Nashville

Ah, I love the smell of moldy documents in the morning. Seriously, my hat goes off to the brave men and women who work as archivists and inhale all that dust and mustiness day after day. Today involved more digging, lots of photocopying, some discoveries of bios, and of course laughing at the '70s haircuts in the yearbooks.

I finished early enough to go to the Hermitage, President Andrew Jackson's home. I sincerely missed my family as it reminded me of our many vacations to historic homes and battlefields throughout the continental United States. Not to mention my parents pulled over EVERY time they saw a historical marker. So what do I choose to do with free time in a new city? That's right, mom and dad, I blame you.

I'm always interested, though, after spending God knows how many years studying history, at how historic sites and museums portray their heroes. For example, while the site dealt fairly with the slave issue, I saw not a word mentioned about Jackson's Indian removal policy. But did you know he imported wallpaper from France and had 37 foster children?

I walked around downtown for a while... Nashville may well be one of the few places on earth that begins live music in multiple venues on one street at 10:00 AM. And I had to laugh when I drove down Music Row and saw just as many lawyer offices as I did recording labels.

Life is a Highway?

Well I thought my visit with Southern relatives was complete after a big breakfast (including biscuits and grits) and a knitting lesson. I will not, by the way, be joining the feminist knitting revolution any time soon. Even when I got the hang of it, it drove me mad.

But alas the battery died in my car. With the collaboration of my great uncle, a boat battery charger, and Carl's garage my car came back to life and put me on the road to Nashville just in time to sit on the freeway for an hour. Let me just say it is not a good thing when an 18 wheeler catches fire and burns up completely (I think the driver got out in time). Then I hit a rainstorm, etc., etc. Needless to say I lost some research time.

The archives at Meharry are a glorified closet but have good information. One thing I have realized, though, about choosing a topic in which the subjects experienced racism and sexism is that the sources reflect their experience. The information is there but it requires a great deal of digging. The woman helping me seemed as excited as I was to uncover some of the data on women.

I finished the day with a walk around Centennial Park and a few hours writing and relaxing at a local coffee shop. I'm staying with my roommate's brother's best friend's fiance's sister. Yeah, I'm confused too.

KinFolk

I am part of a generation and culture who is increasingly disconnected from extended family. I didn't grow up near my grandparents or any other family for that matter, so I didn't have the luxury of playing with cousins or aunts and uncles dropping by. I was also never good at keeping in touch with my "greats", apart from an annual Christmas letter and picture.

But they all love me to pieces. I have visited with four different great aunts this weekend. One is completely dedicated to taking care of my sweet great grandmother, who lives with her. Her main support system is a dedicated group of sitters and she enjoyed having me around. Two are sisters who took me to dinner, where they antagonized each other like teenagers, bugged me about getting married, and had me laughing with their stories. Back at her house, one of the sisters talked to me like I was her best girlfriend. The fourth great aunt lives with her husband and was tickled to death (I've been in the South just a few days and listen to me!) to take me to brunch and cook for me. She considers me a grandchild as she has no children of her own. I am leaving here with Christmas ornaments from her collection and any books I want from her shelf.

I struggle to make connections sometimes... To listen to their conceptions of race, to bridge the technology gap (one aunt was amazed when I showed her a picture slideshow, ordered her an out of print book, and found a local store where she could buy her favorite shoes by using what my uncle called my "miracle box"), and to explain the complexities of my own life while trying to understand theirs. But somehow I understand my own life better by being with them. I can't really explain it. I came from them for a reason.

Ninety-9

I'm taking the weekend to spend time with extended family in Alabama. I have a lot of relatives here with "great" before their title. Driving through Mississippi then rural Alabama I had waves of nostalgia. Summer visits as a kid involved eating "dinner" at noon and then eating it all again for "supper," catching fireflies, fried okra, mosquitoes, southern accents, and small towns.

I am fortunate to have known three of my great grandmothers. Two passed on a few years ago and the other just turned 99. She was spry and with it for most of my life so it was a bit of a shock when her health deteriorated in the past months. I remember climbing in her lap as a kid, watching the birds from her sunroom, and, most fondly, sitting on the porch swing with her like there was nothing else going on the world. She's the sweet Southern woman who loved everyone and told them all to go to church. Most of them did.

When I arrived tonight I was glad she recognized me. Every time I came to her bedside I received a big smile. She laughed when I told her it's ok if she doesn't remember my name, just remember that I'm her favorite great granddaughter. I fought back tears for the first hour I was here, it was hard to see her like this. At one point she told me she's sorry she's sick and cried. I'm sorry too...

As I held her hand I thought about how I want to be 99 looking at three generations ahead of me, to have loved and lived such a full life. She's still beautiful and has quite a spirit despite her health and age. I am grateful to be connected to her.

Archive Dust

Day Two at the Amistad Research Center proved productive. I went through eight boxes of unprocessed files so it was quite a feat. One of the boxes was the jackpot--30 years of the organization's quarterly publication. It's a shame they are sitting in a box.

I decided today I am not organized enough to ever eventually donate my papers to an archive. And in the digital age it would seem ego-maniacal to print every email correspondence to save for posterity. But there is something about reading someone's hand-written notes that seems so intimate, even if it's about how the president spent the organization's money.

I spent an hour at the end of the day in the French Quarter... got some pralines and some beignets, walked around, watched a scene for a movie be filmed at a cafe (it takes a ridiculous amount of people and security to film two people sitting at a table), and took a few hasty pictures.

My favorite part of the day? Watching a man in the Quarter lead a crowd in "This Little Light of Mine", clapping and singing. "Jesus is comin' back, I'm gonna let it shine..."

Tales from the Archives

Greetings from the Big Easy! Here begins the first step of my out of state research for my dissertation.

I'm staying across Lake Ponchatrain from New Orleans with relatives in Mandeville. So we drove across the 24 mile bridge (longest in the world) and through all the city's devastation. I saw where the breach happened in one of the canals and it's smaller than I would have imagined for all the damage it caused. Many houses are abandoned, some are rebuilt, and FEMA trailers dot every few driveways for those who still do not have livable houses. The scene is bleak to be honest. One sign read "Bulldoze house but don't cut down tree." The tree weathered the storm, so why destroy it now? One church was getting ready to re-open this Sunday and a team of congregants busily prepared.

My first stop was Dillard University, which fared decently during Katrina minus its library. I was unable to ascertain before I arrived that the special collections have relocated to storage while the library is being rennovated. An unfortunate consequence.

So I went onto the Amistad Research Center at Tulane. Tulane and the surrounding mansions and parks look untouched. Partly that's because they suffered less damage and partly because they were repaired first. The only time I recognized the impact of Katrina was overhearing a conversation of some professors discussing the university's new evacuation plan. Class and race inequalities were thus impossible for me not to see today.

But Amistad was great... I got through two boxes today and will peruse several more tomorrow they are bringing from off-site storage. I got so excited exploring these materials, like I was starting to put pieces together and to discover. I hope this is representative of how the rest of my trip will go.

The Woman Behind Wonder Woman

From KorePress.org:

"Written by men for 60 years, feminist icon Wonder Woman finally gets a female author in novelist Jodi Picoult, only the second woman to write her story (the first was Mindy Newel, who scripted three issues in the original series). But Wonder Woman's (male) illustrators haven't changed: Picoult reports she advocated for a breast reduction, to no avail. Still, as a role model for girls, Picoult says "I love the fact that [Wonder Woman] is strong and has muscles and powerful thighs." But what about that costume? "All I'm gonna say," responds Picoult, "is that any woman knows you can't fight crime in a bustier."
(artwork by Drew Johnson and Ray Snyder)

Anti-Genocide in the Book of Esther

I've been reading the book of Esther and it has a very clear anti-genocide message. Haman, the evil right hand man to King Xerxes, decides in a moment to decree the destruction of the Jews after Mordecai, a Jew, disrespects him. One personal issue (that shouldn't even have been an issue) and he makes a decision to kill an entire people group. The rest of the book speaks of Esther and Mordecai being used to stop this genocide.

Why isn't it ok? Because it's wrong... God is a God of redemption not of destruction. Even in OT terms of His wrath, God is merciful. And in the case of Queen Esther, the King's own wife would have been killed. Our neighbors and family members could represent a targeted group. Then there's Mordecai, the annoying citizen who sits outside the king's gate and does things no one seems to understand. To put it more bluntly, I see Mordecai representing the homeless or the foreigners who never quite fit "our" customs and standards and thereby pose some sort of threat.

How do they stop it? It takes everyone... Esther as an insider in the kingdom who doubts her power but wields it creatively and convincingly with the people who matter. Mordecai, giving Esther encouragement and strategy. The people, who dress in sack cloth and ashes and pray and fast.

I can find myself in each of those solutions. And I must.

www.savedarfur.org

The Laundry Room

While some people complain about community laundry rooms, I quite like them. I might like the one in my apartment complex less if it weren't two doors down from me, but I like running into people, having random conversations, checking the mail, etc. Once you get past the awkwardness of separating your laundry as you talk, that is.

I have had a hell of a week. To be honest I'm overwhelmed with just about every area of my life. School, work, relationships, family, the future--it's all got it's own stress right now. And it added up and crashed in on me tonight.

While I was waiting for my clothes to dry, I checked my mail and found a letter from my mom's college roommate, with whom she is still close. It was completely out of nowhere, and extremely timely. Two pages of funny stories and lots of encouragement, the kind that you can only appreciate from a life long friend who gets the complexity of your life and the things you're capable of.

So that was it, I burst into tears, reading this letter in the laundry room. No real way to hide. My neighbor, who is a hospital chaplain, came in just as I tried to shield my face. He asked if he could pray for me. I nodded my head yes, choked up, and talked to him while he hung up his shirts. He started to walk out the door and I looked at him, confused... Apparently he meant could he pray for me in his heart, like over the weekend. But he kindly offered to pray with me, and since I was so desperate for someone outside my everyday circle to lift me up, I said yes, please.

He came over and joined hands with me and my roommate. He led us to be still, to remember that God always hears us. And he prayed for tears to wash away pain, hard feelings to illustrate possibility, and conflict to begin growth.

Old friends, neighbors, roommates, prayers, the God who always hears, and the most inane community space.

These are my peace.

Be Not Afraid

To overestimate human potential,
To recognize good,
To become more.

Women in Darfur: How to Help

Save Darfur
www.savedarfur.org

STAND (Student Anti-Genocide organization)
http://www.standnow.org/

Twenty Women For Darfur
www.twentywomenfordarfur.org

Women’s Human Right’s Network
www.amnestyusa.org

Women for Women International: Darfur
www.womenforwomen.org

Women in Darfur: The Situation

The Conflict

Darfur has been embroiled in a deadly conflict for over three years. At least 400,000 people have been killed; more than 2 million innocent civilians have been forced to flee their homes and now live in displaced-persons camps in Sudan or in refugee camps in neighboring Chad; and more than 3.5 million men, women, and children are completely reliant on international aid for survival. Not since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape, and mass slaughter.

Since early 2003, Sudanese armed forces and Sudanese government-backed militia known as “Janjaweed” have been fighting two rebel groups in Darfur, the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The stated political aim of the rebels has been to compel the government of Sudan to address underdevelopment and the political marginalization of the region. In response, the Sudanese government’s regular armed forces and the Janjaweed – largely composed of fighters of nomadic background – have targeted civilian populations and ethnic groups from which the rebels primarily draw their support – the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa.
From www.savedarfur.com

Women in Conflict

Much of the violence perpetrated in the Darfur conflict has resulted in grave human rights violations against women. These violations against women and girls include abductions, rape and forced displacement. The only real protection being provided for Darfuri women and girls has been from African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), despite significant restrictions on its capabilities.
From www.amnestyusa.org

Rapes and Sex Slavery

As Amnesty International reported in July, women and girls as young as 8 are being raped and used as sex slaves in the conflict area, despite guarantees by the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjawid.
In some cases the Janjawid have raped women in public, in front of their husbands, relatives or the wider community. These women and girls are being attacked not only to dehumanize them, but also to humiliate, punish, control, inflict fear upon, displace and persecute the community to which they belong.

The Janjawid have acted with full impunity and with the full knowledge or acquiescence of the government army, and the government of Sudan has not charged a single member of the Janjawid or of the armed forces with committing rape or kidnapping.

In fact, the mass rapes ongoing in Darfur are war crimes and crimes against humanity that the international community is doing little to stop.

Despite the Security Council's actions and our report, the situation appears only to be getting worse. On Aug. 10, a United Nations High Commission for Refugees spokesperson reported that the agency has received reports of an increasing number of rapes inside government and Janjawid-run displacement camps. Authorities in Khartoum not only have done little to stop the rapes; medical resources for the proper care of victims, including trained personnel and facilities to treat sexually transmitted diseases, are sorely lacking.

Single Women in Most Danger

Women and children make up the majority of the population in the camps. As Amnesty International learned from testimonies gathered last May, married women who have lost their husbands to violence and single women are in particular danger of abuse and exploitation, whether they have settled in camps for the internally displaced or have fled to nearby villages.

Their children are more likely to be affected by malnutrition, less likely to receive an education and these survivors and their daughters may be forced into prostitution.

Displacement has also led to an increase in the number of early marriages, with some families resorting to marrying their daughters at a very young age in the hope that marriage will give some measure of protection from the threat of sexual violence, protection parents feel unable to provide.

The Janjawid have raped many women who, fearing their husbands will be killed if they venture outside the camps, have gone in their place to collect firewood. The Janjawid also have tortured women to coerce them to report the whereabouts of their husbands. Forms of torture reportedly have included forcing the faces of women between wooden sticks and pulling out women's nails. Some women also have reported that the Janjawid have broken the legs of rape victims in order to prevent them from escaping.

While giving ample attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the international community needs to do more to stop what is happening to Darfur's women and girls. If the victims were our mothers, our daughters and our sisters, the international community would respond more vigorously.

From “Help Stop Violence Against Women in Darfur” by Beth Glick, program associate for the Crisis Preparedness and Response Unit of Amnesty International USA.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1953/

Don Imus

So the d.j. who called the women of the mostly black Rutgers basketball team "nappy-headed hos" has been let go from simulcast on MSNBC. That's some consolation, knowing that when people respond to such hateful remarks then companies listen (even if just for no other reason that economic boycott--yep, it's still powerful). Granted he will probably keep his radio show, but at least something has been done.

Unfortunately remarks like this aren't all that uncommon. Women are referred to in derogatory terms in music, film, and other media daily. For the record, I don't think calling a woman a bitch or a ho in a rap song is OK. Remarks like that trickle down to the culture and are demeaning even if they aren't meant to be. (Side note: One creative way to resist the negativity associated with words is to reappropriate them--i.e. Bitch Magazine--but that does not completely remove its power b/c broader society still utilizes them in offensive ways).

And I'm for freedom of speech, but I do think there needs to be accountability for racist and sexist slurs such as these.

Political talk shows, from every side of the spectrum, are routinely offensive to any number of groups. But at least they are trying to make a point. At least they have a context. They might be trying to make a point I find offensive or don't agree with, but at least there is a point.

We are all a little (or a lot) racist and sexist. Unsolicited remarks such as Imus' show how fallen and insensitive we are. The whole thing makes me examine myself. Imus spoke these slurs not knowing anything about the women on this team. Nothing about their character, lives, or accomplishments. If I really believe all people are equal, then I will treat them as such by the words that I speak.

I think about all it has taken for women to be recognized as athletes, let alone for women of color to play on integrated college teams. We still have so much left to fight for if such a prominent figure can dismiss the collective and individual accomplishments of women and women of color so easily.

Moreover it makes me realize how much fight I've got left...

Somet thoughts on non-violence

In studying non-violent resistance, I have become very confused. I am with Ella Baker--she believed that militancy was a good idea some times and non-violence was a good idea at other times. But she always believed action was necessary. The term pacifism implies non-action, which is contrary to the way we are set up to help others. But I believe it is possible to be extremely active in non-violent ways. War has done very little for the world, and peaceful resistance, though it takes longer, has longer-lasting results.

Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill church in Grand Rapids, did a sermon series in December entitled "Calling All Peacemakers." He pointed out that Jesus told Peter to drop his sword when Jesus was arrested. And Bell also pointed out that Christ's acceptance of crucifixion was, in a sense, Him rebelling against a cruel and unjust justice system. I'm mulling that over during Easter, thinking about all the violent ways God could have saved the world, and He didn't. It was Jesus coming to be the Prince of Peace, to save the world in ways no one had ever seen.

There is Rock and Always Water

If I were to guess why I was so afraid of failure, it would be to say that I am afraid of unfulfillment. We have very interesting ways to illuminate our own desires when met with the question of why we live. Being is an understatement for the ways we decide to move, forcing ourselves through the crevices of unmovable rock. We gain strength from the untimely changes that confront the way we constructed our future, and climb higher on the hills of uncertainty.

Why the day begins to break
and
Why the stars are outnumbered
by the
Light
of Your
Face...

All This Happens

Take time to whisper the winds of change,
And re-design the anthems that bring you comfort.
Fall short and rise above,
You Daughters of the Most High.
Recognize your inherent worth
And seize whatever you can.
Cling to sorrow long enough to breathe it,
Then move to the place of action-oriented solace.

We find strength when we cannot seek it.
We encounter truth where we cannot interpret it.

Desperately, hungrily, fervently.
We know Who You are.
Show Yourself, make Yourself known.

I am uncomfortable with the concept that
Love and destiny might not coincide,
And take comfort in the shape of Your design,
Where You bring all things together
And make all things right in their own time.

Awake, arise--
Love comes slowly to meet with us
And we cannot reject it.
In embracing love we embrace possibility,
And all the things we couldn't believe
Somehow are true.

Consumerism

"If we really loved like Jesus does, capitalism would be impossible and Marxism would be unnecessary." --Shane Claiborne

Ah, consumerism...

the idol i dress up with things i've bought...

Ordinary 4

"They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD. (Jer. 1:19)

I am inspired by the lack of insignificance You possess. Covered in the insecurity my feeble frame carries around, I lament my own limitations. But oh how You go to great lengths to raise us above all that.

Singing

Inspire the way to be whole.
Receive the advent and
Uncover the blind,
When you were broken
And Life saved you.
Waking,
Hoping,
Receiving.

Joyful Pain

A baby comes to live among us and covers my heart in entirety. Its cries entering the world echo my own uncertainties as I cling to the life I need to know. And somehow I become more alive, letting the baby into my soul and opening to the risk that accompanies love. Beautiful saving and I'm not the rescuer.

And he was torn away from us even as he embodied salvation. The pain of rebirth is to difficult to come to terms with. And the time you left felt like an eternity, us clinging to the promise that you would come back and make it whole.

And you came back like you promised, saving the whole earth and making us right. Peacefully captivating my heart in brilliant ways, rebirthing humanity in the joyous painful saga of your love.

The word of the prophets speak loudly--You have prepared a way in the wilderness.