Mayo.this is the
older version of Madres de Plaza de Mayo who are famous for wearing their white
handkerchiefs and protesting for the past thirty years demanding restitution
for their disappeared children. An estimated 30,000 people disappeared during
the dictatorship. If you disappeared, you died. Abuelas look for their grandchildren,
the children of those who disappeared. They have found 81 folks who were adopted
into other families and are now reunited with their original families. They
set up a Theater of Identity where the question "Do you think you are in
the wrong family?", is asked. My menotor tells me to interview one of them,
Nelidaone of the orginal Abuelas, who also happens to be his mother-in-law.
I go to her homewe sit, set up the camera and she begins to tell me her
story. My mentor's wife (her daughter) and his sister were kidnapped one day.
He was already in exile for about two monthsthe children are left in
the house alone and the neighbors call Nelida because they hear the children
screaming and yelling hysterically. The neighbors say armed men came and took
them...said they were going to the police station and would be right back. The
two women are never seen again. The brother was the leader of the underground
opposition party. I ask the woman telling me the story how and why she got involved
with the formation of Abuelas. She tells me that after some investigation it
turns out that her daughter had missed her period for two months...she had just
written her daughter's husband a letter telling him the good news. They kidnapped
her and her unborn child. The woman continues to believe she can find her grandchild.
She has been looking for 28 years.

I've made contact with two high schools and am in the process of getting permission
to film and interview the students.one is the Colegio Nacional. This
is THE best and most prestigious school in Buenos Aires, possibly the entire
country. Past presidents have attendedthe school of the future leaders
of Argentina. The other school is in La Matanza, the neighborhood I mentioned
where the piqueteros' organization is. Im happy...Im working!

Hope you are all well amidst these global tragedies that seem so far away to
me some days and other days I feel like it doesnt matter what country Im in....the
pain is there,

Stephanie

There's More... "A month in Buenos Aires"
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December 07, 2005

Senior psychology major Eugene Lee' has written an insightful,
lengthy narrative on his ever-changing understanding of what it means to be Korean.
Eugene is one of a handful of students who hang around the Center
for Teaching, Learning and Research, reading books on our armchairs, setting
up appointments to talk about writing, perpetually seeking new writing assignments
and projects. He seems determined, in this way, to earn the title of "'writer."'
But he's not just writing--he's out there living the work, as is evident in the
piece below, a piece that describes a personal quest to understand the shifting
implications and indicators of cultural identity. Eugene is described by Barbara
Ganley as a "'bloggerless
blogger,"' who leaves his mark on various blogs. Last year he posted
a piece on dis.course, "'On
Rhapsody in Blue and Blogging in Blue,"' that uses his experience with
basketball as a metaphor to help us understand the community aspects of blogging.

Here's his new piece, On Being Korean and Korean:

One of my professors asked me last semester if she could use a passage from
a paper that I wrote for her educational psychology class. She wanted to show
it to her senior seminar. The passage, she told me, was a wonderful illustration
of motivation and attribution and the difference across cultures. I said, yes,
that'd be fine. It is, after all, why I wrote it, for people to read.

The passage she used illustrates that in Asian cultures (me being Korean, specifically),
there's more focus on hard work and effort when in comes to achievement,
where as in the US, people emphasize talent and ability. For example, a young
American student might score poorly on an exam and think, 'Well, I'm
no good at math.? An Asian student, cross-cultural research in educational psychology
shows, attributes the failure more to a lack of effort. They simply did not
work hard enough. The implication of this difference is up for discussion, but
that's not why I'm writing this.

It's more interesting to me that she chose me as an example. Thinking
about it now, even though I was born in Korea, I didn't really stay there
long enough to have fully embodied the culture. I left when I was nine, and
honestly, I don't remember much of my time in Korea. I can't really
speak intelligently about the classroom practices in Korea, especially in higher
grade levels, because I haven't been there. And although I can speak the
language fluently, I lack the understanding of what passes for colloquial speech
in Korea. My mom brings home videotapes of Korean television shows and we'll
watch them every now and then. It's one of the (regrettably) few times
I share with my mom as I grew up and we grew apart. We value that time we spend
together, but having grown up in this American culture, when we watch the shows,
there are a lot of times when she'll laugh at a joke I don't understand.

Compare that to my sister who is four and half years older than I am and moved
here when she was in middle school. And I think because she moved here when
she was in 7th grade, she had a tougher time adjusting to America than I did
(I got here when I was nine). I remember she always had more Korean friends
than I did (that is to say, she had some) and she listened (and still does)
to more Korean music than I did. Because she lived in Korean longer than I have,
she must have felt a stronger attachment and a stronger desire to maintain that
cultural connection. Now, my sister has a website in Korean. I visit the website,
but I can't interact with it simply because I don't know how. I
can't type Korean letters on my laptop, and even if I could, I wouldn't
be very coherent. These are the things that I miss out on, and while they might
seem trivial, they are suggestive of the larger contemporary Korean culture
that I'm not a part of (and is not a part of me).

But does that make me less Korean? I don't think so. Listening to Korean
pop music (K-Pop) or writing e-mails in Korean'that doesn't determine
the degree of my Korean-ness. I'm fortunate enough that my parents are
who they are (read: stubbornly traditional and old-fashioned, even by Korean
standards), and instilled within me the important cultural values. I speak Korean
fluently, and this is important because in any culture, language is reflective
of its societal values. For example, in Korea, there is actually a different
manner of speaking when you address someone older than you or someone you don't
know (the mechanics of which are too complex to try to explain in this space),
which reflects great deal of importance place on respect for elders. And even
beyond language, I've maintained other values, like working with your
group, and responsibility to your parents. The biggest difference in the parent-child
dynamic is that here, when you grow up, you move out of your home, and live
your own life, but in Korea, you're not an adult until you can support
your family and your parents, so it's not common for a man with a family
of his own to still live with his parents.

I must admit, however, growing up in suburban Long Island surrounded by White
middle-class Americans, it's easy to feel out of touch with my Korean
heritage. That's probably why I was so interested in learning Tae Kwon
Do. It was more than just learning martial arts, you know? Tae Kwon Do is fundamentally
Korean, and it helped me feel connected to the larger group and my homeland.
And because of that, I felt a sense of entitlement when I practice at the do-jang
(studio). Not only did I feel I had to be better than the other students (who
were White), I felt that I should be better then them. I mean, here I was, a
Korean male living in a very White community, learning TKD in a school full
of White Americans, of course I should be better'I should be the best.
But I wasn't. Not even second, third, or fourth best. After all, I was
just a white belt (I'm a green belt now, and no, I'm still not the
best). And that frustrated me. It made me angry and embarrassed, I think because
of the pressure I put on myself, because of how important it was for me learning
Tae Kwon Do.

I had it all wrong. The fact that I was born Korean did not genetically predispose
me to be better at Tae Kwon Do than anyone, certainly not better than the black
belts who'd been practicing for years. Master Shin, who was my instructor
at the time, and who is now my brother-in-law, told me that I had no right to
get angry because I wasn't supposed to be the best. I was just starting
out, and it would be downright disrespectful of me to think I would be better
than the black belts. The only way I could be better, if I still felt I had
to be, was to put in more time and effort.

It was in that moment that I learned the value of hard work, one of the core
values of Korean culture, the idea that the only way to improve yourself is
to have the discipline to put in the time and effort, and take the whole journey
step by step.

Looking back like this on all of my experiences and the different factors that
compose my cultural identity leaves me with the sense that my cultural identity
is unique, but also that it is unique precisely because of the arbitrary nature
of my cultural development. I don't mean that it was a random or haphazard
process, but while there are certain experiences that I could not avoid and
is universal to all Koreans living abroad, I have been able to choose my level
of involvement in the culture, that is, how much of the culture I want to take
in, and that is something which is not determined by my birth. Because, theoretically,
an American-born white person could move to Korea and live there longer than
I have and learn more about the culture, the language and history than I know,
and be considered more 'Korean? than I am, but still not be identified
Korean, because, well, he's White.

The point is, there isn't just one thing that qualitatively makes me
Korean (or 'Korean?). That part, I think, is up to us, to determine how
we are going to identify ourselves and how much of the culture and background
we are willing to embody. And given that it is a choice on our part, and given
that it is based (at least in part) on our experiences, our identity will always
evolve. I will always learn new things about my culture that'll make me
look at who I am in a different context. And if it's something I like,
then I'll take it in and make it my own. And this will be especially important
when I grow up and have a son (or a daughter) of my own, who will technically
be first generation (because he will have been born here, presumably, and I'm
technically FOB'Fresh Off the Boat), and who may or may not be fully Korean.
How much of my culture will I pass on to him, and will that change based on
whether he's fully Korean or half-Korean and half-something else? How
much of my'our'culture will he be willing to embrace?

There isn't a definite answer to that question, and there won't
be one even after my first child is born. But I think a good start is to have
a clear;not definite;sense of your cultural identity, perhaps through
a reflection like this one, so you know where you stand when it comes to your
culture. And I think I know enough of myself and my cultural identity that when
someone does come to me, as my psych professor did, and take me as representative
of all Koreans, then I will happily bear that burden. Because I know, that there
is something Korean about me and within me and that its good. I am
proud of that. And that pride is something I hope I can communicate to everyone,
including my future son.

By Eugene Lee

There's More... "On Being Korean and "Korean""
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October 17, 2005

Angelica Towne sent out the following notice:

Taking a Writing Course?

Already written fabulous pieces?
Get Published!

SUBMIT YOUR ARTWORK AND/OR WRITTEN PIECE
TO SKIN DEEP MAGAZINE.

Fiction, Non-fiction, poetry, prose, essay, op-ed article, photographs, drawings, reflections, past class writing assignments--anything that is self-expression on a page--is welcome.

It's as easy as three clicks to attach your writing and one more click to email it to:


skindeep@middlebury.edu

SUBMISSIONS SHOULD:

1. ADDRESS ISSUES OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY.

SKIN DEEP uses the theme diversity and identity in its broadest terms. There is diversity of race, sexual orientation, class, religion, interests, nationality, experiences!

2. BE ANY LENGTH OR STYLE

We've accepted as little as five powerful lines!

3. BE SENT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

The first issue comes out the first week of J-term!

Any questions or want to help out feel free to call me or write me a quick email.

Angelica Towne
atowne@middlebury.edu
X7425

Need more inspiration? Here are some stimulating questions:

Who are you? What matters to you that the community should be aware of?

Have you ever experienced (sub)culture shock in your own country?

Are the issues of identity and diversity overrated?

How has your experience abroad changed (or confirmed) your perspective of Middlebury? of yourself?

What is it like growing up multicultural?

How does music influence the way you think, feel, and move?

What is it like being LBGTQ in a heteronormative campus? culture?

Do you cringe upon hearing the word "Middkid"? Why or why not?

What does it mean to be patriotic? liberal? conservative?

There's More... "Skin Deep Magazine Requests Material"
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October 12, 2005

Dena Simmons sent some great information to dis.course that comes out of the National Equity Center, whose mission is as follows: "The National Equity Center (NEC) is a non-partisan organization established to promote diversity and democratic values by cultivating, training, and empowering a generation of citizens with the leadership, community organizing, academic, research, and advocacy skills necessary to eliminate existing local and national civil rights and social justice disparities."

This summer, the summer of 2006, they "will host two Summer Civil Rights Advocacy Training Institutes for college and high school students. The High School Summer Institute requires a 3-week commitment and will be held July 2006 in Washington, DC. The College Summer Institute, held in California, requires a 5-week commitment. Institute staff will live on-site with 25 students of color; developing students understanding of the civil rights movement and refining their ability to convey the lessons to others, including voter education/awareness. The institute curriculum will be developed by Teaching for Change."

If anyone is interested in signing up for the Institute, check out their website. Or, for those interested in positions, be aware that they are "seeking lead faculty, assistant faculty, site coordinators, youth development coordinators, and interns for 2006 Civil Rights and Social Justice Summer Training Institute." The "faculty, youth development and site coordinator application deadline is November 1, 2005." For the full listing of position openings and to find out more about the Institute, visit their website.

To apply for a position, email letter, resume and three references to NEC@teachingforchange.org Or mail to: NEC c/o Teaching for Change, P.O. Box 73038, Washington, DC 20056

I like the way that both of today's postings start with the word "national." I wonder what that means!

There's More... "National Equity Center Opportunities"
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Oh, boy...dis.course is a day late in celebrating National Coming Out Day! Oh, well, here's a little card to celebrate and enjoy, no matter what the day....

There's More... "National Coming Out Day"
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September 29, 2005

I was just sent a copy of this letter by the poet Sharon Olds, whom I have long admired and whose poems I have shared with students for many years, in response to an invitation from Laura Bush to talk about reading and writing at the White House. The letter is so eloquent and moving, so exquisitely precise and honest, that I wanted to post it immediately to share it with others who will understand her sentiments about the current administration, the war in Iraq, and the power of poetry. The letter was sent to me by a newly made and dear friend with whom I had tea today at the Hungry Mind cafe in Middlebury, where the rain burst through cracks in the door in the back of the room, and the creek rushed by carring armloads of branches in a storm. Here's the letter, and do share it with others:

No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame
Sharon Olds
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/olds

Laura Bush
First Lady
The White House

Dear Mrs. Bush,

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents--all of us who need the pleasure, and the inner and outer news, it! delivers.

And the concept of a community of readers and writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women's prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students--long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom, become our teachers.

When you have witnessed someone nonspeaking and almost nonmoving spell out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing. When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely nonspeaking and nonmoving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-expression, accuracy, honesty and wit--and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story and song.

So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country--with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain--did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism--the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, high handed actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of
the candles, and I could not stomach it.

Sincerely,

SHARON OLDS

There's More... "Sharon Olds' Letter to Laura Bush"
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September 19, 2005

Yesterday I was talking with Ariana Figueroa about the blog she started over the summer. She said that she had lots of ideas, was excited, but didn't know quite what to do next. There was a sense of--so much possibility, so many choices. We agreed to talk about her latest entry in particular. But before that, I wanted to ask, since I've worked with her in so many other genres before--essays, a digital story, a research project--how she felt about writing on a personal blog, and how it felt, in particular, to write on a blog that was part of dis.course. She said three things: 1) she liked the interactive aspects of blogging; 2) she liked the visual, layered aspects of blogging; and 3) that she liked being part of dis.course because it reminded her of a program that she participated in when she first came to Middlebury: the Program for Integrated Expression, PIE. In fact, that is how Ariana and I first met, in my last year as co-director of PIE. She then took Writing Across Differences, which led to her participation in dis.course.

Ariana's connection of the two communities seems completely natural to me. Both communities rise out of the same philosophy about learning, writing, community. There are a number of us in the writing program who encourage such communities, online, offline--the list is long. And what Ariana was saying was that, having had such an experience, she needed more of it. She needed to stay plugged in and keep working in community with others.

I was happy to be able to say to her that another site devoted to diversity and social justice had recently praised her latest post. Karen Carter, author of One Sister's Song, mother to three bi-racial children, in her blog Beyond Understanding, had written a flattering review of our site, including praise for Ariana's "detailed and moving" account of her bi-racial identity.

Reading Carter's informative blog, and wanting to blog about her in reply, renewed my enthusiasm to connect dis.course to a larger community--a community of people--bloggers, community citizens, professionals, activists, those new to the topic--who want to address the ongoing legacy and perpetration of inequity in the United States and abroad. Carter makes it clear that this is her purpose. And so does dis.course. But the work can feel isolated, and the voices unheard, if we don't call out to one another, as Carter did, and say, "I hear you." And Ariana is saying that she needs that--that without that, she got stuck in her writing, which is so good. So I hope that dis.course writers and readers will reach out to one another, and beyond; to say, "I hear you," and "why," and "listen to this."

And we need to read. I'm one of the worst when it comes to this. In the midst of moving, I was three days behind everyone else in understanding what had happened down in New Orleans. It wasn't until I started seeing emails that I hopped online to actually read the articles. And I wasn't among the first to respond--it took me some time to get to it. I can say that it's because I was in the middle of moving, but really, I think it comes from being too passive, at some level--as lack of response always does. Here in Vermont, with enough food and dry land and our homes intact (if we are among the lucky who have all these things), and all the wars happening somewhere else, we can get passive. Yet we don't have time to waste, abroad and at home. As a Sept. 4 New York Times article by Jason DeParle points out, "What a shocked world saw exposed in New Orleans last week wasn't just a broken levee. It was a cleavage of race and class, at once familiar and startlingly new, laid bare in a setting where they suddenly amounted to matters of life and death."

Stephanie Morales, a Middlebury graduate on a Watson scholarship who is currently in Spain and headed for Argentina, in response to the Katrina devastation, sent out an email with a list of excellent news sites. I want to share the list here, as it's an excellent one:

www.diversityinc.com
www.alternet.org
www.blackelectorate.com
www.npr.org
www.daveyd.com
www.slate.com
www.bet.com
www.allhiphop.com
www.democracynow.org
www.blackamericaweb.com

Stephanie also wrote about her experience of running with the bulls in Spain (seven people were trampled by bulls which she narrowly escaped from!), and said that in preparation for her work in Argentina, where she hopes to work with young women with eating disorders, she has been reading about the Argentina Project that came out of Hector Vila's first year seminar.

So many people, then, too, are doing things. And on that note, while Middlebury College is holding its Clifford Symposium this weekend, on the topic of Climate Crisis, we are also hosting a smaller conference for a group of schools supported by a Mellon grant to delve into the complexities of Social Justice in Higher Education. In this conference it's our hope to define social justice for the group, assess the needs at our separate schools, assess our own knowledge base, exchange ideas, and draft year long plans for learning and community work.

There's More... "Writing, Community and Activism"
Catharine Wright at 11:51 AM :: Editorials :: Comments (0) :: TrackBack (0)
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September 12, 2005

Dena Simmons, a Middlebury College graduate on a Fulbright fellowship in the Dominican Republic, has joined us as a dis.course blogger, after having submitted poetry to dis.course in the past. Dena will be chronicling her findings and experiences in the D.R. on her blog, Don't Jump out of Moving Vehicles (she has an anecdote on her blog explaining the title!)

To read about her research plans for the Fulbright, see the write-up on the Middlebury College website.

We also welcome Carlos Beato, a Middlebury Junior on a year abroad in Spain, who has started a blog called, "My Findings--A Queer Stranger from the Americas in Spain." Carlos has also written for dis.course before on the topic of privilege and education in America.

There's More... "Welcoming new dis.course writers"
Catharine Wright at 01:44 PM :: Blog Journal :: Comments (0) :: TrackBack (0)
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August 31, 2005

We are participating in an international blog day experiment. To learn about the experiment and gain access to many recommended blogs, click on our category link that says, blogday2005. As part of the experiment we are recommeding the following five sites:

I just read an excellent posting by Ariana Figueroa in her blog, The Politics of Identity, in which she explores her identity as a Southerner who "seeks a docking place," and as a half-Cuban woman. She has insightful posts that examine the meaning of "identity" and "identity politics."

Amaury Sosa is also a new blogger who has compelling material in his site, Queering it Up. "We're going to queer this place up," Amaury said to me over tea one day, gesturing at our college campus, and he is on his way in this exciting new blog that delves honestly into his personal experience as well as into his experiences as a scholar at Middlebury College.

I also recommend the sites of three colleagues who are writing about technology and education:

Hector Vila's blog, Technology and Social Revolution, that comes out of his first year seminar at Middlebury on Future Communities;

Mary Ellen Bertolini's Slices of Cake, that explores past experiences such as the day of 911 in the classroom, and that links to her course blog, Writing to Heal;

and Barbara Ganley, who explores classrooms, media, writing and blogging through posts and presentations in bgblogging.

For other comments on these blogs and bloggers, written earlier this summer in a blog journal entry (which I've now changed the date on to avoid clogging the main page), and to see who has supported our work, go here.

There's More... "Blog Day Sites"
Catharine Wright at 03:15 PM :: BlogDay2005 :: Comments (0) :: TrackBack (5)
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June 28, 2005

For many years Roman Graf in the Office for Institutional Diversity at Middlebury College has invited a small group of faculty and staff to the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, a dynamic six day conference that examines what colleges can do to make schools more hospitable to students and faculty of color and more educated about social justice in education. His efforts ensure that each year, new members of the Middlebury College community are exposed to the latest discussions about diversity in education. Last year, after attending the conference, Kathy Skubikowski, director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Research, moved by her experience at the conference, and particularly stirred by her experience in Franci Kendall's workshop on White Privilege, decided to apply for a mellon grant that would allow her to bring her experience at NCORE to more faculty and staff at Middlebury. This decision resulted in a mellon cluster grant that brings together six schools: Vassar, Furman, Scripps, DePauw, Denison and Middlebury in a collaborative effort to explore the meaning of social justice education and to identify and facilitate needed areas of growth. As the grant year starts July 1, Kathy, Roman and I, who together are developing a series of workshops and events at Middlebury, are scurrying to put together a Social Justice in Higher Education website and an initial workshop for the facilitators at all six schools.

Our initial workshop will bring in leaders in the field, Maurianne Adams and Barbara Love (see Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, edited by Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin), who annually offer an institute on Teaching For Equity and Excellence across the Curriculum at NCORE.

This June, following the recommendations of Roman and Kathy, I had the privilege of attending their institute. One point they made right away that I found compelling was that when we talk about increasing diversity at institutions, or responding to diversity issues, we are not necessarily talking about social justice. Encouraging social diversity does not guarantee that we are addressing differences in power and privilege, historical systems of domination and subordination that still exist in social systems (see higher education websites and student work that address privilege and domination and subordination). This difference in terminology is significant and should be understood by anyone seeking to do this work.

A particularly inspiring moment in the conference occurred when Barbara Love talked about a sea change. I had somehow neglected to learn about or remember this term that describes the "100th monkey" phenomenon--that after 100 monkeys on an island learn to peel a banana, monkeys on other islands, without exposure, will begin to do the same. The "sea change" refers to the way that, following the crest of a single wave, other waves, other people, come behind to maintain, support, develop the momentum. What a beautiful image to sustain us all in working for social justice. That behind every effort we make, every risk we take, there are others, bringing their own efforts to bear. And finally, in a great sea change, the tide turns.

There's More... "Social Justice Education"
Catharine Wright at 04:17 PM :: Editorials :: Comments (1) :: TrackBack (0)
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June 19, 2005

It's been a long time since I've posted a blog journal entry on this site, and I've been meaning to for awhile. I think that what's prompting me is critical mass. At a certain point, there's just too much going on not to write about it. And I feel this enormous sense of gratitude that needs to be expressed.

Blessed by an undergraduate collaborative research grant (UCRF) from the office for faculty development, the site/project has been able to hire a few students to explore their interests and challenge their skills on the site this summer. Amaury Sosa has been researching gender performance, and writing about some of his readings (though not, yet, all). He's a busy guy (or femme:)), who, as he pointed out to me the other day, has five women on the Middlebury College faculty urging him to write. Five! Perhaps we should call him 'the chosen one'. What a lot of responsibility! But then, we tend to attract what we can handle, at some level...and he is chugging along, breathlessly explaining that he has multiple commitments. Of course it's wonderful that he's going to Brazil, and he'll be maintaining two blogs from there.

Mari Kim has been accepted to the Breadloaf School of English, a distinct honor for an undergrad, and I was happy to get a phone call from her today (maybe that's what got me to finally write this entry!) She has her book on Korean American identity and her lecture/museum schedule for August in NYC lined up to pursue her project on Korean American concerns. Mari likes to do things well, in focused periods of time, and though not a regular blogger on this site, she has made some enormous contributions. We love her dis.course bookmarks--Ariana emailed me the other day to ask me to send her some--and the way that she and Cha-Ly Koh streamlined our main page design, after a year of me struggling to find a "look" that I could even live with.

I've been very aware of how each of us apprentices to learning things, such as how to create a blog-space, in such different ways. Last night and tonight, after finally catching my breath from a whirlwind of other foci, I took the time to read my colleague's weblogs. Or at least, the recent work that I hadn't yet read. I got hungry when I saw Mary Ellen Bertolini's blog, Slices of Cake (Mary Ellen has this wonderful habit of talking in cooking and parenting metaphors--even if this particular title is from Alfred Hitchcock). In Barbara Ganley's weblog, bgblogging, she talks about different types of software and ways of using them for different types of users, and most particularly, explores, in interesting ways, the possible opportunities, or not, that could arise from her upcoming collaborative blog project, blogging-the-world. When I look at what Barbara has done, and is doing, with blogs, I realize how l-o-n-g it has taken me, and how slow I am, to really "get" the conversation aspect of the blogging world. I love conversation in real life, and I find it easy to get immersed in writing, but somehow I'm always off in some left field when it comes to blogging. I think I spent about two years just reveling in making links. I just wanted to link to everything (and still do). I didn't really care if I was in conversation or not.

So it's been an exciting change for me that out of our spring dis.course meeting we finally decided that we needed separate blogs for separate "editors" as we've been calling ourselves. And this plan is finally beginning to be not only visually real but real in the sense of conversation among the bloggers. It's really interesting to me that it's happening more via distinct blogs than one big community blog. But it has, and I completely get it, now, because I experienced it from the inside out, in that once I made myself my own blog, I started wanting to write there, rather than on the dis.course blog. It felt more private, less overwhelming. But then, everyone who has worked on the dis.course site describes feeling overwhelmed. We started out too big in scope--too vast. So it sort of left us spinning with ideas. Now we're scaling down, just a little, while we "grow into" our vision.

So we've narrowed down our categories. Tried to maintain Mari, Kanchan and Cha-Ly's home page design (they've all contributed to it) even while adding all these satellite blogs to our left sidebar. And I think it's going to work...I think we've really learned from a year long cycle of trial and error. I look at others and I think, how do they learn so fast? Why am I so slow?

But what really moved me to write tonight, as I said, was gratitude, and what I'm seeing here, now, is the beginning of a rich collection of voices...and of visions. I'd like to especially welcome a few of our newer voices, Karina Arrue, who will be writing about religion and ethnicity, and Ariana Figueroa, who is interested in a lot of things (check out her great musings about identity, the politics of identity, and her search for a subject), but most recently, about the south, where she lives. Ariana is a whirlwind, when it comes to writing, so expect more from her...

I'd also like to thank Kanchan for his dedication and clarity as he plows through various new projects and messes in our mass of templates in the back, and while he helps us with our satellite blogs. And thanks to Cha-Ly for emailing us some info. from England, just before she headed out to backpack. Thanks to Hector Vila for figuring out how to insert our side blogs in column form, and for his patience in general, and thanks to Kathy Skubikowski, Roman Graf, and the Office for Faculty Development for their part in making social justice work a safe thing to engage in at Middlebury College.

There's More... "What's Going on Now"
Catharine Wright at 11:48 PM :: Blog Journal :: Comments (0) :: TrackBack (0)
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June 14, 2005

I entitled this series �The Out & About" series after the book Out and About Campus: Personal Accounts by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender College Students by Kim Howard and Annie Stevens (Editors). I recently read this book for a research project I worked on with Professor Ime Kerlee for the Women's and Gender Studies Department at Middlebury College. The book, which contains various stories of college students and their coming out experiences in a college environment, is not only the contributor to the title of the series, but also the inspiration for the project which both Professor Catharine Wright and I are very excited for. The focus of the book is essentially what this series will be about. In it there will be stories of fellow students, staff, and faculty members of the Middlebury College community sharing their stories of what it is, what it was, and what it will be like to be �out� on this college campus as well as in other college campuses. We are hoping that this series would not only shed light on the �out community� at Middlebury, but also serve to encourage others out there, on this campus, other campuses and in all different walks of life to share their experiences in being out and about. Every week we will post an experience, welcoming you to read and comment, perhaps even tell us your own experience. Many of these stories will focus on �coming out in the classroom,� what it �really� means to come out as well as the progression or retrogression of the different generations and �being out.� As the weeks go by, I will get on to comment on some of the different aspects of the �in and out� scene here at Middlebury as well as offer you various different resources that might tie in with what is being discussed on the blog.

There's More... "The Ins and Outs of the "Out and About " series"
Amaury at 12:44 PM :: Editorials :: Comments (1) :: TrackBack (0)
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May 12, 2005

Despite the end of the year, finals and the warm weather, members of the Middlebury College community have gathered during the past few weeks to discuss contentious issues within our community. Inspired and motivated by the recent events surrounding O�Neil Walker�s lawsuit against the College (below), the decision made with regards to the recruitment policy, as well as Giuliani�s scheduled visit to the College, the student body has shifted from what many have described as apathy to full blown activism. We would like for the community to explore our postings on these three issues and to comment online in order to continue the discussion.

Amaury Sosa

There's More... "Student Body has Shifted"
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