The Only 2 Shuttles I watched Live - The Challenger and the Columbia

I was 14 when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. I was 14 when I was faced with the fact that even the most powerful technology created by some of the smartest people on the planet, could fail. That to trust technology, like the Challenger, was to trust 100s, likely 1000s of people, ones we will never meet, to not break our hearts. I was also traumatized. I watched as that rocket and it's shuttle shot off. I watched with the breathlessness of a 14-year-old as those pieces jettisoned in different directions ahead of white plumes of thick smoke, vaporizing the 7 crew members on board. I wasn't watching out of an avid interest in space. I was glued to the television because, like millions of school children in the US, I was actively taken along on the journey of teacher Christa McAuliffe as she prepared for her launch into space. The dawn of civilian space travel was upon us, and it was female. And I, as a Billie Jean fan, knew women like her mattered to my future. But she wasn't the only crew member. Years later I still feel deep shame that I cannot remember anybody else. I always end up Googling them: Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, and Gregory Jarvis.

I still can't watch footage of the Challenger. Nor could I, after that day, watch any other shuttle launches or re-entries. The instantaneous explosion of that day left no room for rational process, it hit me at the molecular level. I was turned inside out at the magnitude of the spectacle, even as I hadn't drawn any rational conclusions about what I was actually seeing. I still remember my confusion as I watched the shuttle blow apart, realizing now that my very wondering at what was happening, was itself a sign of death. Had the shuttle launched into space like an arrow, with the rocket body falling away, this would have been "normal". There would have been no attempt to understand because that would have been as it should be. Instead I remember thinking something wasn't right, but somehow my imagination failed me. I know that might seem strange. I mean it was an explosion so how much imagination does it take to understand an explosion? The damn shuttle was in bits. Billions of pieces chaotically rearranging the blue sky. But my brain couldn't put together the crew, (that mere hours, an hour, earlier had been waving on the tarmac) with nothingness. The person I had watched for months get ready for this moment, was no more. In seconds, 7 people had gone from vividly present to silenced. They marked that invisible line between life and death with a spectacular failure of human hubris. And human grit. NASA ground control checked in, reporters tried to come up with something to say, and the looks on the faces of the family members watching the launch, live at Kennedy Center, all are lodged, in no particular order, in my memory. But the sick feeling of realizing what those plumes meant, especially as I watched the horror on family member's faces, is something that has always been easy for me to recall. So, from 1986 forward I gave any Challenger memorials wide birth, and I avoided any other launches. That is, until 2003.

I was at a Communication Studies conference in Albuquerque, NM in February of 2003. I was feeling accomplished in both attending the conference and presenting my first paper. It felt like the dawn of a new era in my life. A sense of power and purpose and adventure attended my flight from Sacramento, my rental of a convertible Ford Mustang, and my presentation on the 1st wave feminist icon Inez Mulholland. Prior to leaving for my trip I had heard that I would be able to view the re-entry of the space shuttle Columbia quite clearly in the morning hours of the desert skies of New Mexico. The weather was going to be perfect. It seemed the right time to face my fears. I was in a cheap motel, my favorite kind, and in a place I had never been. The weekend brimmed with new beginnings for me as I immersed myself in this graduate school experience. Yes, I was with a man I should have broken up with a year earlier. He was a dangling modifier of sorts, awkwardly adding details to my life, but he was always good for an adventure, which is why he was there with me at all, and so we enthusiastically set the alarm in order to be up in time for the re-entry the following morning. I went to bed with nervous anticipation, both because of the conference and the Columbia viewing.

The desert morning was chilly and fresh so I dressed in the warmest clothes I had. Wrapping myself in the blazer I had brought for the conference, I aimed to hold on to the snugness I had attained in bed. Not just the warmth, but the safety too. I was nervous again. Anxious really. We waited.  Cups of coffee in hand, made in the motel room, we stared up at the wide and empty morning sky.  And then it appeared. The shuttle. Not the shuttle. Or not the shuttle as I had hoped, but the streaks. Those awful streaks, long and vicious. The plumes of white. So many of them. This time there was no confusion. I understood these marks against that vast blue. I knew how to read them. I felt so sick. I felt responsible. I had broken the covenant with myself. With the universe. I shouldn't have watched. And if my promise to the gods of human adventures hadn't been enough, my apprehension should have told me. Later I found out the crew had been doomed from take off, a tile or something had been broken off and had left the body of the shuttle vulnerable upon re-entry. I wept. It was so final. Like the Challenger. So goddamn final.

I have now and again tried to make sense of how these two shuttle explosions have affected me. Which is usually when confronted with the "break up footage". I know that when I unexpectedly stumble on pictures of the Challenger or the Columbia, I feel that ache, a tightness across my torso, a sudden weight in my stomach, even as my heart rises up and floats against my rib cage. The media anniversaries, especially ubiquitous concerning the Challenger, are events I actively avoid. I don't need them to be reminded. I cannot forget the tracing those shattered vehicles left, and how sharp and clear death is even when it baffles, when it exceeds the imagination. And the sky is always stunning to me in its vastness. I remember one clear day after a tennis practice at Sacramento City College, laying on the concrete looking up into the expanse, the blue was so sure of itself that not a cloud bothered it. It was as direct an experience of space one could get without leaving. An overwhelming infinity that pressed me against the ground even as my center fluttered from my vision shooting so high above me. I could barely stand after. I didn't need to look at that famous picture of Earth from space to know just how alone the universe might feel if we thought about it too much. To come back from space, at least in my mind, would be to find a center of certainty. A globe rich with color and life. Our blue home. That is something I also took away from those re-entries. I love my planet. I think this love, like other emotions we re-visit, are etched into who we are by what we go through. They are the visible marks of the ghosts that still haunt.

Challenger Crew:

Columbia Crew:

Trail Riding as Creative Art

While riding my 14.3 Morgan gelding (Mozart) today, I alternated between trotting and loping along on a beautiful stretch of trail and I kept finding myself on the verge of tears. Not big fat types of tears or anything, but feeling choked up all the same. And it dawned on me, that riding is kind of an art form, even if you are not in one of the disciplines. Riding is how I express myself, and I get to do it with my beautiful rescue horse with whom I have built a relationship based a kind of mutual assurance. We expressed that today. We jumped over small obstacles, and zig-zagged through a little shady Sycamore grove, and changed paces based on terrain (stones, sand, gullies, etc) and signals. He trusted me to stay seated and remain present, and I was trusting him to find his way and to carry us through even as I was alert to the beauty I was immersed in. The smell of the creek bed, the spring of his little body, the blue sky, insect swarms, and the sound of his hooves on the hard packed ground were my inspiration. You see, once you get to the point where you feel secure in the saddle, where you and the horse are moving as a balanced whole, you can start improvising and taking on whatever comes up. You blend your talents. I felt as much as I saw. I was untethered because he gave me height and wings.

I was riding with emotion. With creativity. I find myself swept up with joy mostly, but also there are elements of fear, exaltation, tranquility, and loneliness. Yes, even loneliness. But on Mozart I embrace where I am because things transpire much more quickly. I am who I am as I ride. When I cross the creek and look down for footing, when I look up across the grassy soft hills so I can get a sense of the space, when I briefly close my eyes to hear his hooves and the Black Phoebe. I am responding with what is around me. I am in communication with the dirt, the birds, the horse, myself, and whatever or whoever crosses my path. I remember once happening on a coyote crouching under a Toyon bush, her golden eyes met mine and she scampered off. I held my breath in that moment, and exhaled as I saw her disappear. She took part of me with her. Mozart didn't miss a beat. He glanced at her too, likely smelled her before he saw her, and continued trotting along. My heart rate, my breath, my skin, my brain, everything responds to these never ending series of moments that make up a trail ride. And they filter down into my emotional center. My core. My breath. Because it is my breath that keeps me centered and present. It is my best friend in finding a quiet seat and a quiet mind. 

Mozart and I, two different species, working together requires my physical and emotional lightness, and his trust. We create this experience together that, like theater, is there, but then gone. The creativity is in the doing of it, in the responding to what is around us, and in finding where to go in an instant. I've never thought about this before. There isn't art just in a dressage arena, or in a jumping competition, there is art happening out trail rides, the lowliest of the horse arts. It is an art with therapeutic value. Therapy through creation, through a mindfulness required for presence, centeredness, sensitivity, responsiveness, and emotional availability.

I was talking about this mindfulness as a zone for creativity, presence, and centered self-awareness with a friend of mine, Laurel Friedman. Laurel has started teaching Yoga as a practice for healing trauma. Yoga, like riding, is based in the idea of centeredness, breathing, and open presence to the moment. Facilitating this openness and presence is the breath because it takes us to our center and it also connects us to the world around us. I've taken a few Yoga classes with Laurel, and I am not a Yoga aficionado, but the connection to riding is unmistakable. Balance, mobility, stability, and flexibility are all aspects of Yoga achieved through deliberate movement and breathing and awareness. By drawing on a vibrant connection to our core created through this kind of movement I think we tap into our most creative selves. Creativity might not always result in an art gallery opening, or a book, or any kind of art that we perceive to be "art", but it typically widens our capacity for feelings and what seems possible. When I put up my saddle after riding, and relinquish Mozart to his own motivations, I walk away released, for the time being, from what "should be", and instead I am made acutely aware of the rich possibilities of right now.

Unhappy Walnuts

It was inspiration by way of nostalgia. I wanted to bake my mother's Bűndnernusstorte for Christmas dinner because other than the little individual pieces I could afford to buy on intermittent trips to Switzerland, I had not had this pie any where near my person (nor the smell of it baking) since 2008, the year Muetti ("Mom" in German) died. And I miss her every holiday season, well l miss her every day actually, but I especially miss her on the holidays where she would produce even more magic in the house than usual. There was the ever present braided bread Zűpfa, but I make that, the Christmas cookies that, given the large amounts produced, seem overwhelming to me, and then Bűndnernusstorte. Ah Bűndnernusstorte. It is a round one inch thick torte with a delicious thick crust, that is filled with walnuts and carmel gooey goodness. The thing is, I had only ever made it once with my mother because, well, 1) I was spoiled and usually just ate the goodies, 2) I was a tomboy and nobody was going to catch me dead in a kitchen, not even for Bűndnernusstorte, and 3) I was scared of creating the carmel-walnut center. On point 3 my mother was of no help. She explicitly warned me to stay away when she was creating it. And the one time when, as a young adult I made it with her, (I realized I better make it with her or I would never, ever know what I was doing once she had passed on), when it came to creating that deep brown, walnut and melted sugar center, I really watched in awe as she worked quickly to not let it harden to an unusable mass, and also not get any of the stuff on her skin. And again she reiterated how careful one must be to not ruin the center and also not hurt oneself. My fate was sealed. My cousins also didn't help matters because none of them made the cake either, rolling their eyes in my request to make one together saying, "Why? We can just buy one at the store. That tort is way too hard to make!". Good for them. Switzerland is the land of Bűndnernusstorte.  

This was the year I decided to stare my inadequacy and fear straight in the face. 2019 Christmas dinner would, by God, have a Bűndnernusstorte. My step daughter had moved in with us and she works in a kitchen plating desserts. So who else to help with that touchy, difficult walnut gooey center? It was a perfect converging of talents, knowledge, and context for me to taste my childhood. To combine the ingredients just as my grandmother had done, after all it was her recipe, and as my mother had done, so many times. To be suggested back to that kitchen at 1112 34th Ave in Sacramento, as the smell filled my home in San Diego. To be brought back to the sight of that torte waiting on the counter as we ate. To feel it's weight in my hand as I brought it to the table, like my mother had. Like my father had. Like my sister had. Like I had. We loved that torte. With Christmas dinner shopping list in hand, my husband and I headed off to the store to gather up our various supplies and in my mind, most critically, the walnuts needed for the Bűndnernusstorte.

"How much are those walnuts?" David asked in shock.

"Well, around $11 a bag." I said as calmly and as non-affected as I could. They were pricey after all. But damnit I needed them for the torte and so I was going to push him into the emotional space of sensing he was being the unreasonable partner if it killed me.  "We are making Christmas dinner, which is always expensive. It was like this last year when I bought the groceries. And everything is always more expensive at this store and you know it is. If we had gone to the other store this wouldn't be an issue." (It would have been an issue, but he didn't need to know that).

"I am NOT spending $22 for 2 bags of walnuts and then god know how much on the rest of the ingredients! That is like making a $40 cake for Christ's sake!"

"It is not a cake, it is a torte." I always tend to bring things back to specific instances of vocabulary failure when I feel like meaning is beginning to spin out of control. I don't know why I do this because it is not helpful. Of which his response was evidence.

"I don't fucking care what it is! Don't talk to me like I am some kind of idiot! What I do know is that $40 is too goddamn much for a cake!!!"

"OK. I just wanted to make my mom's torte, that's all" I said, trying to keep my voice low because people were starting to stare.

"Oh, wait. Is this some kind of sentimental thing? You miss your mom and so you want to make this cake?"

Now I was embarrassed, so I mumbled "Never mind, I will put the ingredients back and I will come get them later when I have my wallet." I felt like an idiot not just because of his tone or his volume, but because he highlighted my Achilles heel, my nostalgia. My tendency toward the sentimental.  I walked away with the golden ingredients to return them to their rightful place on the shelf.

"Don't you fucking walk away from me! Get back here now!! I want to talk about this!!! Barbara, I will leave this cart right here if you don't get back here." 

"You don't need to get them. I will get them later. Let's go." I said all of this without meeting his gaze, furious with his voice which carried our private exchange 3 aisles over by the cold cereals. 

With that David shoved the cart down an aisle and stalked out of the store. I followed him briefly to only, upon exiting the store, turn sharply to the left, down the side of the building, and out back to the labyrinth of the neighborhood. I would, I had decided, walk home. There was no way I was going to get into the car with that monster. Husband or not. 

I walked home, and he went, as is his wont, to his sailboat. It was a very quiet evening. The phone didn't ring and sleep was at a distance. Finally at 3:00 am I fumbled for my phone and called him. He answered in a single ring. "Hi". "Hi", he said back. "So what happened?" I asked. We talked it over. It turned out his questions about the walnuts initially had just been to verify their price, because he had been surprised. But then my response had pushed him to just dig in. He explained that his asking me about the reason for wanting to make the cake was a way to find an out of the conversation so he could just return to getting the walnuts. He was trying to create a door for us to walk through, but what I had experienced was a public humiliation. We apologized. We agreed to try to be better at talking things through in a way that was respectful.

So we made the torte. Mom's recipe called for it to be baked at 325 degrees, so we did, but I had forgotten an important bit of information, which was that the oven in my childhood home ran hot. SO, the torte baked for too long at a heat that was too low, which meant the crust was too dense and tough. Lesson learned for next time. The gooey walnut center? It was heaven. Perfect in every way. Just as I remembered. The only thing that has changed is that this torte is no longer just the Bűndnernusstorte. It is now also the Fighting Torte, or the Fighting Walnut Torte, as David told our Christmas guests. We all laughed as he and I recalled the story. 

It's funny how we fight over the smallest things because there are bigger things attached. My heart is attached to that damn Bűndnernusstorte because it comes with so much of me that I have to search for now. So much that I have to just rely on memory for. But with things like the Bűndnernusstorte that memory comes to life. I don't have to rely on just the immaterial memory because now I have the actual thing in front of me. I can experience my memory in a much more first hand kind of way. That is what materiality does. It brings the past into the present, but it also reconstructs that past so that those memories are more vivid. It is like adding color back into a faded photograph so that the details sharpen. And now David and I will likely always recount the unhappy Christmas walnut saga of 2019. And it will make us smile.

Emeryville Mudflats

I remember these sculptures and always anticipated them as we would head into Frisco (and yes the old timers born in San Francisco, like my dad, called it Frisco, and I am reclaiming it). I loved the whimsy even as my already environmentalist soul was worried about the trash. It is possible that at some point my dad made mention of the trash associated with the art, though I don't remember that specifically. And when I noticed it was gone I assumed it was for the sake of the animals that call the mudflats home, which I totally support. But that doesn't mean I am not grateful to the artists who made our drive fanciful or that I don't still stare wistfully out of the window to that muddy expanse when passing by, populating it with the sculptures of my youth.




Remembering the Emeryville Mudflats

What my horse has taught me

Building slowly, block of information by block of information, sometimes going back, but always considering what the horse needs to know, needs to feel before moving forward. Want a relationship? Do ground work. Want to ride? Make sure there are back muscles that can easily support you. Make sure that they know what you mean on the ground before you ever get on their backs. Set them up for success and you will win their trust. And with that trust so much more is possible.

Dog inspired thought

So grateful for quiet dogs. The only problem is when one of them decides to bark (usually Chucho...haven't heard Mags bark in over a year, unless it is in her sleep), it is only one or 2 barks at top volume, out of nowhere, and then silence. Reminds me of when I used to scream "Swing batter!!" at the top of my lungs from short stop, right as the pitch approached the batter. I now have a sense of how alarming this probably was. And I feel badly. Damn dog.

Maggie May and Chucho el Roto

Memory Tree

I am culturally Christian, to be specific, culturally Lutheran. To be even more specific, cultural ELCA. But that's enough of geeking out on the religious specifics. I'm an atheist now, or I am until I can think of something that suits me better. That being said, I do love celebrating Christmas. This is probably because I am culturally Christian (let's keep this simple), but maybe because it is the way in which there are specific sensory experiences that are part of my Christmas nostalgia. I especially love the act of getting a tree, putting it up and decorating it. All while drinking spiked egg nog and listening to Elvis Presley's Christmas album, Bing Crosby's White Christmas, and anything by Amy Grant. There is something intoxicating about the mix of music, nog, pine needles, white lights, and ornaments that take me back to before my own life.

When Tori, my husband's daughter saw my tree and carefully inspected the ornaments, asking about one's that caught her attention. She loved the electrical relay that my brother had, when he was less financially robust, turned into a Christmas ornament and given to me (in fact a number of us in the family received this gift). After a few explanations and musings over the ornaments, she said, "You don't have a Christmas tree, you have a Memory tree".

Sitting here in the glow of the trees little white lights, I have to agree. It is a memory tree. These ornaments are a conversation with the past. For example, I have 2 of some ornaments. Why? Because when my mother died I received some of her ornaments, ornaments that she had bought in threes...one for my sister, one for me, and one for her. I think she liked the idea that we each had the same of something on our trees. Also, when she bought things she really liked, like a cookbook, she couldn't help getting 2 more so that my sister and I could both have one. Looking at any of my two identical ornaments reminds me of this quality of my mother's. It is a memory of her, of her character, of our bond. Or I look at the 1960s plastic ornament of the angel (or it once looked like an angel, now not so much), and I am reminded of the Pennybakers and their endless supply of mixed cocktails and salted peanuts on the coffee table. Their fantastic and terrifying fights. Maryanne was German and her husband, John, was American, they met during WWII and he brought her home as his wartime bride. They were as different as night and day, but the one thing they loved equally were poolside parties with lots of alcohol, or coming over to our house for our various gatherings and imbibing on the good whiskey my mother always kept for when my uncle would come over. Maryanne was a cheerful person, whereas John sulked and brooded, a condition that worsened with the amount of liquor applied. Maryanne would just become impatient and unhinged with him. There is also the ornament that I picked up at a market in South Dakota. It is a dream catcher. The only one I have gratefully, because I am often embarrassed by the roadside kitsch us tourists partake in when on reservations though in the meanwhile not offering any real understanding or attention to what Native people have endured and are enduring. But I like this dream catcher because it was made by an elderly woman who pressed it into my reluctant hands, and I paid her directly, in cash. Somehow it seemed to make things better. My prized ornament, or one of them, is the one I made in Kindergarten for my mom. It has various dried pasta and beads not so skillfully glued to a piece of cardboard with my name scrawled on the back. I remember the pride with which I gave it to my mother, and the joy at seeing it carefully hung in the tree.

But it isn't just the tree with ornaments, it is the smell. The smell of the pine in the house, and the act of putting it up. These physical aspects of making Christmas happen help to conjure other trees, other tree trimmings, the people who were part of the Christmas story in our home. The tree becomes the heart of the home. A place where people gather to talk or, as in the case with my sister and I when we were children, to dream about what lay in those packages, especially those wrapped in the magic brown paper and tied with twine from Switzerland. The way the Christmas tree lights spill across the coffee table in the otherwise dark living room where I sit now reminds me of the way the multi-colored lighted star of my childhood tree refracted on the ceiling. I would lay on the carpet and stare up at the ceiling mesmerized by the design captured there.

My Memory Tree this year is as beautiful as any other. And today is the winter solstice in which Earth is tilting away from the sun, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. Tilting away from the sun, but ultimately moving us towards Spring. This shortest day of the year I sit here huddled with my Memory Tree in front of the Christmases of times gone by. My Yule log is these memories. They warm me. The remind me of who I am. They help me feel connected even as my Christmases have become smaller and smaller.

Layers

Today, when they pass, people see a middle age woman and an old dog. They weren't there the day the Los Angeles Pound had an adoption fair and that lady saw the little puppy stumbling around on short legs. In an instant, she was smitten. There is no way to know how these moments of falling in love arise so instantaneously, but arise they do. It might have been the sad eyes, or the ridiculous motion of a little body on uncertain legs, or perhaps the long ears. Whatever it was, within seconds of their connection, little did they know they would be with each other for the next 15 years. Today, when they pass, people see a geriatric dog, they don't see an athlete who could run hard and fast for miles, and leap across creek beds. They don't see the goofy girl who would for years entertain those around her by showboating her chase and throw skills, all by herself, responding with open mouth and cocked head at the laughter. They miss the dog that loved to look at you through the mirror and then back at you in person, wagging her tail furiously, as if she was discovering both you and the mirror for the first time. That trick would go on countless times, ceasing to get old. Today, when they pass, people see a dog that is remote in her advanced years. They weren't there in the truck with her and the lady, moving from house to house, from Los Angeles to Sacramento, Sacramento to South Dakota and South Dakota to San Diego singing songs, heads in the wind and holding onto each other. They don't see the dog who loved the lady's mom, staring longingly at her and putting her head in her lap for the soft pets. They don't see the pup that was ever watchful and knew exactly how to handle it when this mom died. She was a blanket for her lady that day, never leaving her side, head buried deep in folded arms. Today, when they pass, what people see is a middle age woman and an old dog, and what they see is true. Over the years, from young adulthood and puppyhood to middle age and the golden years, they have stayed together. They are a part of each other now. They are family, made of one strand. Sisters, mothers, and best friends. Woven together by time and experience and love. Today, when they pass, what people see is a middle age woman and a geriatric dog but what they might not know is that these are two souls who rescued each other.

Me and Bella circa 2011

"A" Begging

"I want an A", he stares at her with a kind of unstable urgency, unblinking, pupils wide. "I really like your class, I'll do anything." It's a week before the end of the semester, and suddenly it's dawned on him that he has likely killed off any possibility for an "A". "I think you are a great teacher. What can I do to get an "A"? He breathes these sentences together like he is walking a tightrope of thread, his desperation dangles precipitously over a yawning hollow inside of him.

"Well, you are getting a "C" for participation, as we've talked about, because of your daily and incessant cellphone use, throughout the semester, despite having both addressed this problem both to the class generally, and to you personally and..."

"I'm so sorry!!" he strains toward the instructor waving her off with his hand, her explanation like a noisome fly he has no time for. "What can I do to get an A? I work really hard."

Students mill around after class collecting their personal luggage for the day: keys, phones, backpacks, and even their thoughts. She can hear the final reckoning with class topics filtering back to her through the end-of-class noise. "My dad and I kind of have an either/or power relationship." "Did you hear about the study that said gender differences in power are structural, not natural?" They bustle out of the door into the teeming hallway beyond. New students are already arriving, unpacking their daily luggage or, rather, dumping it into piles on the floor, or on their desks, or both.

Stuffing her leather shoulder bag with her teaching paraphernalia, and nodding goodbyes to the other students, she manages the moment. Turning her attention to Nate, she privileges his ears with the classic, perhaps cliche refrain, "I don't give "A's", you earn them." She stares directly at him and says with as much clarity as she can muster, "You still have 2 assignments left to turn in, and those assignments will impact your grade. I can't predict what you will get on those assignments, but focus your energy on them"

Nate begs, "Can we talk?" His book bag and books lie in disarray around him, and his open notebook, hanging limply off to one side of the desk, is filled with doodling. The pages look slightly damp.

He has stepped closer and she can now smell his unwashed privacy. She can't see the pores in his face, but given his physical trajectory, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that she will eventually, be given this insight as well.

"What can I do to get an "A"?"

She now had managed her bag onto her shoulder, the thin strap cutting into her jacket. It was uncomfortable to carry, but its weight triggered her movement out of the classroom. "Nate, you'll just have to finish your work. You have 3 classes left in the semester. Finish the work." The 3 other students who had wanted to talk to her trailed behind. "Listen, I have to talk to these other students now, so email me if you have any questions about the assignments."

"OK, OK, OK. Bye! I'll see you next class! Thank you for your help! I'll do my best!! Have a good day!"

He melted into the background almost as quickly as he materialized at the front of the classroom at the end of every class. An anxious cloud of solid underachievement nursed by years of somebody (or bodies) doing his work for him, supporting him in his belief that he was not capable on his own. He leaned on that belief as he skirted the water fountain and shedded the conversation with his teacher. It landed somewhere on the floor behind him, propelling him forward as he careened into the next classroom. Just as he settled into the blue seat he usually occupied by the window, his English teacher walked in. He'd try a different tactic this time. He'd talk to him now, instead of after class like he had Professor Weber. That way, if he thought of anything else to tell Mr. Trujillo, he could re-visit the topic with him at the end of the class period as well.

"Mr. Trujillo, I was wondering, do you think I am getting an "A" in the class?"

Tired, the 30 year teaching veteran, looked up over his spectacles. He brushed his hand through his stiff curls. "I think so."

"Oh that's great!! Thank you. I love your class so much. You are a great teacher. I learn so much in your class, and I work really hard."

Mr. Trujillo nodded absently. Nate eagerly plucked his phone from his back pocket. He was a good student. He worked so hard. He had to tell his girlfriend.

Guns, guns and more guns

For the record, I am a gun owner. Not sure why I feel the need to front this information, but somehow I feel it is a fact that might enhance my credibility among the gun lovers out there. I will say, however, that I am not a gun lover. I am merely somebody who likes to be a well-rounded human, and that includes knowing how to hold, load and shoot, specifically, a bolt action rifle. I don't know why, but like driving a stick shift and starting a fire, it seems like one of those life skills I ought to have. Maybe it is being raised in the apocalyptic US culture that teaches me such preparedness means I could, in the event of a major catastrophe, drive a range of vehicles useful in survival situations and keep myself warm, fed and protected. At the end of the day, I see it as a tool. A tool I appreciate, but nonetheless, a tool. That aside, I do have dreams about my gun. Dreams of going hunting with my big brother someday. Bonding with him over the hunt and roasted deer after hours of crouching in some shelter. Maybe we shouldn't call them dreams, but more like daydreams. Those ephemeral thoughts couched in shadow and vague detail. But there is one place I never dream of bringing my gun, or dream of others bringing their guns, and that is in my classroom. Such "dreams" would, obviously, count as nightmares. And yet there seems to be a driving desire by politicians, and Trump most recently, to get rid of gun-free zones in school.

Let me start with this suggestion to Trump and those like him. Start with your events instead of in the schools where myself and my friends teach. If you are willing to allow guns into all Trump hotels, into your press briefings and frankly into any event that you host, then maybe we'll talk. But as far as I understand such events, the Inaugural celebration included, do not allow for guns. Political events that feature important political figures are often "gun free zones" are they not? I wonder why? I mean, if guns make us all safer why don't they start allowing firearms in the Capitol? It is interesting that those proposing gun free zones work at the Capitol, where security measures are tighter than ever for the average, ordinary unarmed visitor. Gun-free zones are for everywhere but where they work. "Open carry - but not here!" - that is the message from Republican lawmakers.

There are those who claim I would be safer, that my students would be safer, if there was an open carry policy in public schools. Let's, for arguments sake, agree. Indeed, having a ton of armed people in American classrooms makes students and teachers safer! Safer than what? This is where we have truly reached crazy land. How many Western, democratic nations, with a healthy public, need an armed citizenry to keep public schools safe? Is that the landscape we live in? Where our society is so dysfunctional that the only answer to violence in society at this point is that everybody takes up arms alongside their books? Our police are not enough? Americans are so awful that they cannot be trusted to to shoot up an unarmed classroom? That is the country we live in? This sounds more like the landscape of a failed state. Yes, in a failed state, I reckon guns are an imperative for keeping students and teachers safe. Images coming out of Rwanda in the 1990s come to mind. Or Syria today. Open carry in schools in a functioning state however is loony toons and clearly nobody is consulting teachers en masse.

I do not want to teach an armed student population. I have enough on my mind. The chances for a mass shooting in my classrooms are small. In fact according to the Psych Law Journal (http://www.psychlawjournal.com/2012/12/school-shootings-what-are-odds.html) there are about 2.46 such shootings a year. Granted the article accounts for K-12 and not community college, but I'll take the whole aggregate, even though on average there are less community college shootings in comparison. I have a higher chance of dealing with a person who is terrified of writing, than I do with dealing with a live shooter. I would rather focus on what I've been trained to focus on. I am not saying mass shootings are not a problem. They are. And there should be a concerted effort to dialogue with educators, mental health professionals and campus security to create a system that can identify a student in trouble, intervene before there is a threat and when there is a threat, have an updated policy on how to respond.

This is not a rant against gun owners, this is a plea for sensible and rational policy and gun rhetoric. Arming students and teachers is not a solution, it is madness wrapped in a nostalgic political ideology for the Wild West. There is a reason gun laws were enacted to begin with. I don't think most sane people are looking to prove themselves at another Hyde Park Gunfight or its more well-known but less deadly cousin, the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.

Pick me up before you go go

Today felt unmanageable.  Up so very early and still not enough time in 24 hours to accomplish what I should get done.  Coffee.  Early morning campus dash to my office.  The swimming pool beckoning, swim suit at the ready, but the clock is relentless and my tasks endless.  The swimming pool remains sequestered in the realm of possibilities.  More emails. At least my dog is relaxed on her little make-shift office bed.

Last night I had so many weird dreams...disconnected, anxious, bloodless, and disorienting.  That feeling persists.  The universe whirls by and I am running after the chunks that I am responsible for. Running, going, doing but not finishing anything really.  I get weird when I am like this.  Kind of crabby and melancholy and nervous all at once.  But don't ask me about it.  I'll cut you short without meaning to.  Nothing important going on here.  Move along.  Hell, I can't even get to my dentist appointment.

Early morning email from a friend of many years saying he had a dream last night and I was in it.  Oh the funnies.  We did silly, crazy shit back then.  He's smiling when he writes it, I can tell.  I smile too.  Starting off the day with a connection.  It's like that Star Trek thingy where the molecules (the transporter?) start putting the person back together after being teleported.  My molecules are sometimes not mine to manage.  Sometimes a ripple crosses the universe, the internet, the virtual whatever and rearranges me for me.  My nightmares from last night are suddenly spongy, like the surface of a leaky water balloon.

The day moves into a new phase off campus.  Car must be located.  I move through the well managed streets of La Jolla.  Suddenly a familiar voice shouts my name.  In a moment's notice I am picked up and ensconced in a car that had moments earlier been whizzing by.  No ceremony, just a casual celebration of spoken and unspoken threads of connection.  A friend from years back.  We talk excitedly about his prospects of becoming a father.  I've never seen him so relaxed.  So sure.  For a few moments we spend time together like we have all the time in the world and talk like we are picking up a conversation we started earlier that day.  It's like having a present given to you when you least expect it.

The email, me, the car, the 2 friends that actually know each other as well as me.  Here we are.  All together.  Making happies.  Picking each other up before we go go into lives that rarely include each other anymore.  And yet.  Here we are.  Making follies of nightmares.  May we live long and prosper.

Gaze respectfully...if you must gaze at all

I have recently realized (I'm slow) that what I have problems with are the practices of looking...looking at bodies racially, sexually, politically, according to size etc.  Even when it comes to the naming taken on in identity politics that demands first a practice of looking.  So, in other words we name ourselves as "Fat" or "Caucasian" or "Natural" or "Femme", etc we might be undermining social practices that can create invisibility and silencing, but we are also continuing to normalize ways of looking that condone a kind of objectification   Identity politics seems to reach a kind of cul-de-sac of activism because of this.  Not that identity politics are dead, nor are they useless, but practices of looking in many ways defy, undermine and damage empathy.  Practices of looking encourage the gaze of power because the person doing the looking is involved in evaluations that are produced within a system that has powerful social norming practices.  Visual media alone, to which we are subject to daily, makes a practice of highlighting bodies that are considered normal and abnormal...and oddly it seems, we willingly turn this practice back on ourselves.  We practice, in this visually centered culture, identity politics that take up the tools that normative media outlets use in order to try and re-define, for example, what is considered "normal" and "abnormal".  So we ask others to gaze at us in particular ways because, we hope, it makes them think about us, and allows us to re-insert ourselves where we have been ousted or silenced.  The result it seems, is that we end up reifying the looking and gazing that ultimately leaves out the experience of being, especially as connected to others.

Experience of being, you ask?  I look, I see and I experience because, after all, I am a product of Western culture where seeing is a part of my experience.  Fine, but that kind of experience is one that challenges a relationality demanding to be understood, nay to be embraced.   Porn, for example, is an example of this.  I have gone back and forth on porn...hetero porn, gay porn, feminist porn...you see...even in naming the genres, they are named by the ways in which we see the people in these categories!  Porn divides up people into body parts, sizes, predilections, etc. but doesn't remember the interaction, the experience of the people except insofar as they relate to one's own pleasure...These practices of looking are found in the most mundane day-to-day interactions and end up as political fodder (Obama's looking at the Attorney General).  Strangely it is the feminists who are considered radical because they take issue with Obama's comments on A.G. Harris' looks as inappropriate, rather than Obama's comment as a radical departure from the professional norm.  Sadly, the idea that professional behavior would not condone a boss saying, "She sure is a cutie" (Obama's comment in a nutshell), is clearly still a theoretical benchmark.  What feminists bring to light and have brought home (for me) in this Harris instance is that in the moment that Obama made his comment, Harris was turned from an Attorney General into an object of pleasure for men (or women).  We went from interacting with her ideas and with her, to looking at her.  Evaluating her based on her (in her case) attractiveness.  This constant evaluation of attractiveness is a practice of looking and one women in particular undergo.  We must constantly negotiate when we are being interacted with and when we are being looked at, and this happens so seamlessly it is hard to tell the difference at times.  And if we have a problem with it, and it (oops!) leaks out in a unacceptable way (looking "out loud" in a professional setting), it is the person who is looked at who is at fault.  She is too serious.  She shouldn't have been that attractive.  This can also be seen in a culture that still defends rapists the ways in which came to light in the media coverage of the Steubenville rape case.  NBC, ABC, CNN, you name it, employed discourse that highlighted the youth of the men involved, their "normalness" and their tragedy.  This is not to say that they are not victims in a way.  They too are part of a system that teaches them to be predatory in their gazing.  They are trained from a young age to look at women and evaluate them based on various categories of attractive (i.e. "slut", "lesbian", "easy", "virgin", etc).  We can see these men as belonging to us, to our culture and so when NBC airs a program that takes an "inside look" as to how the lives of the rapists had been upended by the accusation, we can sympathize with them.  This despite that the "accusation" that had video and audio corroboration by the rapists themselves (posted on the internet) laughing at the victim for being "dead" at the time of the rapes.  She was unconscious.

Looking is often done, in a noticeable and acceptable way, by the powerful.  People who determine the scope and parameters of looking.  And even as we try to change the terms of how somebody gets represented we don't look at why looking is important to begin with.  Because the practice of looking, the art of looking, if you will, its terms and so forth, are constructed by those with power, people who are disenfranchised are especially subject to practices of looking.  This is why we can talk about poverty porn, because we understand that the gaze on poverty is much like the gaze we have in passing scantily clad people, we look for our own pleasure.  We evaluate what we are looking at based against "normative" models and we appropriate the visual before us in whatever way we like.  We "rubber neck" with fear, loathing and lust.  In the United States, women of color have especially have to endure these evaluations.  Harris is probably not unfamiliar with this and neither are many others.  This is a land where colonialism laid down its laws and boundaries, and where rape was an acceptable tool to conquer unwilling natives, slaves, wives and employees.  This is what is meant, in part, by "rape culture".  This is why the girl who was raped in the Steubenville rape case felt ashamed to come forward.  She had been looked at in a way that was acceptable.  She had made mistakes and was subject to the "natural" practices of over-wrought teenage men.  The culture condemns both, the men legally and her culturally.  She will always be viewed with suspicion and even hostility (which is why she has had to move away from Steubenville).  She engaged in the same drinking behavior as the men, but in her case she passed out.  The scale of power already normally in play shifted even further in favor of those who could now practice their looking unimpeded and act on that practice of looking.  In other words, the practice of looking was boiled down to its essential, the practice itself.

I am not saying any kind of looking, and it's kissing cousin, objectification have NO place, but that this is probably best left done between people for whom power and distance is no issue.  Or if the practice of looking is a mindful one, one where the looking itself becomes highlighted.  Objectification in this instance might even be fun.  Looking and gazing, once the current practice is substantially addressed, might even encourage empathy, rather than a pornographic overtone.  Looking or gazing will never be something that we can completely undo.  However is it possible in making ourselves aware of the practices of power we engage in when looking that we can produce a different kind of looking.  So the next time you find yourself evaluating someone else based on their looks, "positively" or "negatively" remember that you are probably engaging in a practice that inherently reflects the power of social norming behind it.  Gaze mindfully.  Gaze respectfully.  If you must gaze at all.

Fear

Fear makes a person do funny things.  Not "ha ha" funny, but strange-funny, sad-funny and even tragic-funny.  I have been thinking about this as of late.  Really I have been thinking about this since I killed a baby rattle snake in my yard two weeks ago.  There it was, curled up in the traditional rattle snake coil, except for smaller because it was a baby, no longer than a foot perhaps.  I had been gardening, vigorously pulling weeds in my front yard on a warm San Diego morning when my hand alighted near to the snake and my eyes near to my hand.  The rattling motion of the tail is what caught my attention as it varied from the overall stillness in the background.  The rocks, the dirt even, blended with the snake, but that rattle was shaking like crazy.  I have to admit that I was a little slow in understanding what I was looking at.  This is embarrassing for a person who has mentioned with some pride (on the appropriate occasions of course) that she is the daughter of a biologist and also considers herself to be somewhat savvy when it comes to the various wildlife available in this little nook of Penasquitos Canyon.  Certainly not someone afraid of snakes.  It seems however the moment I realized that what I was gazing at was a rattler I immediately came up with reasons as to why I should kill it.  In the meantime, in order to prove my own rationality was at work, thereby meaning my decision making was clear headed, I stretched out the little snake with the handle of my hand spade.  I contemplated the nose of the snake, the way it's tongue flickered in and out (perhaps smelling me?), it's length and the way it's tail moved though I could not hear any actual rattle noise.  In my rational contemplation of the characteristics of the snake I did allow myself some room to be surprised.  I had never thought of this particular detail before, namely that a baby snake's rattles are not audible because they are not dry enough or big enough to make sound.

Once complete with my various speculations of the snake, (speculations is a generous word for a process that took no more than a minute) I summarily drove the pointed metal part of the hand spade through the rattler's neck, directly behind it's head.  I was surprised that 1) the mouth opened in response and 2) that the dirt beneath the snake and my spade gave way, which made for a less clean cut, if you will.  During this time I continued my reasoning that had commenced with my earlier speculations, that this snake was surely a danger to not only myself, but also my dog Bella.  That even if I took it down the slope of my property and placed it in the canyon, that it would somehow make it's way back up the slope, into my yard and kill either Bella, me or both of us.  After all, as we know, baby rattlers are the deadliest.  They don't know how to control their venom and so inject too much and invariably kill their target.

Once the snake was dead I immediately began to feel shame, but this did not stop me from continuing to pile on more fear laden actions.  Instead of burying the dead snake, so that the thing that it now was, could properly decompose into the earth where it lay and be eaten by the various happy bugs, I subsequently picked it up and plopped it into the garbage can.  Now, I reasoned, it could not attract rodents and other undesirables and wouldn't smell or be dug up by my dog.

Fear.  Not just reactionary, protect-yourself-now kind of fear, the kind of fear that is somewhat forgivable (even if you can feel chagrined about it later, depending on the circumstances), but rationalized, well thought out fear.  I never knew I was capable of that kind of fear.  That is the kind of fear that ends up contemplating the most irrational means for the most improbable ends.  The concentrations camps of Nazi Germany come to immediate mind.  But also the death of Matthew Shepard.  And the pre-emptive war that keeps us safe from something(s) but we're not sure what.  I am, it appears, capable of that kind of fear.  Now I am not saying I could rationalize killing 1000 people tomorrow, but give me time and under the right circumstances, the right "conditions of possibility" perhaps I am no better than George W. Bush or Pat Buchanan or that more "irrational" idiot who accidentally shoots an intruder who turns out to be his wife.

Since that day out in the garden I have determined to arrest my fear.  Come to terms with it.  Understand it.  Not that fear is always useless, but I have come to believe that much of the time it is a hold over emotion and response from a much older human ancestor.  I won't speculate as to which human ancestor as there seems to be some dispute in the Neanderthal connection.  Regardless, pre-historic ancestor no doubt.  In other words, most of the time fear should probably be dealt with as being fundamentally irrational, no matter how many fancy words you put to it.  A survival instinct.  So far nothing dramatic has happened with this new awareness of fear, except that I am perhaps more sympathetic to people who are afraid and respond in anger or self defense.  I am also taking some risks again.  For example I have not written in this personal blog since 2010 and I am picking it up again.  I have put the surfboard in the water and attempted to catch waves, not just ride on the foam that I catch after the wave breaks...the result being I have both caught and ridden 3 waves now.  I trust my partner more instead of live in the fear of old hurts morphing into new ones.  I also want my politics to be kindness.  Fear more often then not, does not encourage kindness.  So now I am learning to embrace my fear and look at it, understand it and then let it go.  I hope by doing this I'll have more time to "live the dash" in my life.  1971 - ?  That dash is what matters now, not the question mark.

Sleep

Sometimes it comes in a rush, dunking me under in a cloudless, dreamless black that shrouds me until morning. Other times, it hovers, playing with me. When sleep hovers in this way, like a shadow or a Puckish geist, then every sound is amplified and every thought seems to stomp through my brain. There is no gradual “falling asleep”, but instead there is a thrashing into sleep. And a battle ensues with that day’s happenings or perhaps a restless careening from one memory to another. The worst sound in the world during such epic sleep wars is the ticking clock. The constant reminder, the rejoinder to the wakeful and stomping thoughts, that morning will be here soon and you will be abused by sleeplessness all the following day. The sheets slip by me as I move on my narrow, single mat on the floor. There is not a lot of room for error here. Too much movement and I end up on the floor, next to my empty beer bottle (or on top of it) and paperwork and books. The fall isn’t far, after all it is just a mat, but nonetheless falling out of bed is never pleasant. There is something inherently unsettling about falling out of one’s bed. Sleep should be still and deep as a pond in shade. The beautiful creatures crash around beneath the surface, but the stillness of the place is intact. The wasteland of wakefulness when the body is tired but the mind won’t quit. Junk churns out of impossibly twisted mental meanderings. In one moment I am wondering if a mosquito is overhead and in another moment I attend to a conversation I had with a student earlier in the day. Suddenly the neighbor dog barks and I am forced to recollect I have to take Bella to the vet regarding the bump on her head. This thought sends me into a tailspin on Bella’s health, mortality, love, belonging and so on. Sleep is elusive in moments such as these, no doubt, which marks my longing all the more profoundly. I sink down, covered in feather duvet up to my chin, curled on my side, wondering when this most natural of acts became so damn difficult.