More Daisy dancing

Starry Plough, Berkeley, 4/3/11--the Gold Diggers

Letter to the Crazy Lady

At one of the middle schools I've been assigned to work at as a counselor, I was told to work in Room 40--the speech therapist's office. I work there on the day she isn't at school. It is the only room the school has available for me, they have said, and so I have no choice. Because she is A Crazy Lady, I am super careful not to move or touch anything, or when I have to, I put it back exactly the way I found it. I tiptoe around her damned room, but this has not stopped her from sending me Crazy Emails containing accusations such as (among other things) that I have touched her pencil sharpener, allowed students to sharpen their pencils in her sharpener (Eegads!), and used her computer (which is password-locked). She also complains that the thousands of chairs in her room have not been arranged in the exact same way she left them, which includes knowing which exact chairs go where (there are at least three different kinds of chairs and the Crazy Lady has precise ideas about which go where). Here is the response I sent her today, being very fed up.

Hi _________,

I am sorry about any trouble I have caused you. I am truly doing my best. I have never touched the computers or electric pencil sharpeners, and neither have the students. I have never moved or touched the desk.

You are right that I moved the chairs, because I have an eight-student group that comes in and needs to sit around the table. So I put the chairs around the table in the middle of the room. After the students leave, I tried to return the chairs, but because I had not made an exact count of how many chairs were originally around the table, it is possible I was off by one or two chairs. In other words, it's possible that one or two chairs were still around the table in the middle of the room, as opposed to around the table pushed against the right-hand wall.

I will do my best to ensure that the room remains in its original arrangement, but I think it is fair to say that there may be some small sign that I was there (such as one extra chair around the table in the middle of the room). Unless I take a photograph when I walk in, there may be some small discrepancy. Would you like me to bring a camera to work? I would rather not, because it gives me an extra thing to remember and I am lugging so many things with me already, but I will if you would like. Otherwise, these small signs of my presence will probably continue, and I do not want to be in a conflict with you.

The only other possibility is that the school finds another place for me to be, and they have already told me this is not possible. And the final possibility is that we can discontinue my presence at the school, which of course is the most extreme scenario and I would rather we don't come to that--but it is a possibility.

Please let me know what I can do, and again, I apologize for any inconvenience.

Facebook defriend-estation

Yesterday I got Facebook de-friended by a radical right-wing Republican. I hadn't written anything particularly political on Facebook--just mildly so-- but then a friend of mine wrote in with some stronger opinions, with which I agreed. Then my radical right-wing "friend" (he was a former neighbor of mine) wrote in yelling belligerently in all caps and telling my other (real) friend to move to Cuba. Oh dear, I thought. I don't want it to look like I won't tolerate difference of opinion on my Facebook page (I will, really), but I think I have to de-friend him now because he is being rude and below the belt and going too far. I always hate having to do something that will potentially offend someone, so it was with trembling fingers that I scrolled down my Friends page, looking for his name so I could defriend him. How relieved I was to discover that he had already defriended me! Relieved and a little bit... proud.

The semester is over

A lot of grading awaits, but classes are over. Final assignments will be turned in today. It's strange to think that this may--possibly--be my second to last college composition class. I certainly had some challenges and hard times this semester, but in general, I am leaving with a warmer and fuzzier feeling than usual. I know you could say it's because I realize this period of my life is ending, and maybe that's true. But I've also been giving a lot of thought to how I got through the semester, particularly with regard to some students I found challenging from day one. Even from the first day of class, they were talking and horsing around and wise-assing a bit, and I remember a feeling of dread as I walked away that day: oh no, this semester is going to be a disaster. I remember telling my husband that when I got home.

But it wasn't a disaster, not at all, and I managed to handle what I saw as a potential discipline problem in a way that never exploded. Of the four students I thought could be a big problem, two are coming back for my class next semester (with my whole-hearted approval) and one just sent me a nice note over email. I keep thinking how badly I would have handled the situation as a rookie teacher, and how proud I am that I managed to let these students know I needed them to behave differently without alienating them or making them turn against me and the class. I stayed in control, I didn't let them hijack the class or ruin it for the other students, but I also didn't ever yell, threaten, bully, try to have them removed, or even make them feel like I didn't want them there (I think). They remained in the class in good standing. I end the semester with a feeling of great fondness for my whole class, for these students as much as the others. I am so proud that I have it within me to handle this sort of thing now. It makes me think that, ironically, I am more suited and qualified to be a teacher than I ever was before in my life, right at the pivotal moment that I may be walking away from it.

Not that I'm thinking I don't want the change. I think I am just a little puzzled.

Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey

1) In my recent Word Twist game with Melissa, we both found the Big Word. She found SISTER, and I found RESIST. Neither of us found the other one's word. Think about that for awhile.

2) Two nights ago I was telling my mom and Mark about a teacher-student conference I overheard some time back in which I thought the teacher wasn't giving the most useful critique. He was zooming in on a lot of grammar errors, but at the same time saying there were larger, "global" problems with the paper while not giving much guidance as to how to address them. (It's hard; I know.)

Suddenly my mom piped in, "That is exactly like this time when I was a girl and was fired from my job at the library because my boss thought my friend was wearing a clown suit! Really, though, my boss was just anti-Semitic."

But... IS it like that? In any way? This should really make you think. Deeply.

I think we worked something out

We have talked and come up with some ideas for getting along better. I think it's okay now. My feelings are all bruised, though. Sensitive me.

Ugh

Well, it looks like I might be taking a break from my family of origin for awhile... my mother is here and things are bad and I don't think I can continue this arrangement anymore (where she comes once a week and we pay her from our child care stipend USF gives us). The comments she made are definitely out of line; she told me she "doesn't understand why people in their thirties are so tired all the time" (that would be Mark and I) and that she feels as if all the hard work she does for us just "isn't paying off"--that she "isn't seeing any progress." Like we are some kind of charity she's invested her money in, but now she needs to reconsider her investment, given how little progress we've made! These criticisms were also embedded in other criticisms of me and the messiness of my house (which also plagues me, but I seem to have a hard time keeping up with it).

All these remarks were made pretty much within ten minutes of walking in the door. She arrived after having been away a week, and during that week all three of us have been sick. Nevertheless, we have still both gone to our jobs, graded papers, prepared classes, taken care of Daisy, cooked meals, done loads of laundry, and averaged 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night. But she can't understand why people in their 30s would be so tired.

I am starting to think that part of the problem (though it doesn't entirely explain the nastiness and ugliness of her remarks) is that we have this arrangment where we pay her. Hence, her role is truly unclear. Is she somehow our employee, so that when she's here we can expect her to take care of Daisy while we do other things? (Not things for pleasure, mind you-- I mean, catch up on laundry and dishes, run errands, and work on my schoolwork.) Or is she here more in the capacity of grandmother, someone who enjoys time with her grandchild and wants to be doing this, rather than doing it for earnings? It is all somewhat blurred and confusing. I think somehow that this confusion of roles might be making her nastiness more possible.

Hmmmm

I got this quiz from lumenatrix's site. It is here:
http://mindmedia.com/braintest.html
The results make sense to me--kind of. I am not surprised that I would be a lot more auditory than visual, and a lot more left brain than right. However, I guess that also confuses me a little. I am very VERBAL (Scramble, anyone? Pleeeease?), and rather logical, and I like for things to make sense. My high school English teacher used to call me "the voice of reason." But I am certainly not extremely efficient, or logical to the extreme. I have very strong emotions. I am not very structured or well-organized, either. I agree that I am a detail-oriented person and it's probably true that I am understated in thinking of my own abilities (I hope). The thing about tight schedules and enviable organizational skills making me a great team asset-- definitely NOT true. I am not sure how the visual/auditory thing was measured but I would say in a heartbeat that I am pretty unobservant visually and terribly bad at mechanical/spatial relations, and that (on the other hand) music is the most important art form to me (surprise surprise) and that I can't live without it.

Can it be true that I am both reasonable and extremely emotional? Both those things seem true to me, of me. Well, this gives me a chance to spout one of my maxims, which is that in my experience, the most rational people are usually the ones who are the most in touch with their emotions, rather than the ones who believe they are acting purely logically and rationally and without the influence of emotion. I secretly (now, not so secretly) think those people are often the most irrational of all.


Your Brain Usage Profile:
Auditory : 62%
Visual : 37%
Left : 77%
Right : 22%

Sarah, your results indicate a strong left-hemisphere dominance with a mild preference for auditory processing. This blend would suggest that you are an extremely efficient person, logical perhaps to an extreme. You tend to structure your life and learning in very precise ways.
You benefit from experience, seek the rational in situations and feel most comfortable with routine.
You are a detail person. You see each piece of a puzzle or situation with equal clarity and value, and thrive on your ability to fit each piece into a unifying structure.
Your learning style tends toward the auditory, which suggests that you process inputs sequentially and classify each before moving on to the next. You do, however, possess sufficient visualization skills and interest to supplement the auditory tendency and render you more active than a person who is purely auditory.
In all likelihood you will be somewhat reserved in appreciating your own talents and understate your abilities even to yourself. You will organize your time and set schedules for yourself and, in that sense, lose sight of spontaneity and other needs - both of yourself and others. Your enviable organization, structure, and efficiency make you a valuable asset to a team effort.

le top playwear

le top playwear

The last few days, part 2

After my first all-day class in psychotherapy as a career option, I took BART from downtown SF to the Lake Merritt station and walked to the Oakland Museum to see Mark's KISS band in the Best of the East Bay celebration. Now I realize this sounds like nothing to those more directionally gifted among you, but I was worried about: getting on the wrong BART train; getting off at the wrong stop; and not being able to find the Oakland Museum. But none of it came true. It was one of the most competent days I've had of taking public transportation around the Bay area, given I also bussed it to the class downtown. I felt environmentally responsible and directionally sophisticated.

Mark and I had the happy experience of getting to hang out for a little while in the outdoor backstage area with Krist Novoselic, the bass player from Nirvana-- now playing bass with the band Flipper, who were the headliners at the East Bay party. He was such a kind, intelligent man, not to mention hilarious. One of the coolest parts of this experience was that rather than us tiptoeing up to him as someone whose work we admired, he approached us in an open, very friendly way to praise Destroyer's performance and tell them how well he'd thought it had gone. Knowing us, even if we'd been able to figure out who he was, we would not have gone over to fawn and swoon, I'm sure (at least I wouldn't have) because of fear of seeming obnoxious. It was very cool that he was so inviting and friendly and wanting to chat. Mark did have an opportunity to mention that it was an honor to meet him, and he was completely gracious in response. We actually had an extended chat with him, so I have to upgrade this from a "meet" or an "encounter" to a "hang out," if I may be so bold.

He had been very amused by the fact that during soundcheck, Mark's band happened to pick "Christine Sixteen" to play, at the same time as a group of prepubescent girls were doing all these acrobatic maneuvers on the lawn right in front of them. Now, don't think he had a dirty mind: the lyrics to "Christine Sixteen" are disgusting and it was impossible to watch the young girls flouncing around without being totally amazed at Destroyer's either A)chutzpah or B)shocking obliviousness. I was thinking the same thing and wondering whose idea it was. Krist Novoselic was apparently a big KISS fan when he was a boy and when we talked with him backstage he enjoyed discussing his favorite humorously filthy lyrics by KISS and also AC/DC. But we also discussed our upcoming hopes for the election of Barack Obama and the scary yet not hopeless conditions of things in our world today, and so don't think the whole conversation was lewd and lascivious.

I enjoyed being out again at night, mostly, I think. Some of the event staff gave me the job of turning women away from the ladies' room while Mark's band changed into costume in there, and that was a bit stressful for me. You can imagine how badly the ladies want to get into the ladies' room at a concert, and while I was saying, "Sorry, a KISS band is changing in there," they had a really hard time accepting their rejection gracefully. One lady demanded to know why the KISS band wasn't changing in the men's room, and my answer--that the mirrors weren't big enough--made her sorely disgruntled. Then Jonathan told me I ought to be saying, "The toilets are broken," instead of making every single woman at the concert angry at the KISS band, and that did seem to be a more effective strategy, despite it being a lie, which makes me uncomfortable in general(being a terrible liar).

I was amused by hearing one of the ladies I had turned away telling her peers in a whisper, when Destroyer took the stage: "You wouldn't believe it, but they're all actually women."

I always feel a little nervous before one of Mark's performances, anyway, and there were some things that went wrong that set the band themselves on edge-- such as Jonathan's last minute wig panic (no wig--a very serious problem when you're supposed to be Paul Stanley). Jonathan ended up having to wear Mike's wig (the drummer), so he was wigless as Peter Criss. Then, it seemed like there were a few technical difficulties at the show, such as Stone's having trouble lighting his fireball and Mark's smoke bombs falling off the gum on his guitar. And because they started late, searching for Jonathan's wig, they were made to stop their set before they got to play "Rock and Roll All Night." BUT, despite these problems, the show went really well and it was fun for me to observe, from the audience, how thoroughly the band won the crowd over, so that by the end they were screaming for one more song and audibly disappointed when it didn't happen. This band is just so much FUN, truly (not just because I'm biased).

There were a few minutes when I felt tired, and old, and not up to being a band wife anymore. But what a day I had! I was out all day at my class, from 10:30 to 5:30, then I went straight to Mark's show and didn't get home till after Daisy was in bed. (And did I mention that I hung out with Krist Novoselic backstage? Eh? EHHH?) This must be a first, I think, since Daisy's birth. I missed her, but it was exhilarating to have had such a day.

How strange to think that only a few short years ago, pre-Daisy, I used to stay out all night on a regular basis, sometimes till 5 AM. Things sure do change. Huh.

Some exciting days, part I

I am feeling more upbeat about my future than I have in years, and this makes me a little apprehensive to write about it. I worry that trying to pin down exactly why I am more hopeful will fix the feeling down in mundane language and kill it, somehow. Nevertheless, I really do feel like saying something about the last couple days. I am two days into my three-day class on psychotherapy as a career option, and even though the class has been a flawed one from my perspective, I just feel re-energized, somehow, by the experience of being back in there in the flow and exchange of ideas, and re-awakened by the fear and anticipation of possibly going back to school and starting a new career. All my worst fears came true: we DID have to hold hands, and we chanted sayings at each other, and drew with our left hands, and meditated, and stood in a circle making spontaneous sounds and movements. Our teacher told us she has clients try to remember their own births. On the theory that we might not have been welcomed properly into the world, hence our psychological problems, we all held hands and welcomed each other. It was kind of nice, or it would have been, if I weren't so lame and always using irony to distance myself from heartfelt emotions. I can see that there's a big following for this kind of "right brain" activating exercise, and I honestly don't mean to denigrate it, but it's just not me. I have to believe there is room in the psychotherapy world for me and my more "left brain" ways--though I also think I can learn and improve my spectrum of responses by opening up to some of these new ways.

Despite the activities that just didn't fit me, I feel, overall, more hopeful about this career path than I did before. I met a few students in the class who are more like me, and even whose stories about how they got to this class are quite startlingly similar to mine. We went around the room telling our stories, and after I told mine, one woman spoke up, saying she really felt she should go next because hers was so uncannily like mine: she had gotten a history Ph.D., had a father who was a history Ph.D. who had had a great influence on her choices, had discovered that the academic life wasn't very comfortable for her, and now has a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and is interested in possibly embarking on a career as a therapist... and this daughter has a flower name like mine. AND: we ordered the same lunch, two days in a row, without consulting one another.

The whole experience of going to the class has been so... re-orienting for me, so bringing of new energy. I have loved getting up in the morning and going downtown on the Geary bus to the building where my class is held, and mixing and milling with all the people downtown-- so different from my usual days out here in a quiet, less populated part of the city. I have loved listening to other people, and taking notes, and thinking and feeling unexpected things-- even the uncomfortable or critical thoughts I've had have been welcome, as getting my brain moving again. I've enjoyed the lunch breaks and imagining myself part of this energetic downtown workforce, as such a different kind of life than any I've experienced. I missed Daisy, but I've also greatly enjoyed the bus ride home at the end of the day to see her again.

This experience has convinced me that whatever I end up doing, I need to do SOMEthing different. I was vaguely aware of being a little depressed, even though I do adore my time with Daisy, but I now feel much more certain that I need time devoted to cultivating my own self, as separate from Daisy. It has just brought me so much energy and hopeful feeling, and I'm sure it will make me a better mother, too-- because when she's had a hard time, I haven't felt as frustrated with her or as despondent, because there's something else going on for me that lifts me up, instead of feeling like however Daisy's feeling on a particular day completely makes me or breaks me (if she has a crabby day, then I usually feel crabby because my entire sense of self-worth is invested in how I'm doing as a mother). When she was crabby these last few days, I didn't feel so entirely cast down by it, and although I wanted to help her feel better (of course), I still felt happy because of other things that are going on in my life right now. I wasn't crabby, in other words, just because she was crabby.

And now only one burning question remains to be resolved: what should I do with my left-handed pastel drawing? I will never be able to throw it out, since it is the emblem of my "rebirth." Maybe I'll hang it on the wall next to Daisy's fingerpaintings.

Trying something

Well, after talking about it for many months (years?), I finally signed up for a course-- a 3-day workshop through Berkeley Extension on career options in counseling and psychotherapy. Have no idea what to expect. Am terrified by the thought of day-long sessions in which I will probably have to do major soul-searching and talk to strangers intimately. Want to recoil within myself just describing it to you. I hope we don't have to hold hands. Mine are just way too sweaty.

Students

I am constantly thinking of changing careers. I could write many paragraphs about this, but since I have a ton of grading to do tonight (final grading) I'll try to sum it up briefly: I care very much about my students, but I struggle with a lot of feelings of inadequacy and just plain discomfort in my role as a teacher, particularly as it relates to the performative aspects... getting up in front of them day after day to try to be brilliantly illuminating while simultaneously hilarious and captivating, and all on the subjective, elusive subject of "good college writing."

Anyway. I am always thinking of changing careers. And then the end of the semester comes, and no matter how many times it's happened before, I am surprised and touched by the reactions of my students. Several of them wanted to take a picture with me, many of them told me they'd miss me and the class, and I got quite a few sweet and moving emails from them. And today I found out one of my students won an honorable mention in USF's student writing contest, for a paper she wrote for my class-- not a small feat, considering she's a freshman in a required writing class and the contest is open to all students at USF, including seniors writing for classes in their majors.

So I am currently feeling warmly disposed, both toward my individual students and toward the profession. It's just that I know I can't keep going the way I have been, can I? As a perpetual adjunct? It's worked for me so far, because for a time I was working on my dissertation and teaching part-time, and now I am being a mother and teaching part-time; so part-time seems okay, at the moment. But I always feel like I need to show my commitment to the career by applying for full-time work, or else move on to something else...and I just don't know what to do, for all kinds of reasons.

One thing you can say for motherhood

Whether it's currently more joyful or more frustrating, more ecstatically wonderful or more teeth-knashingly difficult, it never feels unimportant.

Crazy, crazy man

Our former manager, who was removed from his post, has been doing little acts of vandalism around the building to try to make life harder for the new manager. He is a crazy, crazy man. Last week he broke the doorknob off the elevator door and left it sitting on the bench outside. Was I there to see him do it? Well, no. But I do believe it was him. Why? Well--the backing to the doorknob was missing, so whoever removed it took one of the parts away with him. Also, it had been removed by force, the new manager told me. And the person who removed it did not call to report the damage to the new manager (if anyone else had done it, accidentally, they would have called to tell him, I AM SURE).

Our new manager (who is nice, sane, and reliable) told us that there have been other acts of vandalism around the building, always occurring in the wee hours of the night/early morning. I do believe it is he, the crazy man, who is doing it. He has also been tearing down any notice the new manager posts in the lobby, so that the new manager has taken to printing out individual copies for every unit and slipping them under our doors, instead.

I never see him anymore-- not even standing up in his window, staring at the women in the street with his binoculars, the way I used to. In fact, I have only seen him once since he was deposed, but it was in a sort of creepy way. I saw him come RUNNING out of the front door, in a crazy and agitated sort of way. I don't know if this sort of thing translates verbally; maybe you have to see it to understand why it is creepy. Most people don't come running aggressively out of the front door. It really struck me, in that instantaneous kind of way you can detect sometimes when there's something wrong with someone by their nonverbal cues, something about the way they're moving or carrying themselves that is just... off, or wrong for the context, or something. After I saw him come running out, I hid in my car till I thought he might be gone. Then I went into the lobby. But, I was unlucky; he came back in, with the same air of being in an enormous, aggressive hurry, walked past me and the friend I was talking to, and smacked her four-year-old son in the side of the head as he walked by (the boy was wearing a plastic fireman's helmet, so it probably didn't hurt, but was still totally inappropriate, as this is the woman he was previously harrassing, who has since filed a police report against him). He didn't say one word to us.

Other people have had brief sightings of him. He ran into one of the other tenants and told him he planned to buy the building and evict us all. Fat chance, but still creepy.

Creepier still, our new manager told us of a recent incident in which he and his girlfriend were waiting for the elevator, which is an old-fashioned sort of elevator, a "lift," in which you can see through the chain-link fence around it the outline of the person who is coming down in it, as it comes. So they were standing, waiting, and down it comes, with The Crazy Man in it. When he lands, instead of opening the door normally, he KICKS it open. Violently. With his foot. So it narrowly misses the head of the new manager's girlfriend. If she had been standing a centimeter closer it would have given her a concussion. Or possibly injured a little kid, badly.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, The Crazy Man is tall and big and strong. And angry.

The good news is that everything he's doing is being reported to the owners, and apparently he's got one chance left and then they're going to try eviction; at least, this is what our new manager told me. Eviction is hard, and especially in this case, when, as I've been told, the Crazy Man is a Vietnam vet receiving government money to live in the building, which would make eviction harder.

So, we'll see.

Sad

It was hard going back to work today, and as I dragged myself into Lone Mountain (the building where my class takes place--a really gorgeous building, actually, with a great view of San Francisco), I had a sobering realization: I know the exact bathroom habits of all the other ladies who teach on Lone Mountain on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, I visit the same bathroom and see the same ladies. I have never spoken to them, and we don't know each other's names, but there they are.

I even know which STALLS they like to use. I am not kidding.

On the other hand

Daisy was literally a pain in the butt today. We were walking in Sutro Heights Park with my neighbor Robyn and her very cute son Eli. I was standing and talking to Robyn at one point, and Daisy was playing near a stone deer she particularly likes. I noticed she seemed to be getting kind of irritated by not having my undivided attention, but it was nothing too awful so I ignored her. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my upper thigh and turned around expecting--I don't know what. A small dog, maybe. I honestly don't think I would have connected it with Daisy if Robyn hadn't said, "She just bit you in the butt!"

So, there it is: my verbally precocious daughter bit me in the butt today, instead of using her language skills to express herself to me. I reprimanded her, but I was kind of shocked, as well as embarrassed, so I didn't have a clear disciplinary tactic in mind. I'm going to have to come up with one, though, because I want to send a very clear message if something like this happens again. This is the first terribly naughty thing she has done, and I was unprepared! It hurt, too. Really a lot.

Another annoying habit she's developed is not liking foods she previously liked (such as PIZZA), spitting out the food we give her, and handing it to us, saying superciliously, "THANK you." I wish I could better describe the tone... it's so prim and haughty, exactly like the tone an adult would use if she wanted to thank someone insincerely, being polite on the surface but fully conveying the sarcasm at the same time. "THANK you!"

Obnoxiously braggy post

I read in a child development newsletter today that you can expect most two-year-olds to be able to put two words together, and that at three they start to put three and more words together. This CANNOT be true. My girl has been putting more than three words together since 18 months. I know she is on the precocious side verbally (just as she was slow to develop some of the gross motor skills), but she can't be that far ahead. Today I recorded her (finally, on camcorder), reciting "Baa baa Black Sheep"--every single word, with no prompting from me. Okay, I had more obnoxioius bragging, but I have to go change a diaper.

How I know I'm out of touch with the younger generation

Today on the radio I heard Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend," and, just like the other times I've heard it, I felt shocked and embarrassed.

Philadelphia speech

I wanted to write to my blog today that I thought Barack Obama's speech today, in which he addressed the concerns people have over his association with Jeremiah Wright, was a great speech. I was wondering how he would deal with this potential obstacle to his campaign, and I was truly and deeply impressed by how he did. In fact, I think it may be the best speech I've heard him give yet. I admire the way he took the issue head on, trying to actually explain his reasoning for continuing to be in the church and for why he can't completely disavow Wright, instead of trying in a fake way to distance himself entirely from Wright or put some facile political spin on the whole thing. I thought it was brave. He spoke to his audience in a way that respected their intelligence--that assumed they could try to grapple with this difficult point in a real way, instead of needing some little bumpersticker answer to the whole thing, some simplified catch phrase to make the whole thing go away. He actually talked to us about what was going through his mind and how complex the issue is for him. As I was listening, I realized that I almost never feel this way listening to a mainstream political speech. He was saying yes, this is hard to understand, and not completely pretty on the surface, but let's look deeper and try to understand.

The speech was substantive and felt genuine to me. What he said about the contradictions and painful divisions within communities we're part of made sense to me. The things that make us up are not always comfortably unified, and sometimes the people most intimate to us say things that make us "cringe," as he put it, but it would be dishonest to say that they are not still a part of who we are, to pretend a total distance. I also liked the way he tried to show the context from which Wright's anger arises, instead of trying to write him off entirely as a nut case. He showed that that anger has reasons and justifications, even if he also needed to say he didn't agree with all the specific manifestations of it in Wright's sermons. The speech (the parts in which he remembered the struggles and injustices black people have faced in this country) was also an indirect answer to Geraldine Ferraro's insane comments about how lucky he is to be a black man in this campaign, or he wouldn't be where he is.

I wanted this post to be a lot better, but I am too tired now after my long day to do better, so I will leave it at that. I just wanted to record how surprised, in a good way, I felt listening to this speech-- that it wasn't what I had been expecting. I think I'd been expecting something less honest, more like a superficially indignant, politically necessary, total rejection of Wright (what most candidates would do). What actually happened, what Obama decided to do, was so much better than that. It was the kind of speech that asks that its listeners be nuanced thinkers whose minds can grasp complexities and make sometimes unexpected connections, and I am soooo not used to that after years of listening to dull, trite, talking-points oriented speeches that flatten and dilute issues and talk down to us like children.