I'm going to vote for Martha Coakley tomorrow. I wish I could get excited about it, energized by her, inspired by sending Massachusetts's first woman to represent us in the Senate. Sadly, she's no Hillary Clinton and inspires nothing in me. Truly, I think that she has vocally espoused more progressive views across the board than Clinton did when she was campaigning - but hey, this is Massachusetts here, not the whole nation, so of course she does. Despite her mostly-good official positions, Coakley is dull. Madame Secretary has proven her commitment to the disadvantaged people in the world in the last 12 months and that's all I can ask.
Of course, Coakley has to have her flaws, and they are doozies. Her arguments in Melendez-Diaz were bad enough, but her name on the amici curiae regarding the prosecutors in the Terry Harrington case strikes me as disgraceful. I recognize that I'm no legal scholar and can't possibly understand the nuance of such argument, but what it fundamentally comes down to is a person's right not to be framed. If it doesn't exist in the Constitution, we are beyond repair. It's clear that Coakley doesn't believe this right exists, and quite likely doesn't believe it should.
I am glad we have such a strident proponent of a woman's right to abortion and of gay rights on the ballot, and it also pleases me that she will stand her ground on unjust wars and oppose Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan. She says all the right things that so-called liberals are thought to want to hear. The only paper trail she leaves, however, is one that does not exactly speak to her progressive credentials. It is difficult when considering voting for a candidate who has not held a voting office in the past. In the primary, I dug deep on Capuano trying to find some mark in his record and came up with nothing. Every vote he'd cast as a lawmaker was exactly the choice I'd want my representative to make; how could I not reward him with my vote to bring him to a higher office? Of course, I couldn't know how Khazei or Coakley would have voted if they'd had the same privilege to do so. I just don't like the case Coakley has made for herself by way of her career.
But that's not what matters today. I wish it could be just a regular election and I would refuse to hold my nose. The more I thought about it in 2006, the more I realized that Bob Casey was in fact scarcely an improvement upon Rick Santorum. He was an insult to a base that has consistently voted for progressives and why he identifies as a Democrat is beyond me - and even further, why Democrats would be willing to welcome him. The truth is that Martha Coakley is not that candidate, but even more, I'm not sure I would stay home even if she were. This month the Senate has the chance to improve the healthcare situation for a few million Americans with pre-existed conditions and who are over 55, people whose difficulties I can't dream of, and probably will never have to because of my privilege. If Martha Coakley is not elected, it is nearly a sure thing that those people won't yet see those changes, and may not for a long time to come if ever. If she is, it is a sure thing that they will. Any failures she has on civil rights issues will not come to light in the Senate for ages, because she will be the juniormost, and will have little clout. In the meantime, she could be replaced with a better AG. In the meantime, this flawed incremental bill will pass, and increments of shitty policy will improve for some people who need it.
In the end, that's enough that I may not even have to hold my nose.
(Besides, if she loses, the embarrassment will likely be enough that the Dems trot out another Bob Casey in 2012.)
Monday, January 18, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
draft: hoo, watt, and aidano (aidono?)
beginning paragraph here describing a scene with main character, Chenay "Rush" Rushmore, working very late in her office on initial draft research. her partner Gina enters the office and reminds her that she wants her home and ready to take the next day off for their anniversary. Rush pulls her down to the empty chair beside her and starts showing her some of her stats and names. this is a ritual for them every year - Gina will let Rush bounce draft thoughts off her and Rush will stay out of the office on their anniversary, though she rarely gets off her blackberry.
The game was in her blood. Thirty years as a general manager, the first woman in the role, the youngest anyone to be named to it (though in fairness, Epstein at his installation had only two months on her at hers). Her half brother had been a scout, took her on trips when she was in high school, dreamed with her of a day she'd make as much as Felix Hernandez just for throwing a ball. She'd had the velo of your average sinkerballer, the control of Buehrle. She was scouted by top baseball colleges who thought she'd put their softball teams on the map, but they didn't like that she wasn't interested in soft pitch. Varitek, then coaching Georgia Tech softball, personally called her and talked her into signing up with them, swearing he'd get her a bullpen session with the baseball coaches.
She lost her dream quickly when she was assaulted by a male pitcher at a team party, for being an "uppity bitch" encroaching on their territory, and the tryout never happened. She kept pitching to keep her scholarship, but her excitement was rekindled only by her economics courses, which she eventually took as her major.
She was a first generation college student, her grades decent in high school, but her SAT scores would never have gotten her accepted at GT if she didn't have the athletic skills. Her great-uncle was the moderately successful major leaguer Randy Winn, and several cousins had been in scouting or coaching after falling out at the minors. They were a sports family and nobody expected brains of her, much less demanded them.
When she finished her third semester with a 4.0 after barely scraping a 3.0 her first year, heads turned. She struggled mightily to keep the grades in the spring among her demanding softball schedule, but despite her papers always coming first, she still led them to the college world series that second year. With softball, she realized she had to choose between a personal life and grades, and opted for the latter, instead enjoying the occasional one night stand with opposing players while on the road. She was driven by her first taste of intellectual success, seduced by the notion of making money with her mind instead of her athletic prowess - something she'd never considered possible before.
Of course, she'd always known that going pro was going to be a stretch, but it had never even occurred to her that she might have other avenues to wealth. But at college, new possiblities opened. Maybe the WNBA "stars" were content to live the life of an athlete while being paid like a corporate secretary, but it wouldn't be the life for her. After graduating with honors, she returned to her family in Philadelphia, but spurned her roots by doing so to attend Wharton. Here, finally relinquishing the life of a full time athlete, she permitted herself to date, network, and plan her career. She was sure she'd going into investing, the market capturing her like nothing before had.
Baseball was a fading pastime. She joined her brother still when he came to town to scout for the Twins, and her father brought her to plenty of Phillies games. But she'd gotten a taste of how huge the world was beyond sports and the promise filled her with excitement. When she picked up a cute comedian who'd made some sharp baseball jokes at her favorite dyke bar's open mic night, she thought nothing of what it was that had brought them together.
The game was in her blood. Thirty years as a general manager, the first woman in the role, the youngest anyone to be named to it (though in fairness, Epstein at his installation had only two months on her at hers). Her half brother had been a scout, took her on trips when she was in high school, dreamed with her of a day she'd make as much as Felix Hernandez just for throwing a ball. She'd had the velo of your average sinkerballer, the control of Buehrle. She was scouted by top baseball colleges who thought she'd put their softball teams on the map, but they didn't like that she wasn't interested in soft pitch. Varitek, then coaching Georgia Tech softball, personally called her and talked her into signing up with them, swearing he'd get her a bullpen session with the baseball coaches.
She lost her dream quickly when she was assaulted by a male pitcher at a team party, for being an "uppity bitch" encroaching on their territory, and the tryout never happened. She kept pitching to keep her scholarship, but her excitement was rekindled only by her economics courses, which she eventually took as her major.
She was a first generation college student, her grades decent in high school, but her SAT scores would never have gotten her accepted at GT if she didn't have the athletic skills. Her great-uncle was the moderately successful major leaguer Randy Winn, and several cousins had been in scouting or coaching after falling out at the minors. They were a sports family and nobody expected brains of her, much less demanded them.
When she finished her third semester with a 4.0 after barely scraping a 3.0 her first year, heads turned. She struggled mightily to keep the grades in the spring among her demanding softball schedule, but despite her papers always coming first, she still led them to the college world series that second year. With softball, she realized she had to choose between a personal life and grades, and opted for the latter, instead enjoying the occasional one night stand with opposing players while on the road. She was driven by her first taste of intellectual success, seduced by the notion of making money with her mind instead of her athletic prowess - something she'd never considered possible before.
Of course, she'd always known that going pro was going to be a stretch, but it had never even occurred to her that she might have other avenues to wealth. But at college, new possiblities opened. Maybe the WNBA "stars" were content to live the life of an athlete while being paid like a corporate secretary, but it wouldn't be the life for her. After graduating with honors, she returned to her family in Philadelphia, but spurned her roots by doing so to attend Wharton. Here, finally relinquishing the life of a full time athlete, she permitted herself to date, network, and plan her career. She was sure she'd going into investing, the market capturing her like nothing before had.
Baseball was a fading pastime. She joined her brother still when he came to town to scout for the Twins, and her father brought her to plenty of Phillies games. But she'd gotten a taste of how huge the world was beyond sports and the promise filled her with excitement. When she picked up a cute comedian who'd made some sharp baseball jokes at her favorite dyke bar's open mic night, she thought nothing of what it was that had brought them together.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The pain doesn't happen so much these days so my life isn't controlled by it in the same way it was a year ago. That's some progress, and I want it to be meaningful, but it will never be enough. Twenty-three and joints a-creaking. It's not a situation conducive to being inspired by incremental improvement.
When I bother to trace the progression, I realize that in fact I am almost in a place I was before Things Began. February 2008 when work turned upside-side, anxiety took control of my body and triggered a new kind of pain that became regular and sometimes debilitating. I had observed with some regularity in the two years prior that my once-sprained knee was prone to swelling and pain in precipitation or after bearing my weight a long day, but it was not a feature of my life - just incidental. Two years ago it overtook me.
But today, I am actually largely back. Sure, the knee is weakened from its injury and causes me problems from time to time. And okay, the other knee sometimes does, too. Well, and my hips. But the frequency is such that it's an occurrence, not a feature any longer. Okay, it's still spontaneous, unexplained, and can still sometimes border on debilitating. Do I sound like I'm not being completely honest with myself? Maybe so. I really just want to be able-bodied, don't I?
The thing is, my body has changed so much in that time. I was never strong before, or athletic, or physically gifted in any way, and sometimes fell terribly behind the pack in the most basic things. I couldn't get my 50m swim times under a minute. I couldn't run without wanting to vomit. I couldn't hit the softball straight and the pitches scared the shit out of me. But god, how I miss that old ability to squat without pain. To touch my toes without grunting. To walk down stairs without fear of falling over. To walk up them without wincing. To want to walk the 0.6 miles on the school run and to get real pleasure from a long bike ride and to feel like I needed to move and stretch just a bit most days in order to feel limber and healthy. To exist within what my own standard of healthy and fit was.
I do believe health is individual and relative. We should not place an expectation of health upon anyone or a moral value upon some arbitrary standard of what is health. Michael Phelps has a different definition of health than my friends who suffer from fibromyalgia and different expectations of what his body can do at its best than do they. And different than I do. But I really do believe I know my body is capable of doing more than I deal with now. I just want to get back to that old self. She wasn't an athlete and most people wouldn't even call her particularly fit. But god dammit, she was able-bodied, and right now I feel like I border on disabled and I'm just not ready for that when I feel like it's fixable.
I have the capacity to get to that place now, because I am not sidelined by my pain on a constant basis. But it's a huge damn hump to jump because it means dealing with discomfort and physical difficulty on a regular basis and FUCK MAN, with all the god damned pain I've had why would I do that to myself, why would I do anything but spoil myself and allow my body to be as comfortable and rested as it can be as often as possible. But nothing comes of that life. Nothing comes of that existence. It's just I don't know if I can make this happen on my own.
When I bother to trace the progression, I realize that in fact I am almost in a place I was before Things Began. February 2008 when work turned upside-side, anxiety took control of my body and triggered a new kind of pain that became regular and sometimes debilitating. I had observed with some regularity in the two years prior that my once-sprained knee was prone to swelling and pain in precipitation or after bearing my weight a long day, but it was not a feature of my life - just incidental. Two years ago it overtook me.
But today, I am actually largely back. Sure, the knee is weakened from its injury and causes me problems from time to time. And okay, the other knee sometimes does, too. Well, and my hips. But the frequency is such that it's an occurrence, not a feature any longer. Okay, it's still spontaneous, unexplained, and can still sometimes border on debilitating. Do I sound like I'm not being completely honest with myself? Maybe so. I really just want to be able-bodied, don't I?
The thing is, my body has changed so much in that time. I was never strong before, or athletic, or physically gifted in any way, and sometimes fell terribly behind the pack in the most basic things. I couldn't get my 50m swim times under a minute. I couldn't run without wanting to vomit. I couldn't hit the softball straight and the pitches scared the shit out of me. But god, how I miss that old ability to squat without pain. To touch my toes without grunting. To walk down stairs without fear of falling over. To walk up them without wincing. To want to walk the 0.6 miles on the school run and to get real pleasure from a long bike ride and to feel like I needed to move and stretch just a bit most days in order to feel limber and healthy. To exist within what my own standard of healthy and fit was.
I do believe health is individual and relative. We should not place an expectation of health upon anyone or a moral value upon some arbitrary standard of what is health. Michael Phelps has a different definition of health than my friends who suffer from fibromyalgia and different expectations of what his body can do at its best than do they. And different than I do. But I really do believe I know my body is capable of doing more than I deal with now. I just want to get back to that old self. She wasn't an athlete and most people wouldn't even call her particularly fit. But god dammit, she was able-bodied, and right now I feel like I border on disabled and I'm just not ready for that when I feel like it's fixable.
I have the capacity to get to that place now, because I am not sidelined by my pain on a constant basis. But it's a huge damn hump to jump because it means dealing with discomfort and physical difficulty on a regular basis and FUCK MAN, with all the god damned pain I've had why would I do that to myself, why would I do anything but spoil myself and allow my body to be as comfortable and rested as it can be as often as possible. But nothing comes of that life. Nothing comes of that existence. It's just I don't know if I can make this happen on my own.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
origins
You think that Luck
Has left you there.
But maybe there's nothing
up in the sky but air.
And there's no mystical design,
No cosmic lover preassigned.
There's nothing you can find
that can not be found.
'Cause with all the changes
you've been through
It seems the stranger's always you.
Alone again in some new
Wicked little town.
I am inclined to scorn ideas of "who I am" or "being true to myself." Of the notion that there is some essence to any given YOU that is deep and unshakable. I am one of the least constant people I know where motivations are concerned. I have a personality; it is what it is, and hasn't shifted terribly much over my life. But I don't think my personality is particularly defining of who I am, and in fact prefer not to think of there being a definition of such a thing.
Few constants. I am young enough that it would be naive to label anything a constant, especially something as fresh as 8, 9 years. And certainly I'd never claim a movie or a lyric defines me. I have, however, been able to maintain the constant of being inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch since its release in 2001, and its expression has resonated with me over and over in that time. And the lyrics above summarize the world view by which I am motivated and the principles by which I live.
Nothing is preordained and no fortune guides my hand. Everything happens for a reason is a popular way to put it, but what I really mean is that I believe firmly in cause and effect. Things don't happen because they were meant to happen, but because something came before to move events along. To search for fate and wait for destiny is to waste time, and whenever I sit around hoping something will happen, I realize my life has flown by me leaving a shell of myself behind.
I do not believe that the course of each person's life is in hir hands, that one has control over everything. This objectivist view brings bile to my throat, so hatefully it is used. It is a slip of chance borne out in my genes that I suffer from anxiety and depression (and maybe more), and I am not to be scorned or resented for being vulnerable to their irritants. It makes accomplishment a little more of a challenge and it means I must make more effort than some, and that I must allow myself weakness, on occasion.
It's just that I've gotta stop looking for things that can't be found, and look inside me instead. Stretch, breathe, visualize, find clarity - find drive - find fulfillment. Maybe? It's all a worthwhile experiment, I hope.
Has left you there.
But maybe there's nothing
up in the sky but air.
And there's no mystical design,
No cosmic lover preassigned.
There's nothing you can find
that can not be found.
'Cause with all the changes
you've been through
It seems the stranger's always you.
Alone again in some new
Wicked little town.
I am inclined to scorn ideas of "who I am" or "being true to myself." Of the notion that there is some essence to any given YOU that is deep and unshakable. I am one of the least constant people I know where motivations are concerned. I have a personality; it is what it is, and hasn't shifted terribly much over my life. But I don't think my personality is particularly defining of who I am, and in fact prefer not to think of there being a definition of such a thing.
Few constants. I am young enough that it would be naive to label anything a constant, especially something as fresh as 8, 9 years. And certainly I'd never claim a movie or a lyric defines me. I have, however, been able to maintain the constant of being inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch since its release in 2001, and its expression has resonated with me over and over in that time. And the lyrics above summarize the world view by which I am motivated and the principles by which I live.
Nothing is preordained and no fortune guides my hand. Everything happens for a reason is a popular way to put it, but what I really mean is that I believe firmly in cause and effect. Things don't happen because they were meant to happen, but because something came before to move events along. To search for fate and wait for destiny is to waste time, and whenever I sit around hoping something will happen, I realize my life has flown by me leaving a shell of myself behind.
I do not believe that the course of each person's life is in hir hands, that one has control over everything. This objectivist view brings bile to my throat, so hatefully it is used. It is a slip of chance borne out in my genes that I suffer from anxiety and depression (and maybe more), and I am not to be scorned or resented for being vulnerable to their irritants. It makes accomplishment a little more of a challenge and it means I must make more effort than some, and that I must allow myself weakness, on occasion.
It's just that I've gotta stop looking for things that can't be found, and look inside me instead. Stretch, breathe, visualize, find clarity - find drive - find fulfillment. Maybe? It's all a worthwhile experiment, I hope.
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