On Woodstock – 2020

I have a file on my desktop entitled “Woodstock Essays.” It’s full of documents that I intend to write, that I have begun, some need editing, some have been edited to death, some are finished. I’m reading more these days rather than writing. Writing requires your brain to cooperate with your fingers as you type and it requires one to think mindfully about the past, the world, life, and, perhaps, to contemplate how all of these things help us operate and, hopefully, evolve, progress, and move forward. I’m working this summer more than I have in summers past as we contend with how to teach online and #BlackLivesMatter and the fact that I am a race scholar who must distill the current climate and impart it to my students in a few short months in a cohesive and hopefully elegant fashion. I am mindful of the fact that I need to make an impact more so than at any other time in our history, my history.

Life is still full of small, sweet moments even in the time of Covid-19. I have more time to spend with friends and neighbors, people who have become family over the past few months. I have been to the beach several times and seen the ocean, when wanderlust gets the better of me and my only option is to drive an hour and a half away to watch waves and see the immense possibility that only the ocean provides, at least for me. I can be home with my dog every day, whom I love like a child. I have the option of doing nothing all day or a few things that will hopefully make the world a better place when we emerge from our shelters. I relish my quiet mornings with coffee and emails and Twitter and the news, when I don’t have to rush to be anywhere, even though I always want to be anywhere but here. I’m learning to be grateful for the seemingly inconsequential moments that make up a day in what has become the year 2020.

But I will not be going to Woodstock this year. This would have been my seventh year at my writing retreat, a refuge that provides me not only a place to write, but a place where I can spend time with like-minded creative and wonderful-for-the-world humans. That week every year is where I find my center, where I re-calibrate, where I create words on a page that will ultimately, and hopefully, become my next book. I am missing my fellow writers and poets and while we have been in communication over the past few months, we will not have had the pleasure of being in each other’s space, being creative and peaceful together, drinking too much wine, blowing bubbles, talking about the seemingly insignificant, yet so significant issues of the day that infuses our writing. Creativity feeds on good souls and well, those souls feed my writing and my spirit.

2020 has been a challenge, in many ways wretched and in others, redeeming. We have lost people we loved, we have lost a sense of who we are as a country and as a people, we have learned to be humble in the face of something bigger than us. But, we have also found grace where we thought we might not, we have found our tribes – the people who reach out if not with open arms – but open minds and open hearts, and we will, hopefully, find our way back to each other and to a place like Woodstock, a place where love and creativity resides. A place where hope has not been lost. A place where our souls re-calibrate and where, ultimately, we can emerge as better humans. While I won’t be in Woodstock this year, I have discovered that Woodstock really lives in me. I wish I could take you all there.

In peace…..

A History of Racial Riots and Why Ferguson Matters Today

I wrote this in 2014. It’s worth a re-post. Here we are 6 years later. Still.

I was in Atlanta last weekend for the annual Southern Historical Association meetings, a city brimming with a rich historical past, from events of the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, and, notably, the home of Martin Luther King, Jr. On Saturday afternoon, as I was heading to lunch with a high school friend I had not seen in years, I witnessed a scene that happens daily in every major metropolitan area of the country.  Two young black men were walking down the street talking when a police car drove by, then circled back, stopped, and apparently asked them for identification.

As we drove away, not knowing the circumstances surrounding this particular police stop, my thoughts went to Ferguson, where the grand jury was still deliberating the fate of Officer Darren Wilson.  In what was surely a poorly timed announcement late last night the country learned that Officer Wilson would not be indicted on any of the five accounts for the murder of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown.  The city of Ferguson quickly erupted into chaos as peaceful demonstrators took years of anger and frustration to the streets.

Incidents like this do not happen in a vacuum nor are they spontaneous acts of “thuggary” as the media would like us to think.  As we learned from the McCone Commission in 1965 charged with looking into the Watts Riot and, perhaps more importantly, the Kerner Commission in 1968, there are systemic causes behind the riots that still exist today – residential segregation, substandard housing, high unemployment, and distrust of police in predominantly black neighborhoods.  In 1965, when Marquette Frye was arrested during a “routine” traffic stop, more than 200 onlookers watched as a scuffle broke out between Frye and a white police officer leading to one of the most explosive and expensive riots in American history. In 1965 Watts, where the population density of blacks relative to the rest of Los Angeles was incredibly high, unemployment for black men stood at 34%.  Most notably, in an area of the city that was 98% black only five of the 205 police patrolling the neighborhood were black.

Similarly, in 1967, in Newark, New Jersey, routine police harassment and a lack of political power led to yet another costly riot.  As the Kerner Commission noted after the riots in Detroit and Newark, America was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.”

According to Michelle Alexander’s New York Times bestselling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, we are still a racially divided nation, even more than four decades after the civil rights movement proper.  As recent studies have shown, blacks are more likely to be arrested in almost every city in America for every type of crime.  And as noted in last weeks USA Today investigative report, “Racial Gap in Arrest Rates: ‘Staggering disparity’,” in Clayton, Missouri, a town that is only 8% black, African Americans constitute 52% of those arrested.

As a political activist and a pacifist, I do not condone any type of violence, yet I understand that when marginalized groups of individuals feel dispossessed and without a voice, they have, historically, taken to the streets to bring attention to the problems that they face everyday; problems that most of America are either not aware of or turn a blind eye to.  As was apparent in President Obama’s prosaic address to the nation last night after the verdict was read, we do not, as a country like to talk about race.  But it is a conversation that needs to be had, despite the fact that we elected an African American man as our Commander in Chief.  What happened in Ferguson is an example of “the straw that broke the camels back.”  It is not indicative of the trope propagated by the media of a black community that is persistently violent in the wake of not getting their way.

As was the case in 1960s America, police-community conflict continues to be the underlying cause of much of the racial unrest in our urban communities.  Problems of inner city black America are real, economic dislocation among other problems are in dire need of immediate policy attention.  If we really want to address the issues that created Ferguson, we need to be honest with ourselves about the racial disparities that continue to exist in the United States.  Only then can we move towards a post-racial society.

 

 

On Chefs

On Chefs

I seem to have an affinity for the most dangerous, the most morally suspect, and the most wicked people, particularly when it comes to men. Men with foul mouths, tattoos, motorcycles, leather jackets. Men who smoke too much, drink too much, love too hard and too fast, and fuck like rock stars. I gravitate towards the ones who are the most problematic, to say the least and, completely unavailable, to state the obvious. Men who smell like booze and cigarettes, men who reek of decadence. Men who are both handsome and witty, salty and sexy. And for all of these reasons, with more than two decades in the restaurant business behind me, when I entered academia I left in my wake a trail of chefs. (It is also the reason that I have had a two-decade love affair in my head with Anthony Bourdain, the only man who has ever truly smashed my heart into pieces when he took his own life last year.)

Food is love. It’s why I love chefs. Talented chefs. Chefs who appreciate how food makes people feel; food that transports us to another time and place; food that conjures memories of times past. Chefs who are so passionate about food and what they cook that it reveals their souls. Food is sensual. Food is love. And because I love food, I love chefs.

Let me tell you about the relationship between bartenders and chefs. Bartenders are not like other “front of the house” staff. We operate in much the same vein as the back of the house staff do, albeit more visible than cooks, but equally as essential to how a restaurant operates. We are also as dangerous and morally suspect and wicked as those in the back. We drink while we work, much as chefs do; we seduce patrons with our concoctions, much as chefs do with food; we serve sex in a glass, rather than on a plate; and, like chefs, regular folks flock to us because we are somewhat of a mystery. Subsequently, you will find that chefs and bartenders are drawn to each other for the sheer fact that while we appear mysterious to the people who patronize our establishments, we are not a mystery to each other. We quietly and resolutely move in and out of each other’s realms in what can only be described as a seductive dance between the most important person in the back of the house, and the most important person in the front.

The first chef I fell in love with was my father. What I remember most about my father when I was child is that he always made us the most delicious food, on the grill, in the kitchen, with love and humility and skill; he still does to this day. I could feel his love through food. I would rather eat in my father’s house than at Le Bernadin or The French Laundry or at any place that doesn’t exude the love that his kitchen does. Food is love. Also, he made me a bartender when I was a small child and well, chefs and bartenders have a special relationship.

The second most important chef in my life is my brother. He went to culinary school at age 24, armed with a new GED and a sense of how important food was to who he had become. My brother is all of what I described above. He has a wry, dry sense of humor. He’s extremely well read and well informed about the world. He listens to the best music (we went to Grateful Dead shows together when we were younger) and loves to make food for people he loves and even, at times, people he would rather spit on than serve a well-done steak. But he does it, because he loves food and food is love.

And then, when I found myself back in Bowling Green after a failed attempt at life in Washington, D.C. (the first time) I met David. I found myself back at the sports bar where I had worked three years prior as an undergraduate student and David was best friends with one of my favorite bar backs, another David. David was sexy and young and had the body of Adonis. David played volleyball in the self-made sand volleyball pit he and his roommates had created in the house next door to where I was living. He had just graduated from college and had been accepted to the Culinary Institute of America, which made him ever the more appealing in my eyes. I knew what the CIA was and because I was a bartender I loved chefs. We spent a beautiful six months together in flat, boring Ohio talking about food and drinks and where we would travel and then a year apart while he studied at the CIA. I love to visit him in Hyde Park, breathing in the beautiful grounds of the campus and eating the best foods I had ever tasted and, of course, having the best sex of my life, because well, chefs and bartenders go together and we fuck like rock stars.

David had his choice of externships: Working for Alice Waters in California or working for Charlie Trotter in his new age kitchen in Chicago. David was a good chef. He was better than good; he was talented and his love for food made him stand out. He was an up and coming chef in the newly emerging Food Network world of cuisine and it showed in the fact that he had his pick of places where he could work in a kitchen for six months to hone his craft. Ultimately, he chose to work for Emeril, the newly famous “Bam” chef who had recently opened up a restaurant to rave reviews in New Orleans, the site of all food decadence. And so, after a slew of bartending gigs and lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., and trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life, I decided to go with David to New Orleans.

New Orleans changed the trajectory of my life. I will never question my decision, even as a raging feminist, to follow a man to a place that was unknown, the only time I ever made that decision and probably the only time I will ever do so. New Orleans is still, to this day, the only place that when I am entering airspace, when I can see the Mississippi and see the Superdome from the plane and can sense the humidity in my bones, I feel that I am home. New Orleans has been my home since I moved there with David in March of 1996. David, however, felt differently about New Orleans. Working for Emeril was difficult; the hours were long, the work was hard, and while he did, in fact, hone his craft, he unfortunately, ended up not appreciating the city and all of its nuances as much as I did. He ended up leaving and I ended up staying because I, as a bartender with much more time to take it all in, got what New Orleans was, and still is, all about. I embraced the culture with a bear hug-like jubilance. And it wasn’t just the food that I fell in love with. I let city’s history and love of music and all things beautiful flow through me; part of an appreciation for the arts that has always been part of my DNA. I soaked in idiosyncrasies that are an intimate part of everything New Orleans. I breathed in the night Jasmine that bloomed in the spring and the stench of Bourbon Street in the early hours of the day when I made my way to Café Du Monde for Beignets and Chicory coffee. Mostly, I loved the whole “laissez le bon temps roulez” (let the good times roll) spirit that enveloped the city and its people, with a ferocity that only rivals falling in love. I cherished the way laid-back New Orleanians moved around in a weary daze, slowly, but with intent because it’s humid every single day and if you live in New Orleans you are simply forced to take in the day as one takes in that sweet smell of night Jasmine. I was in love with it all.

I left New Orleans to attend a Ph.D. program in the northeast. I chose the farthest place from New Orleans I could possibly go. I needed to be grounded and serious and hunker down for what was sure to be a difficult three years of immersing myself in books and theory and pedagogy. New Orleans would always be my home, I told myself. New Orleans wasn’t leaving me, I was leaving it, like I had left the chefs, but this time it wouldn’t be permanent. It was only a layover while I became what I was ultimately supposed to become, a professional historian. Also, as someone who grew up in the Midwest, someone who had embraced the humidity the first year and enjoyed the wonder of what it was to live in hot weather for nine months, it started to wear on me. I wanted to be back on a college campus in the fall, experiencing the change of seasons, and cold, and the quiet that comes when winter settles in.

When I found myself back in Washington, D.C. in the winter of 2001, after attending graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, needing to be in the city so I had access to archives at the Library of Congress and Howard University, I went back to the “industry.” I started back working for the McCormick and Schmicks Company, an old-school steak house restaurant located in the central business district close to the halls of Congress where the politicians made secretive deals over three or four martini lunches. I was back working in a bar, but as a cocktail waitress where there were fifteen tables and booths and I was expected to work half the room while another waitress worked the other half. That’s seven tables apiece (we split the other one) in a busy, crowded, loud room that on any given day could be raucous yet manageable, or chaotic and completely unmanageable. When I accepted the position I agreed that I would work 3-4 days a week so that I could spend the majority of my time finishing my research and writing my dissertation. That schedule never happened as I found myself working at least five days a week, sometimes back to back or double shifts and even the dreaded “clo-pen,” closing the bar at midnight, getting home at one a.m. only to wake up and turn around to be back to open everything back up at 10am. Clo-pens are the worst, particularly when you’re trying to write a book.

So, about Chef #2. First, he was an asshole. The day I arrived in a new starched white shirt and ironed apron and new pens and an upbeat attitude he told me to ditch the hoop earring I had in my upper left ear. It wasn’t professional enough for a place like M&S Grill. I handed it to him and he promptly threw it in the trash. Yes chef. He constantly yelled at me for seemingly every little infraction. I couldn’t ring in orders to his liking. Yes chef. Customers don’t get special treatment, I don’t care if it is Newt Gingrich, because they want to substitute fries for mashed potatoes. Yes chef. Could I tell the bartender to make him a vodka, splash of tonic, immediately because this night was a goddamned shit show. Yes chef. Could I not come into the kitchen and ask him inane questions for fucks sake did I not know the menu by now and could I just answer the customer’s question without bothering him when he was in the weeds and didn’t have time for silly questions from the new girl. Yes chef. And then, one night, did I want to have a drink with him after work, after working a double-shift, dead tired and just wanted to go home and put my feet up and drink some wine. Yes chef.

His name was Rob. He was 6’2 with piercing blue eyes that looked like ice. His hair was prematurely grey for someone soon to be only 40 years old. He swore a lot, particularly in the kitchen and, notably at me, often. He drank, a lot, almost as much as me. He had tattoos. He wore a leather jacket. He chain-smoked. He was an asshole. He fucked like a rock star. He was intoxicating in his bad boy chef way. I fell for him. Yes chef.

There were rules about the chef dating the wait staff. Of course, we ignored them and for six glorious months had what can only be described as a mutual love affair with food and booze and cigarettes and coffee and sex. When I got incredibly sick one evening he made me the most delicious friend chicken and mashed potato dinner, comfort food, to ease my soul and my fever. He bought me a silver hoop earring to replace the one he so casually tossed into the trash my first day at work and bought himself a matching one to seal the deal. He still yelled at me at work, to keep up the pretense that we were not a couple even when everyone in the restaurant knew we were having carnal relations on the regular. When my bag got stolen out of the staff locker room, he bought me a new phone and a new Coach purse and anything else I needed that I couldn’t afford on a poor graduate student/cocktail waitress salary. And then, after I had quit M&S Grill and went to work as a bartender/manager for a friend with a much more reasonable four day a week schedule walking distance from my apartment, he left. No explanation. No conversation about what wasn’t working. No “this is how we end a relationship as adults” conversation. Yes chef.

With Chef number two in my rearview mirror I vowed to never, ever, under any circumstances, with a newly minted Ph.D. in hand and a visiting assistant professorship in the waiting, to date a chef. I slept with a chef or two here and there, because well, they fuck like rock stars, but no more love affairs with chefs. So, I dated a bar manager instead. Not a chef. We spent five years together probably not in love, but perhaps a mutual understanding that we were part of a tribe, since I never felt quite like I fit into academia. We drank and smoked and had sex, sometimes, and then I left because being part of the “industry” tribe wasn’t enough and I knew I wasn’t in love.

Chef #3. So, I had successfully avoided chefs for more than twenty years. Out of the “industry” means it’s easy enough to see them through the kitchen window, admire them from afar, pay your bill, and casually walk to another bar to end the evening leaving that chef behind. But then one showed up at my local haunt, the bar that I have frequented for years here in Bethlehem. The bar that is my Cheers, that has become my family. The bar that I call home on any given day and that welcomes me with open arms. I walked in on a dreary January day for happy hour to see friends I hadn’t seen in weeks as I had been spending the holidays with my best friend who lost her husband earlier that year, a man I loved and also considered my best friend.

“Who’s the new guy?” I asked.

“Joe,” was the response as we call everyone who works in the kitchen at Joe’s “Joe” since they seem to come and go casually and so frequently.

The new “Joe” was cute, bearded, goofy and smiling all the time, and as I would soon come to discover tattooed. Abort. He smoked a vape and interacted casually with the regulars, drinking with my friends at the end of the night, long after happy hour ended and I had gone home. Abort.

A few weeks later I arrived at Joe’s on a Friday at 4pm as I do when I am meeting the “guys” for “thank god it’s the weekend and let’s start it early” drinks. I sat with Shelly at the end of the bar and we caught up on the week.

“So, what’s his story?” I asked.

And then Shelly proceeded to tell me all of the things that once again reminded me why I should never, ever ask about the cook. Abort.

He went to the Culinary Institute of America. Two degrees. Abort. He worked in Boston for nine years. He had a restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard and then moved to Philadelphia and then back to Bethlehem where he’s lived for the last seven years. Abort. “He’s smart and interesting, albeit quiet,” she said as I looked at him with fresh eyes and the impending sense of danger that creeps up in me when my gut is telling me not to think the things I know full well I shouldn’t be thinking in the back of my mind.

Chefs are bad news Shannon. Abort.

But then I went out back to smoke a cigarette as Joe’s had recently become a non-smoking establishment and I found myself asking about his time in New England and telling him about my time in New England and thus began a friendship, once again, between a bartender/now writer/historian and a chef.

Every time I walked into the bar he beamed. He found reasons to be in the bar, not the kitchen, to converse or to be present. He told terrible jokes and I told him so. He fucked with the regulars and became integrated into the Joe’s groove. He stayed and we started calling him Pete and not “Joe.” We continued our outside smoking conversations, drawing the minutes out longer and longer each time, quietly and resolutely becoming more than simply friendly patron and chef. He began asking me if I was going to miss him every time I left through the back door to leave for the evening. And then one night, as I was walking out the back door, he told me that he was off on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with his wry smile and it was then I knew that I was falling back into chef mode and that he had won me over. I wrote my phone number on one of my business cards, holding onto it for a week fighting the urge to let another chef have full access to my life and, quite possibly, my heart.

Joe’s St. Patrick’s Day is epic. It begins at 9am and there’s breakfast and Guinness and Bloody Mary’s and Mimosa’s and revelry. We regulars gather to watch the parade (which was non-existent this year in the age of Covid-19) and spend the day wandering the streets of Bethlehem, always ending back at Joe’s, our home base. This year was sure to be our last hurrah as the threat of quarantine loomed over us. I sat with Shelly at the end of the bar, mild day, doors open, talking, watching Pete watch me from the kitchen down the long bar, watching Pete walk to the end of the bar where we sat to ask Shelly questions periodically, questions she later told me were unnecessary given what he had already knew and questions, which we know now, were simply a pretense to come to the end of the bar and talk to me. And when I left that evening, after drinking all day, and multiple Irish Car Bombs (which I admit I am too old to drink at this point), I pulled the trigger and gave him the card with my number on it. And then I said, “Tell me a story.”

So, this is the story, at least this is my story. We spent a glorious, love-full, intoxicating, couldn’t-get-enough-of-each-other month together. He told me he loved me the first week. He insisted on it even when I emphatically stated that great sex isn’t love. He insisted. He bought me a purple orchid because my favorite color is purple and I should have something beautiful living in my house, aside from me. (That orchid has since died; a metaphor perhaps?) He asked me to wear his necklace, his favorite necklace, a piece of meteorite on a chain, meteorite that had survived thousands of years, as our love would, and then he ordered another one for himself, sealing the deal. We discussed how neither of us had ever wanted to get married, and then all of a sudden we were planning a wedding in Vegas, getting married by “The King” himself, followed by a party at Joe’s where we met to celebrate our new love. We were going to buy a houseboat because both of us had dreamed at one time of living on a houseboat a la “Quincy.” We watched Money Heist and called each other Tokyo and Rio because like them, nothing would ever tear our love apart (spoiler alert, they split in Season 4). We drank and smoked and talked about future travel plans where we would eat and drink and have rock star sex in exotic places and experience the world together. When I finally relented and said I loved him too, I asked him to promise me he wouldn’t break my heart and he asked me not to break his and we pinky swore we would never hurt each other. We had rock star sex because chefs and bartenders are part of a tribe and this is what they do when they have found each other after all these years. I succumbed to something and someone that I promised myself I would never do again. I succumbed to a chef. And, this time, I believed that it was real and true and forever.

One month. And then he left, well not so much left as quietly stopped communicating. No explanation, even when I repeatedly asked for one. Nothing. I asked him not to break my heart and well, pinky swears never really held up when we were kids, so why should I expect them to as adults? One month. He broke my heart in one month. It was impressive. And that’s the story, at least my story because I don’t know his and maybe I never will. One month. I opened my heart for the first time in almost twenty years and convinced myself that chefs could be safe and could love and that this one could be different. Love in the age of coronavirus and all that shit.

Most days I’m not sorry. Most days I am enormously grateful that I could feel my heart again. For one month my heart was wide open and welcoming. I decided that to try and love again was a risk but it was a risk well worth it. I decided he was worth it. When a chef tells you that the stars aligned when you met, believe them, because maybe they did. But! And there’s always a but. Be cautious. The stars may have aligned, but sometimes stars fall and hearts fall with them. Love is hard and it’s risky and mostly worth it. Just don’t fall for a chef. They’ll make the stars fall every time.

What Charlottesville Tells Us About the Post-Feminist Moment

March 25, 1965 was a mild winter day for Alabama – 75 degrees – albeit accompanied by the normal Deep South humidity. The marchers were dispersing after hearing Dr. King’s speech on the capitol steps in Montgomery. 39-year old mother of five, Viola Liuzzo had joined the march after witnessing the horrifying images of civil rights marchers being beaten on the Edmund Pettis Bridge two weeks earlier. When she informed her husband that she would be leaving their white, middle-class neighborhood in Detroit to join the march, she stated, “It’s everybody’s fight.”

Later that evening, as Liuzzo drove Highway 80, shuttling marchers from Montgomery back to their homes in Selma, a car pulled alongside her. Shots rang out and her passenger, a black teenager named Leroy Moton, pretended to be dead. He would survive the attack; Liuzzo, who was shot in the face, did not. An investigation later revealed that the car who ran Liuzzo and Moton into the ditch was driven by and was full of KKK members, one of whom was an FBI informant.

Almost immediately rumors began to circulate about Liuzzo, later discovered to have been created by J. Edgar Hoover to detract from FBI involvement in the murder. She was called a Nigger lover who had left her husband and five children and gone south to have sex with black men, resuscitating the Jim Crow era trope of miscegenation that justified a majority of the lynchings committed against black men in the early 20^th century. Liuzzo was also accused of being a drug addict. Most notably, a poll taken by the widely popular Ladies Home Journal in July of that year showed that 55% of respondents said she was not a good mother ostensibly because she had left her children to participate in the march.

Fast forward to August 2017, half a century later, post-civil rights movement, post-Obama presidency, and post-second wave. Heather Heyer, a white, 32-year old paralegal is attending the march in Charlottsville, Virginia, in support of equality and to protest a White Supremacist/Nazi inspired gathering. Like Liuzzo, friends noted that she “was a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised who was often moved to tears by the world’s injustices.” And like Liuzzo, a half century later, she was standing up for what she believed in when she too was struck down, this time by 20-year old white nationalist James Alex Fields, Jr. Within days, the Alt-Right website, the “Daily Stormer,” notably read by Dylan Roof, the perpetrator of the mass shooting at a Charleston, South Carolina church, published an article disparaging Heyer, calling her a “burden on society” for being childless and stating that “Despite feigned outrage by the media, most people are glad she is dead as she is the definition of useless.”

Unlike in 1965, the social media response to the article and vile comments was swift; ultimately, Google opted to disband the site. Still, the backlash against Heyer, not unlike Liuzzo, sheds light on how far we have yet to come with regards to post-second wave feminism. Almost a half century after the women’s liberation movement, women are once again being told to “stay in our lane.” Indeed, the election of Donald Trump was fueled in part by an anti-feminist backlash against Hillary Clinton, disturbingly supported by the 58% of white women who voted for him. While the topic of race certainly needs to be front and center these days as we witness the current administration continue to fan the flames of a disaffected, white racist populous, as a country we also need to address the lingering resentment surrounding the progress that women, and white women in particular, have made as a result of the women’s movement, a movement that arose, in large part, from the “rights revolution” created in the wake of the modern civil rights movement.

While the backlash against Liuzzo was not unusual for 1960s Cold War America, the disturbing response in some quarters to the murder of Heather Heyer is a reminder that as far back as the abolitionist movement of the 19^th century, African American and women’s rights continue to be connected.  We need to stop resting on the false assumption that the civil/women’s/gay rights revolutions of the “sixties” ended the most heinous forms of discrimination. Perhaps a new non-violent direct-action movement is necessary to stanch the radical racism, sexism, and bigotry that has bubbled to the surface since November 8, 2016, an election that emboldened some Americans in their belief that we are indeed going to “Make America Great” again by returning to the days of Jim Crow, the Feminine Mystique, and pre-Stonewall. Despite the numerous successes that emerged from the rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, we cannot anymore rest on those laurels. Perhaps it is time for a new rights revolution if only to remind America that we are already a great nation, and we will not let a group of Nazi racists tell us otherwise.

 

 

On The Back Door

On The Back Door

The sun was setting in Bethlehem tonight. As I sat on my couch and looked out the window  of my living room the sky became an amalgam of yellow and pinks only seen in spring clothes and Easter egg hunts. As I am wont to do, I decided to go outside, to the back of my house, phone in tow, to take pictures. It’s always better when the sun is setting behind the mountains that I can see from steps of my back porch and between the naked branches of the tree that envelops my neighbor’s yard. When I went to the back door the screen door was locked and I quickly realized that I had not had a reason to go out of the back door to my house in weeks.

My faithful dog and part of my heart died a few weeks ago. For almost fifteen years she was the love of my life; as one of my friends so gratefully explained, she was my heart, living outside of my body in another, more restful, fuzzy, and soulful spirit. I struggle with the loss of her everyday but not as much as when I go to the back door, when there is no reason for me to be there barring the temptation of a beautiful sunset that should be photographed before it fades into the evening. These are the things that remind me that she is no longer in my immediate presence, although she is with me – her ashes and her soul lives in my home.

I have long been a loner, single girl who thrives on her independence yet revels in time with friends. Magnolia allowed me to enjoy both. She, too, was an independent spirit and was comfortable being home alone until I came home to let her out the back door into her yard to smell the dogs who had walked through our environs that day and then back onto her bed or chair all the while knowing that she was well taken care of and loved. She made coming home, or staying home, easy because she was always willing to watch the bad movie or take naps whenever the mood dictated. She loved walks and cheese and snuggling, but only for a short time, much as I operate in the world and relationships.

I hate the back door these days. I avoid it because it reminds me that I don’t have Magnolia to let out anymore. It’s almost spring. Daylight savings is coming and as we are so lucky to have in Bethlehem, particularly from my view of the mountains, sunsets are stunning. I will at some juncture once again appreciate walking out the back door to take in the sun and the clouds when they mingle to create the beautiful colorful sunsets that I am so appreciative of from the back porch of my tiny house. But, for the next few weeks, or months perhaps, I will always tread lightly on walking out the back door. Because Magnolia is not with me to appreciate the view.

On Being a Childless Academic (or Why Sheryl Sandberg Bugs Me)

At some point when I was first entered graduate school someone asked me why I was interested in a career in academia. Along with the obvious reasons – a life of reading and ruminating on history, living inside an academic university setting so that I could remain a college student, if only in my head, until I die, or the fact that we get summers largely free to pursue our own agendas whether that be travel, or leisurely reading, or research and writing, I also remarked, as a young twenty-something year old, that it would leave me time to raise children, if I chose to have them. The hours are amenable to having children if you plan the births out just right. Three months off in summers, more than a month over winter break, shorter weeks with time spent working at home; all of this makes academia a lovely vocation if you can get through the Ph.D. process I have described in an earlier post.

Some twenty years later, I have chosen not to have children. I had already had a child. At seventeen I gave birth to a son and gave him up for adoption, having already chosen academia over parenting. I wanted to go to college and I did. Then, the man I fell in love with in college, another lifelong academic, discovered much too late that he wanted to marry and have children with me, but by then I had begun graduate school and moved on to another relationship. After finishing a masters program in New Orleans, I moved almost two thousand miles north to New Hampshire, to pursue a Ph.D. I think it was then that I had settled into the fact that being a full-time parent just wasn’t in the cards for me, nor did I think it was a life that I wanted to pursue. I have never regretted that decision, nor do I think that one day I will look back and think I made an awful mistake, as some folks still like to remind me.

Per Sheryl Sandberg, I have leaned in. I am a fairly successful historian and writer. I have stood up for myself in and outside of the classroom, against men who challenged my authority and my knowledge and against women who have challenged the way I reside in the “guild.” Even with union representation, I skillfully negotiated a contract at a smaller university than the Research 1 institution where I was teaching and in a position that I later found out they were fighting to keep me. I have achieved tenure and promotion and have won awards for my writing and research. I leaned in and did it successfully so. I did it, yes, without children, but also, because I think that women can lean in without them.

What I will not accept, however, is a challenge to my decision to not have children. As far as I am concerned, like many decisions I think should be left up to women, particularly when it concerns their bodies, societal standards and proscriptions about what a woman’s place is in this world is not up for debate. My daily decisions about how I reside in the world, and what I do with my time, is never up for debate. I may question myself at times and, like we all do, decisions I make, but a decision not to have children is not one of them.

And here is what no one, even my female colleagues with children, will admit to – childless female academics are tacitly, or perhaps not, expected to pick up the slack where the mothering academics do not. We are expected to stay late for departmental functions where mothers are given a pass because their child has a school recital. We are expected to organize the annual Phi Alpha Theta dinner where mothers are expected to be home making dinner for their children and helping them with their homework. We are expected to show up at the weekend open houses and shuffle perspective students and their parents around campus because mothers who have children that play sports or other activities are expected to be present on weekends. We are expected to serve on committees that meet at odd hours because mothers have to tuck their children into bed at night. We are expected not to have the busy, fulfilling lives that mothers have because we are either single, childless or married, but without children and thus, have the time and the inclination to do all of the all of the things, oftentimes called “service work,” that mothers should be given a pass on. Well, I’m here to tell you, we don’t want to pick up your slack nor should we be punished for not doing so.

My life is just as fulfilled, if not more in many cases, than the academic mothers I know. I have friends who comment that they live vicariously through my Facebook and Instagram posts, that they wish they could be out on a Friday night for happy hour with their friends or tubing down the Delaware River on a lazy, warm summer day. They could do all of these things but they chose a different path than mine. And I’m not ever going to apologize for the life that I choose to live.

The research on childless women is long these days. Everyone from Sheryl Sandberg to Anne-Marie Slaughter to Rebecca Traistor, among numerous other feminist writers, have jumped into this conversation about successful working women and motherhood or the lack thereof. There are blogs devoted to childless women and how to understand them. There are books about how to be a successful mother and wife and businesswoman. What I don’t understand about all of this is how we are having this conversation post-second wave feminism when the choices – all choices – we thought, were not up for debate any longer. My feelings are that feminists, in all of our different and differing variations, have yet to see eye to eye on the mother vs. childless issue. It’s not a competition, or it shouldn’t be. Didn’t we all, during the second wave (and some of us on the cusp of the third) address these issues adequately enough so that we had moved on to bigger issues like the glass ceiling, which very well may be broken this election year; the lingering doubt about women’s health care choices; the fact that women still make less than men in the workplace; and how women have still yet to be adequately represented in congress, the Supreme Court, and on the Forbes 500 list? Why cannot we, as women, agree that the choice of whether or not to procreate is a singular personal issue and then support each other in kind when said decision is made?

 

 

 

On Fighting with Hemingway or How I Became a Feminist

Ernest Hemingway and I have a complicated relationship. It consists of both love and enmity, but also commitment, on my part, through sheer will. As a writer I cherish the words he put to paper – the pictures he painted for us of Paris in the fall, the oceans and snowy mountains, and the horrors of war. As a former bartender and lover of all things alcohol I understand his penchant for bourbon or a beer and a dimly lit, smoky bar. As a feminist, however, we part ways. Hemingway had a complicated relationship with all women; he loved them, many of them, but he also wrote and thought terribly about them, some of them. I’m quite certain, however, that had I been born during his time, I would have found myself drawn to this man, seeking him out as a writer and a woman because aside from all of his foibles, the way he thought about the world and life, until he committed suicide of course, is what women loved about him. Myself included. And, well, I seem to have an affinity for complicated men.

I read The Old Man and the Sea when I was in Junior High School. I was already a voracious reader devouring Sidney Sheldon and Stephen King and Ken Follett novels by the dozens. I had yet, however, to be introduced to the classics – To Kill a Mockingbird (which is still my favorite book and so much a part of who I am that I now teach African American history), Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, Lord of the Flies, and, Hemingway. Like none other, Hemingway so vividly describes a scene that the reader is so awash in the depth of his words that you can almost taste the salty air, smell the snow, internalize the fear of an enemy, palpably feel the misogyny. As a preteen I had yet to discover what feminism was and what it would eventually mean to my life and life’s work. My father worked hard at making me an equal in a household of all men. But at twelve years old, all I knew was that I loved Ernest and A Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises and all of the words he wrote by hand drunk, after a night of imbibing at Sloppy Joes and those he edited at his desk in the early morning hours.

When I discovered the depth of his misogyny in my late teens I was heartbroken. How could he betray me like this? How could I continue to love a man who broke women’s hearts and then wrote that having a conversation with a woman is akin to “moves of a chess game” where you must be “careful not to stare and not look away.” (A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls). “To hell with women anyway,” he wrote in The Sun Also Rises. To be fair, a nurse broke his heart during the war and well that heartbreak, like many of his life experiences, emerged in a book.

I have to admit, however, that Papa and I do converge on one theme – marriage. Hemingway was quite familiar with the subject of marriage and while he did it often, he actually didn’t believe in the institution. He loved his wives, but he was a serial philanderer stating that he couldn’t perform when his mistress became his wife. Perhaps the surreptitious nature of the affairs was the aphrodisiac he needed to actually have sex. Secret sex does have its benefits. Hemingway felt that marriage didn’t allow him the life he deserved – one replete with drunken friends and fishing trips and routine rolls in the hay with whomever he desired. And while this is not my particular view of marriage, as I believe you can have all of those things within a marriage, except the latter, like Hemingway marriage is just not for me.

In high school I became aware of the second wave feminists that were working for a more just and equitable world for women. My best friend Deb subscribed to Ms. Magazine and I read stories about women becoming president and stay-at-home dads and the sexism that plagues my gender to this day. In college I became a full frontal feminist (shout out to Jessica Valenti) and attended pro-choice marches in the nations capital wholly believing to this day that the decisions I make about my body are solely mine and mine alone. And so feminism is what made me question my faith in him and this is where Hemingway and I began to part ways. I still revered him as a writer but the misogynistic nature of his writings began to weigh on me. It’s a difficult thing to love a man who has betrayed your sense of who you are in your body and who has disappointed your sense of the importance of half the worlds population.

My relationship with Papa remains a complicated one; still full of love and respect in many ways, but always teetering on the edge of complete failure. I try and remember that he was of another time and place. Still, I know that were he alive today, and I happened upon him in a smoky, dimly lit bar, I’d buy him a drink and bow in awe.

On The Guild

“After you take your comprehensive examinations, which will consist of both five-hour written and two-hour oral examinations, you will then be ABD – All But Dissertation. And then, you are on your way to becoming a member of ‘The Guild.’” – Jeffrey Bolster, 1997 Graduate Director, University of New Hampshire

Did I just hear him correctly? I had been in New Hampshire for a little over a week and I recall sitting there quietly, my insides churning, as I ran over and over in my mind that I would be questioned for two-hours by five accomplished men and women on hundreds of books that I had not yet read and digested and memorized; books that apparently by the end of three years would become so ingrained in my DNA that I would be able to dredge up the minutia of history from the far reaches of my cells, regurgitate it brilliantly to even more brilliant humans, and thus, prove that I too belonged in The Guild. This was how I began the first semester of my doctoral program at the University of New Hampshire. Paralyzed by fear, uncertainty, and mired in sheer terror.

In direct contrast to that moment, this day I am lying on my soft, yet worn beige sofa, listening to Miles Davis radio on Pandora, reading a book about the possibilities and hope that history can bring us. Magnolia, my sweet 13-year-old beagle/border collie/mutt, is snoring loudly in her green Woolrich dog bed not two feet from me. It’s a day that is as sweet as they come. I can enjoy days like this because I am now a member of said Guild, who is soon to embark on summer break – four months of days like this – lazily reading, writing, and contemplating history. When I first emerge from a semester, after papers and finals are assessed and grades are submitted and anxious student emails are addressed, I find myself reaching for something to read that reminds me that I am not simply a staid academic, but also a writer. I long to read something other than history, hoping to re-acclimate myself to the current world, out of the morass of oftentimes disturbing past events, although when historians in the future write about our current times, they may be more disturbed than I am when reading about the Jim Crow South. I savor this type of reading because it feels luxurious compared to the methodical nature of how I read non-fiction texts with an eye towards sources and theory and method. It is in those fifteen weeks of a semester that I miss this type of reading, the kind that transports me to another place for a few hours, where my heart and mind are still and I can slip quietly into the peacefulness that reading someone else’s well put together and carefully thought out words bring me.

My relationship with the academy has always been a complicated one. I have been in said relationship with academia for the better part of three decades now knowing, almost from the day I set foot on the campus of Bowling Green State University in 1986 (Go Falcons!) that I would never, ever leave. The quad – where students gathered to sun, read, play football, protest, meet with classes on warm, sunny days; the ivy and moss covered old, red brick buildings; the union, where the cacophony ranges from loud conversation to laughter to crying to quiet contemplation; my almost hysterically clichéd Philosophy professor replete with beard and padded-elbowed, tan corduroy jacket, smelling faintly of pipe smoke and whiskey and books – all of it made me want to linger there for the better part of the day, a year, and now, my life.

And then there was Tim. When I met him at a Peace Coalition meeting during my freshman year, Tim was completing a doctorate in Sociology. Tim was brilliant and funny and contemplative about the world. Tim lived social justice. Tim was who I wanted to be and be with as a young, idealistic eighteen-year-old. Tim and I became friends. Tim and I became lovers. Tim and I discussed social inequities and poverty and race and peace long into the night. We drank Iron City at a dive bar off of Route 6, about 20 miles from campus. We listened to the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary at deafening levels reliving the “sixties” in our own small way. We were and perhaps still are in many ways soul mates. Tim’s love of academia moved through me like osmosis. I, too, wanted to join The Guild. Who wouldn’t want to spend their life living vicariously through their students, reliving their own college years through their students eyes, walking through hallowed buildings that reek of books and sagacity and lead paint. A life spent reading and writing. And summers months free to explore history and the world.

When I graduated from BGSU with an undergraduate degree in Therapy/Sociology, I didn’t immediately apply to graduate school. I moved to Washington, D.C. and worked at the Community for Creative Non-Violence, the largest homeless shelter in the United States, as an activist. I supported myself by bartending at night, as I had done to put myself through college. It was a necessary respite from the four and a half years that I worked and went to school full-time. I need space from academia, to regroup and come it at with fresh eyes and a less jaded spirit. Four years after I moved from the nation’s capital to New Orleans, Louisiana, I began the process of seeking out a graduate program that would suit my social justice sensibilities and nourish my intellectual soul. I contemplated Seminary school at one point, if only to understand the inner workings of the various religions that infused my sense of social justice, but that which I didn’t quite understand. I found a program in Women’s History at Sarah Lawrence College. I was accepted. I deferred. I stayed in New Orleans where I earned a Masters Degree in African American Urban History, studying with some of the most accomplished, activist, and interesting historians I still know to this day. And then, I moved myself and my then dog, Riley (name for BB King of Pat Riley, depending on who you ask) to New Hampshire, some 1400 plus miles South to North. Away from everything I knew and loved. Away from my love and great food and music and to an even bigger degree.

Honestly, I am proud to be a member of The Guild. Most days. There are elements of academia, however, that bring pause. History and, my field in particular, Southern History, is still largely white and male-dominated. Female academics, including myself numerous times, often get “mansplained” – talked over or dismissed or ignored. We are easily waved away with a look or an admonition more than we should be when females are more than half of those graduating with history Ph.D.s. I still find myself wrestling with “imposter syndrome,” the feeling that I’m simply posing as a historian and not really belonging to The Guild in the way that others seem to do so effortlessly. I am not subject to the “publish or perish” aspect of The Guild as others I know are at universities that thrive on research, however I continue to write books because, quite simply, I love this particular facet of being a member of The Guild. My small, liberal arts university doesn’t expect me to produce the number of books that research institutions do, however I do it anyway largely because of the joy I feel when I sit down to write about a history that is yet to be unearthed and brought out into the world.

I’ll continue this but, for now, this is how I feel about The Guild. It’s the most I’ve written in months. It feels good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Bowie

I woke up today with David Bowie’s music in my head. I always wake up with music in my head, and perhaps I had inadvertently heard the news before I feel asleep late last night, but I woke up listening to “Golden Years” as I aroused this morning at 7am. I rolled over and looked at my phone, as I always (and probably shouldn’t) do, and there it was, the master of the mystery and stars had passed away after a long, silent, and private illness. I’m not quite sure what I have to say about this loss. I’ve been mulling it over all day long, through fits of gratitude and tears. I’m grateful that I lived when David Bowie was present and making music. And I’m quite happy to say that I am lucky enough to actually understand who and what Ziggy Stardust was and what that persona meant to this world.

All day long, I have had David Bowie’s music in my head. “Changes” and, yes, “Lazarus,” what he left us with to remember him by. I ran errands this morning and Sirius Classic Vinyl had dedicated a whole day to the man and his music. As they should.

I remember that once, many years ago, I was listening to Casey Kasem talk about music. He said, “Music is the history of our lives.” If that is not true, I don’t know what is. My belief is that music surrounds us and envelops us and grinds into our whole beings in a way that most people can’t or don’t even fathom. There are times when a Gerry Rafferty song comes on the radio and I’m immediately whisked back to a moment where I am in the back of a my father’s ugly, robins-egg blue station wagon, with my two brothers, driving to my Uncle Russell’s camp in Eagle River, Wisconsin, for a week, or a weekend, in the wilderness to fish and hike and live a simpler life.

I’m remembering seeing U2, with my hoped-to-be boyfriend in college, when the “streets had no name,” as we drank Iron City and made out in the back of the theater.

And then there’s Rhiannon, who “rings like a bell in the night, and wouldn’t you love to love her.” Junior high and High School, and all of that mess.

Today, I listen to everything under the sun. Mostly Miles Davis and Townes Van Zandt and anything that is easily digested while I’m writing or reading.  It’s how I get through the day. It’s how I imaginably write about life and love and grief. It’s how I live through and in this world.

I will miss the oddness, the spirit, the eyes that my niece shares with him. I will miss how loving his music made me feel better when I was a kid trying to figure out the world in all its madness (and my friends too, as they confessed on social media today what David Bowie has meant to their lives). I will miss how I always rocked out when Bowie came on the radio and, how I always paused for a small second to check in. And honestly, how did we not all stop and think about these words, just for one small minute. Because, you know, life is always changing…

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.

Changes

RIP Ziggy

Can’t even imagine the world without your words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Love

“I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity because I battle selfishness. I write about joy because I know sorrow. I write about faith because I almost lost mine, and I know what it is to be broken and in need of redemption. I write about gratitude because I am thankful – for all of it.” – Kristin Armstrong

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” – Denis Waitley

I initially wanted to call this piece “On Failure,” mostly because I think it’s important to talk about failing and recently I feel like I have failed a bit. I’ve also been thinking a lot about love. Recently I was sitting at my favorite bar, Joe’s, a Saturday night on a seasonably chilly evening (it hasn’t been so chilly as of late) and I was enjoying a warming bourbon and the question was posed to me by someone I truly love, “Do you believe in love?” And I sat there, with my legs crossed on a stool in dim lighting and Townes Van Zandt on the jukebox (probably still not called that, but ok) and I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that question. Who believes in love?

I’ve experienced a lifetime of love in myriad ways. The question seems to me complicated and, then, not so much.

These days, I think that I am mostly tired of love. I have friends in the throes of divorce and, well, it makes me question love. We’re all tired, in so many ways; as I have written about in the past, it’s relative. When I think about love I think about how I write about what ails me, pains me, makes me elated, makes me qualify life, makes me think about the world. And yet, I also write about love. Love infuses my thoughts and my words and my life.

I have plenty of it these days. That love thing. My friends and family daily remind me that I am immensely blessed, and yes, I use the word blessed even if I am a heathen in this here life.

When I was four years old my mother left. She walked out on my life and my brother’s lives and my father’s life. She left us there wondering what we as small people had done wrong and what Petey, the tiny yellow bird who lived in the hallway in a little, wired cage, had done wrong. I still think about this although the memory of this day has only crossed my brain recently. It’s the holidays and I think that we all cross paths with our memories at this time of the year. We think about family and ex lovers and friends who have left us or passed. We miss those we have loved.

And sometimes love is about failure. I have failed in this life. Many times. We all have. Let’s own it. Perhaps at a job or at school, at relationships or just, generally, life. This is what ties us together. It bonds us as human beings. But, if we’re lucky, we regroup and we love.

Failure is a significant part of our lives. And we fail at love. Often. When we fail, however, we rise. Hopefully. When we fail we grieve and cry and lament, learn, and then, we rise. We should rise to the better place where we should be after we fail. Our lives are all about failure. I love failing because when I do, I hear the silent voice in my head telling me that I can do better and I can figure it out and I will, ultimately, succeed. Failure is what propels me on to the next day, project, or life’s challenge.

Life is always a challenge. Sometimes just getting up in the morning is a challenge. The crawling out of the warm bed. The making the pot of coffee. The showering and making the self presentable to the day and the getting to work. And then I think, that there are folks who have to work much harder to experience their day than I do. Riding three buses and the A train and just getting there. That is not my life. And then I remember that life really isn’t the challenge I think it is.

And then, let’s get back to love. Social media reminds us that love fails, often. Social media also tells us that love thrives. I have loved and I love everyday. I love my friends and my family and this world, as hard and heartbroken as it is sometimes. I love hiking and music and my soft, warm bed that some people, many people aren’t lucky enough to have. I love a soft gentle breeze on my face that I have experienced recently on an unexpected warm December evening. I love the smell of rain on a hot summer day and I have joyously danced it. I love fall and the smell the varied colors of the leaves seems to bring on a crisp clean day. I love the musty smell of my dog who certainly needs a bath most days, but always smells like her and reminds me that she is, well, my dog. And I love this life I call mine, replete with writing retreats and live music and drinks with so many friends and excited students who get into graduate school and, also, folks who are broken, but who I call mine and who, when they rise, make me feel that life is worth living every single fucking day. Yes, I believe in love, even in the most mundane of things that happen every day, in every moment.

When we gripe to our friends about how tired we are, how hard life is, how terrible our commute is everyday, let’s think about the folks that don’t have these woes. There are folks that have real things to complain about – those who work 8-12 hours a day for shit money, that have a completely minimal place to live, that have to take care of a family member – child, parent, significant other – every day, that isn’t able. Those that just aren’t bitching about the fact that life is hard; they’re just doing it.

Yes, I believe in love. And in those sweet and small, quiet moments, when I’m not overthinking the world and my life and I’m listening to John Coltrane and I remember just how incredibly lucky I am to be here in this life, I truly believe in love.