On the Passing of Prince

Prince, like Bowie before him, came at the wrong time to be really important to me. Too late to be what my parents raised me on, too early to be what I raised myself on. And unlike Labryinth, Purple Rain did not run in heavy rotation on rainy days at summer camp. I know some of his songs, of course, because I don't live under a rock, but I never owned a Prince album. But I still mourn.

 Prince released over 40 albums, which is an incredible amount of work. And he died at 57, which is so young. And he clearly had more to say. He was an incredibly influential artist, and if you pay attention, you'll hear his influence in much of what is being made today, and he wrote a number of songs beyond those that he recorded himself. He mentored and encouraged other artists, including many women. He was also a huge cultural influence beyond his music. He gave us an alternate model of what it means to be masculine and to be sexual, and in a world filled with fragile and toxic ideas about what it means to be a "man", Prince provided an antidote. He also fought, hard, for his right to own his creative output. And while I'm sad that YouTube isn't full of Prince songs because of his aggressive copyright lawyers, I can respect where he was coming from, for himself and other artists. 

Whenever someone like this dies, social media fills up with people sharing stories of what that artist meant to them, and it is honestly one of my favorite things about social media. We get everyday fans talking about how someone's art changed their lives, in ways big and small, and we get the people who knew them sharing more intimate stories. We get to mourn together, to gather and "get through this thing called life", to celebrate a person's life and deeds and to mourn their absence.

 There are people who don't get this. They don't understand the mourning over someone we never met. What I think those people fail to understand is that when we mourn, we are mourning for ourselves. We are sad because we have lost someone. Maybe it's someone we knew personally and loved as family, and we are mourning that we will never again hear their voice or hold their hand or see their smile. Or maybe it's an artist and we're mourning the loss of all the art they didn't get around to making. Or maybe we've been reminded of our own mortality (or the mortality of someone we love). Or reminded of our common humanity, and we mourn a stranger because we know that no man is an island. When musicians die, I am reminded of how lucky we are to have the technology we have. Some art - literature, sculpture, architecture, is designed to last, by its very nature. But music is fundamentally ephemeral. And yet we found a way to capture it, so that we can listen again and again, so that the perfect song is there for us when we need it, so that generations to come can listen to "Purple Rain". We are so lucky.

 Prince was famously a Jehovah's Witness. I don't know much about how they conduct funerals, but I hope that at his funeral, they read Matthew 5:16: "Likewise, let your light shine before men, so that they may see your fine works and give glory to your Father who is in the heavens." (New World Translation). Prince did that. He was generous with his time, his talent, and his resources - he mentored and lifted up other artists, he gave to people in need. He let his light shine and he created transcendent experiences for many people. I hope that as we mourn, we can also take inspiration. To be ourselves, authentically and without fear. To live our truth, to put our art into the world, to let our freak flags fly high and our lights shine as brightly as possible for as long as we are given in this life.

"People in Washington are stupid but not that stupid"

That's the cover of today's Washington Post Express. Inside, the quote is attributed to "Brian Doe, a wealth adviser at Graus Capital Management in Atlanta."

I'll grant you that people everywhere are stupid. In the hopes of making some of us less stupid, today we're going to have a lesson in literary terms. Specifically metonymy. Metonymy is pretty common in our every day speech. Wikipedia defines it as "a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept." Common examples include referring to "The White House" instead of the President or "Hollywood" for "The American Motion Picture Industry". And I see this happening a lot with the shutdown. It's pretty common to refer to "DC" or "Washington" instead of "the Federal Government of the United States of America", and I completely understand why. But here's the thing - Washington, DC is not just the seat of our government, it is also a major metropolitan center. And so when you start talking about how "people in Washington are stupid", I know that you really mean "everyone in Congress", but I still get a little defensive. Just as Congress is not the entire government, so too, not everyone in our nation's capital is an elected official. Most of us are just ordinary citizens trying to build our lives. Many of us are directly employed by the Federal Government. Still others depend on the government for our livelihood, whether it's as contractors or restauranteurs or tour guides. DC is a company town, and Washingtonians are suffering from this shutdown just as surely as if the mine or mill in some other town were to shut down. And we're no more at fault than the rest of the country. In fact, since DC doesn't have a voting representative in Congress, you might say that Washingtonians are LESS at fault than the rest of the country.

So please, skip the metonymy and direct your frustration not at DC, but at the members of Congress who have opted to put petty partisan squabbling above the business of this country.

That's what "Shut It Down" means

So, we're on day 8 of the Federal Government shutdown. According to Facebook, my friends who are Federal employees are either a) working without pay or b) growing furlough beards and have completely re-organized their homes. They're not on vacation, they're on hold. Vacations are planned and have defined start and end dates. Furloughs are just days of not knowing how you're going to pay your bills and if and when you'll be allowed to go back to work.

And in the meantime, the same Representatives who voted for the government shutdown are yelling at Park Rangers for doing their jobs (without pay) and proclaiming how terrible it is that soldiers' families aren't getting their benefits. And yes, this IS terrible. But that's what you voted for. The Federal Government isn't some faceless boogeyman that's out there trying to run your life, it's a lot of dedicated, hardworking, US citizens who have a lot of different (and often thankless and underpaid) jobs that keep our country running. It's Park Rangers who make sure you don't fall into a ravine, it's food inspectors who keep our food supply safe, it's accountants who make sure benefits get paid on time. But all those people have been declared "non-essential".

The folks who voted for the Tea-Party-aligned Representatives who voted for this, who yelled "shut it down" at rallies, who think that the Federal Government is big and bloated and unnecessary are now turning around and saying "how dare you not give veteran's their benefits?!" That's what you said you wanted. Death benefits aren't manna from heaven, they're something our government provides (and should provide). That means that check is processed by a Federal employee. When you tell the non-essential employees to stay home, and make it illegal for them to work, well, then, guess what? You are denied the fruits of their labor. And that sucks. There are pregnant women out there who were counting on their WIC benefits to give them the nutrition they need to have healthy babies (so much for the Right being "pro-life"). There are families out there who were counting on their benefit checks to make the mortgage payment. All because the Republicans are afraid that people will turn out to like the Affordable Care Act.

I understand that there are disagreements to be had about what the role and size of the Federal Government should be. That's fair. If small-government conservatives want to have an honest conversation about their vision of the Federal Government, I'm all ears. Let's talk about balancing the rights of the individual with the needs of the community. Let's talk about what "justice for all" means, and how we can make sure that everyone is taken care of while trying to keep anyone from being taken advantage of. We have a lot of people in this country, and a lot of viewpoints, and it is totally reasonable for us to have a serious conversation about what path is the best one for all of us to go down.

But in the meantime, let's pass a budget, so that doctors and food inspectors and Park Rangers and accountants and lawyers and intelligence analysts can get back to doing the work of the American people and get their paychecks, and so that soldiers and new mothers and veterans can get their benefits and WIC vouchers and disability checks. Stop holding the country hostage and start holding a conversation.

Thanksgving 2012

I have many things to be thankful for. I hope you all do too. Here are 30 (in no particular order):

1. I am grateful for the sun, without which none of the rest of this would be possible.
2. I am grateful for water. For hot showers and baths, for cool water to drink.
3. I am grateful for blue skies and sunshine and fresh air and the smell of rain on the pavement in the middle of the night.
4. I am grateful to be alive. I don't believe that I would miss being alive if I were not, but I am alive, and I am thankful for it.
5. I am grateful for my body. It is not perfect, but it works, and it wakes up in the morning and it sleeps at night and digests what I feed it and moves where I want it to without pain.
6. I am grateful for my hands. Hands that can feel, and type, and hold books, and crochet, and make food, and hold the people I love.
7. I am grateful for my brain, for the ability to think and dream and solve problems and create.
8. I am grateful for food, and for knowing where my next meal will come from.
9. I am grateful for sleep, for the opportunity to allow my body and my mind to reboot and heal.
10. I am grateful for a warm, safe place to sleep.
11. I am grateful for public transit, so that I can reduce my carbon footprint and have time to read and not have to fight traffic, pump gas, find parking, etc.
12. I am grateful for my education, especially for the fact that I had access to a free, quality public education and that no one questioned my right to learn because of my gender.
13. I am grateful for my parents, who have never made me doubt for a second that they love me, and who taught me many things.
14. I am grateful for my Gentleman Friend, who is kind and loving and generous and looks after me.
15. I am grateful for my friends. They are smart, funny, kind, generous, wonderful people who take care of each other.
16. I am grateful for employment. I am lucky enough to have jobs that pay the bills and also allow me to do different things that I enjoy.
17. I am grateful for technology. For the Internet, for smart phones, for iPods, for Kindles; for safer cars and planes and trains; for protective equipment, for security systems, for diagnostic tools.
18. I am grateful for medicine. For painkillers, antibiotics, replacement joints, transplants, IUDs, chemotherapy.
19. I am grateful for democracy and suffrage, for the right to vote and have a say in what my government does.
20. I am grateful for protestors and agitators and people who fight for what they believe in. The people who risked their freedom and their lives to build a better, more just world, to take us one step further on the road to peace.
21. I am grateful for the people who have and do serve in the military, who risk their lives in defense of their country, and especially for those who made our democracy and independence possible.
22. I am grateful for first responders; for firemen, EMTs, and police. For the people who sacrifice their holidays and nights and weekends to take care of all of us.
23. I am grateful for the people who pave roads and collect garbage and mine coal; for all the people who do the dirty work of making our civilization run.
24. I am grateful not just for the food I eat, but for the people who got it to my plate; the migrant workers, the farmers, the truck drivers.
25. I am grateful for literature, and for literacy. For stories that comfort, for stories that challenge. For sweeping opera and short stories.
26. I am grateful for the visual arts. For paintings and sculptures and mobiles and that feeling of awe when something beautiful is in front of you.
27. I am grateful for the performing arts. For my early exposure to dance and music and theatre. For the way a song can capture perfectly how you feel, for the way dance can tell a story with no words, for the way a stage can keep you in someone's living room or take you on a journey around the world.
28. I am grateful to live in a city where I have access to world-class museums, theatres, restaurants and parks, and for the opportunity to enjoy them.
29. I am grateful for leisure time and days off. For the chance to spend a day alone in my pajamas watching movies as well as the chance to spend a day with the people I love.
30. I am grateful for the ability to be grateful. For the ability to see and appreciate the beauty in the world.