Electric Ladyland

18 million cracks in the glass ceiling

So we finally know who the VP picks are:  Biden for Obama and Palin for McCain.  I'm not yet sure how I feel about Biden as a running mate for Obama, the candidate I'm supporting, but I can tell you how I feel about Palin.

No thank you.  Just because she's a woman doesn't mean she has my support.  Feminism is about freedom of choice and her values don't line up with mine. 

It's a nice little stunt the McCain campaign pulled trying to quote-unquote make history by putting up a woman as their VP candidate for the first time ever, yanking the headlines away from the DNC the very next day after Obama's acceptance speech.  I hope Hillary supporters, through their anger, see this for what it is.  Yes, we want to see the greater participation of women at higher levels of government.  But do you think Palin's going to come out pressing for ratification of the ERA - equal pay for equal work?  Do you think she's going to fight for LGBT rights?  Does she care deeply about rebuildling our badly damaged social safety net and addressing income inequality in this country?  How about universal health care?  Fighting for human rights and going after the international slave trade?  What kind of women's values does she champion? 

Palin tried to neatly co-opt Hillary's rhetoric upon introducing herself as the new GOP veep candidate, saying, "The women of America aren't done yet."  Speak for yourself but don't pretend you speak for me, Ms. Palin.  Don't you think it's patronizing how your party trotted you out -- here, now, after a strong, accomplished politician has concluded her run for the highest office in the land -- to win an election rather than as show its commitment to representing the majority of this country?

The Republicans have not broken any new ground in picking a woman for VP.  I'm old enough to remember Ferraro.  That was about 25 years ago.  It didn't make such a big impression on me then.  Maybe my mom would have a different take on that since she was an adult at the time.  Veep is different, though.  You know what made an impact on me as a little girl?  Shirley Chisholm's candidacy.  That's partly a local thing in my case because I grew up in South Hadley, MA and she taught at Mount Holyoke for several years after her run at the presidency.  We were all aware of her candidacy.  Admittedly I was young enough so as not to be all that politically conscious and it happened before I was even born but I remember being very proud that she'd run even if she hadn't made it as the official Democratic nominee.  That sort of thing does send a message to girls and young women as does Title IX, which has actually come under attack in recent years if you can believe that.

Here again, in 2008, we have women figuring prominently in the race for the White House.  While Hillary wasn't my candidate I think it does say a lot that McCain baldly pandered to women by putting a woman on his ticket.  Just because she's a woman.  I wonder what young women are taking away from this.  We can be genuinely proud that Hillary has normalized the idea of a woman running for the office of President of the United States.  She's right in claiming that her campaign has cracked the glass ceiling and I will celebrate when it finally shatters for good.  As a thirty-something woman having watched a steady procession of nothing but white, straight, mainly Protestant men since Chisholm and Ferraro's time, this means a lot to me.  As does Obama's candidacy for the same reason. 

I'll know we've made progress when next time it's not the gender or the race of the candidate that's making headlines but just the bold and visionary policies they put forward to restore the American dream for all people, putting us on a track to realize the incredible potential that we have as individuals and as a nation.  Just the issues - real issues, not sensational fluff bits like how many houses McCain has but rather how we're going to fix health care and education, get out of Iraq and repair our failing infrastructure.  Obama went into detail on this for the first time on Thursday night as he made history becoming the first African-American to be nominated for the highest office in the land.  The newspapers are buzzing about Sarah Palin now but I'm going to exercise freedom of choice and seek out more details on what he and his running mate Biden prescribe for getting us back on track.

Also, my thoughts and prayers are with the people of the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast.

Holy scorching essay, Batman!

Wow.  I just finished reading the best blog post I've read all year.  It starts off about Obama's proposed strategy of "reaching out" to conservatives (whatever that means - think that's been tried by Pelosi & Co. and is pretty much a euphemism for playing doormat) but offers a primer in economic trends of the last 30 years in this country (particularly with regard to the inequality of income distribution), the origin of today's right-wing juggernaut, and the ROI to them of what they've done to us.

Most importantly, it asks -- and persists in asking -- this question:  what kind of politics do we progressives need?  And then proceeds to answer that question brilliantly.

Now if an actual candidate would get down to brass tacks and start addressing the reality of our political and economic situation this way then that's a candidate who'd have my vote!  Meanwhile, hats off to Lambert for breaking things down and getting into the fine print.  I've been hoping for yet rarely seeing that sort of detail in the media.  This stuff makes economics interesting, makes me wish I'd taken a course or two in college.  It is, after all, a vital topic that most of us tend to steer too clear of.  Never too late to educate yourself.

Beyond hurl

Ok.  I know some people will do anything for a vote but this is just abysmal:  the presidential candidates stumping in Iowa have released Christmas ads that will make you want to go a step beyond throwing up, whatever that is.

Dry heave?

Found out about it from an NPR segment in which Democratic and Republican political consultants, when asked what they thought of these ads, said they thought the parties should burn the tapes.

Rudy wants to give me job growth, secure borders, fiscal discipline and strict Constructionist judges for Christmas.  Rudy!  You really shouldn't have!  No, I mean you shouldn't have.  I'm not playing here.

I think I like Hillary's ad even less, though.  She forgot where she put my Universal Pre-K!  This rates a simultaneous headsmack-and-groan.  So bad it's ... bad.

Meanwhile, in Japan, the Defense Minister has recently been quoted speculating how the Japanese government would have to deploy its Self-Defense Forces were Godzilla or Mothra to arrive, then worrying about whether or not they could communicate with the creatures. 

Nope, no one's making this stuff up.  People voted for these folks.

Darfur, generating meaning

Went to see Winter Miller's play In Darfur at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park with some of my coworkers tonight.  It was very striking and raised uncomfortable, morally troubling questions about journalists' role in calling attention to the genocide.  To run on page 1 with a name, breaking your promise to your source and condemning her to vicious militia reprisals from which she'd be lucky to escape with her life?  Or not to run at all, losing the opportunity to bring Darfur front and center into the spotlight of the Western press so that someone might actually care enough to do something about it?  Nick Kristof spoke as part of a panel after the play concluded and said that depiction was basically accurate, that he'd been part of frustrating calls back to the editor's desk in the New York office but had had the good sense to start swearing after hanging up the phone, not before.  Samantha Power spoke very eloquently about the situation in Darfur.  I'm going to borrow her book, A Problem from Hell, from the library. 

One of my many favorite coworkers mentioned Change.org in passing the other day as we were driving to an organizers' training retreat in New Jersey.  Maybe it was having just come home from seeing In Darfur that made me want to check that out:  networking and activism for social justice.  So I'm fiddling around with it now, setting up a profile and learning how it works.  Perhaps this will be a social networking site I will actually use.  I could get behind it more than others because it actually has a purpose.  Of course, I already work for a nonprofit that does amazing things to address the issues I care deeply about so I'm not exactly bereft of opportunities to make a difference every day when I walk into the office either.  That's pretty rad.

Side note about the social networking thing, though.  This is yet another site I'm registered on and I would really dig it if there were some type of social networking aggregator out there.  Let me see if I can remember all the social-networking-web-2.0-esque places I'm on:  Change.org, Del.icio.us, Friendster, GoodReads, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Mixi, MySpace, Technorati, Twitter... are there any others? 

Friendster and MySpace I hardly ever visit because I've already got a blog and those places really aren't my style.  LinkedIn I actually find fairly useful.  GoodReads I enjoy quite a bit too.  Mixi is where I used to do some blogging and social networking in Japanese but I haven't kept up with it the way I'd like to.  Twitter, aka microblogging, is fun and mobile -- I actually like it more than I thought I would and someone calls the Red Sox games on there so that's a bonus.  But all in all, as another favorite coworker opined to me the other day, looking at me with that look that only she gets, "What does it mean to be LinkedIn?"  I smiled and said I'd get back to her when I had the answer on that one.  Not sure what meaning is being created by all this networking, all this content generation.  One's mileage may well vary.

cell phones and human rights abuses

the times has an article up on the diamond industry and its links to human rights abuses in africa.  i'd been hearing about this through my coworkers so it was not new on my radar, but a new twist came along later today.  i got a thank you email from collective good acknowledging my used cell phone donation from october.  i went back to their web site to read up on their latest news and found this interesting piece:  "war, murder, rape... all for your cell phone."  it seems that no matter what the purchase we confront issues of the moral practices behind its production.  cell phones are a nasty one-two punch involving both human rights and the environment in this case.  as a techie working at a nonprofit i find this especially interesting.  are there nonprofit techies out there advocating and educating on this issue?

tatemae: not just for japanese

very interesting article in the times today, one of the most intriguing ones i've found in a while:  "the fine art of hiding what you mean to say."  it concerns iranian social conventions for interpersonal communications and in many instances, they seem to closely mirror the japanese concepts of honne, tatemae and oseiji (flattery).  take this passage for example:

“Speech has a different function than it does in the West,” said Kian Tajbakhsh, a social scientist who lived for many years in England and the United States before returning to Iran a decade ago. “In the West, 80 percent of language is denotative. In Iran 80 percent is connotative.”

Translation: In the West, “yes” generally means yes. In Iran, “yes” can mean yes, but it often means maybe or no. In Iran, Dr. Tajbakhsh said, listeners are expected to understand that words don’t necessarily mean exactly what they mean.

i once read in an article that in the west (by "west" i specifically mean america as i'm not sure this really applies throughout all throughout the west and i believe americans place a much higher premium on direct speech than some other westerners), during a conversation the burden of expectation is on the speaker to be clear for successful communication to occur.  elsewhere, in japan for example, the listener is expected to accurately interpret what is being said for succesful communication to occur.  while living here in the u.s. i can distinctly remember some times when american friends reproached me for not being clear enough in saying what i meant.  it could only have been my fault for not spelling it out enough and i had failed in my role as speaker, having not used precise enough language. 

i never encountered such expectations in japan.  on occasion, when out with japanese friends in the u.s., one of them will point out how i had missed the contextual meaning of something someone said or did.  in those situations the focus is on my ability to listen well.  i can't remember japanese friends in japan, however, mentioning that i had missed something -- i wonder if that can't be explained by the guest treatment of foreigners in japan and the fact that my japanese friends in america, who've become a little americanized, feel more comfortable with coming right out and telling me if i failed to understand something. 

it's a rare thing when people can find a middle ground across cultures, or even jump across cultures, to understand a different way of thinking and approaching communication.  this week my calligraphy teacher told me he wondered where i was heading as i continued to study japanese and become more familiar with the language.  "few people can understand both sides," he said.  that might have been because i had just been hanging out with him, another japanese person and a young american college student after class.  there were some times when i ended up explaining a japanese concept to the american college student and then, a bit later, i explained a bit of recent american slang he used to my japanese friends.  i didn't think anything of it because that's pretty normal for me now.  i did of course feel very comfortable speaking to the american guy because we come from the same background, but i felt just as comfortable catching up on my japanese friend's latest news and indulging in a little girl talk with her.  it was fun.

not too long ago i realized that what's normal for me now, what doesn't take energy anymore, used to literally cause me headaches when i was starting out learning japanese in japan.  there were several occasions when my brain shorted out and it was painful to try and contort my mind into assembling a sentence in japanese.  it wasn't natural by any stretch of the imagination and oftentimes required a complete inversion of my english thoughts.  that's to say nothing of the cultural layer -- translating literally word for word often will not work when you're dealing with english and japanese. 

it felt like a long haul at the time.  but somewhere along the way something fused or i crossed an invisible line and now that's not so much of a challenge anymore.  i often think directly in japanese without needing to first put it into english.  there's a lot more to learn and get familiar with to become fluent now, but i do feel like i crossed a hurdle some time ago and now it's not so much of a strain as it used to be.  i think it would be great for more americans to try and make the leap from english to a vastly different language and from american-style thinking to another kind of thinking.  there are many directions in which you could take this and apparently, according to the article i read, iranian culture (ancient and multilayered) involves some of the same challenges and nuances as japanese.  fascinating. 

climate conscious

today was a good day.  i went to see an inconvenient truth and switched to green power.  that was easy and not that expensive either!  also found this cute video of al gore as the president on SNL.  very funny except for the part when you sit back and think "why god, why did we have to end up with bush instead?"

if you can read this

then you should sign this petition and read up on net neutrality.  the more i read about this issue the more it pisses me off.  nothing is more antithetical to the spirit of the internet.  it makes me mad and it should make you mad too.

check out the video below for a quick, easily understandable primer.  thanks to nten for making me aware of this issue through the sessions at this year's nten conference as well as last week's free webinar on the aol/goodmail controversy on letting people pay for preferential access to your inbox without your having a say in the matter.  i think if more people knew what was going on they'd be really upset at what the telcos are trying to get away with.

taking it down a notch

hey.

don't have much to report.  as i told my roommate when she dropped by for a little while between saturday engagements, i've done nothing today.

bupkus.

well, that was my day until around 5 o'clock or so, when i got a mild whiff of ambition and then spent a few moments organizing my finances and cleaning the bathroom.  other than that, not really anything.

oh, i did just finish reading american vertigo by bernard-henri levy.  that was an excellent read.  saw him on the daily show last month and found him so articulate that i thought i'd like to check out one of his books.  i think i'll look for an earlier work of his, who killed daniel pearl?, next.  good writing, real meaty intellectual stuff you can chew on.  stuff that expands your mind instead of making you feel comfortable about what you've already learned.

so yeah, i guess i did that.  and now i'll probably go watch samurai rebellion since i've got it home from netflix.  other than that, mmm, yeah.  taking it easy.  it's just as well since i kind of wore myself out in d.c. and at work this past week and next weekend i'll be escorting dad around town for his 60th birthday festivities. more active times will come around in a bit.  for now, though, i'm gonna take it easy.

visiting the capital

i just got back from a pleasant weekend in our nation's capital.  went down friday night after work on the train and stayed with my buddy christy at her place not far from chinatown.  she was busy working on a paper and finishing up law school in general but was kind enough to let me hang around. 

i slept late on saturday.  sometime in the afternoon i had lunch with christy at chipotle (mmm, fast food burrito) and then ambled slowly down to the washington mall, where i lay down on the grass and basked in the sunshine.  opened up my copy of american vertigo and read it slowly, without a care in the world, just enjoying the peace of the moment.

eventually i got back up and then started towards the sackler, where i saw the hokusai exhibition they had on.  i'm pretty sure it's related to the one i saw in japan.  couldn't take any pictures so there's nothing to share, alas, but i was struck yet again at how well the sackler presents its exhibitions.  the sackler as a museum impresses me.  they asked us to take surveys upon exiting the exhibition and i gave them very high marks.  anyway, about the exhibition, i was touched by how they said he kept reaching towards higher, more divine goals as he grew older.  hokusai was particularly interested in the stars (if i remember, they said his name means "north (star) studio" in japanese).  i felt as if i wanted to get to know more about him as a person after reading the vignettes about each of his major periods.

the art, of course, was matchless.  that much i expected.  but what i didn't know was that he produced so many paintings!  apparently he did nothing but that towards the very end.  each one i saw was a masterpiece in its own right, deserving of several hours of study.  i didn't have that much time, unfortunately, but the impressions stayed with me.  i also loved the floating tiger piece with which they closed the exhibition, signaling his ascendance to the next plane.  beautiful.

apart from that i did see some early manga as well as some woodblock prints of the old tokaido route (i found kakegawa, kikugawa, kanaya, fukuroi -- all towns near where i lived -- and was happy) and one picture of a mountain scene in totomi (western shizuoka), also nearby.   

after viewing as much of the hokusai exhibition as i could, i went up to dupont circle for two hours of journal-writing.  that started off uncomfortably -- i couldn't quite get in the mood for a while -- but after a while i got into it and found i had plenty to say.  sometimes it goes like that.

met up with christy and friends for dinner at an afghan restaurant in adams morgan, had leek dumplings with a meat and mint yogurt sauce.  it was fantastic!  the glass of malbec i had along with it didn't exactly knock my socks off, though. 

the next day was the save darfur rally on the mall.  that was inspirational and moving but also a exhausting (mostly dehydrating).  the jewish community was out in force but i happened to be in the company of a rwandan family as well as some african muslims (not sure if they were darfurian or not) fervently cheering along to what was being said.  i appreciated that they had an armenian speaker (few people seem to know about the armenian genocide) as well as a bosnian genocide survivor.  it was nice to see such solidarity and spend a day in which everyone was thinking about the welfare of others, of the betterment of the world.

i took the acela home that night and occasionally looked out the window , thinking of how it felt a bit like the bullet train in japan but wasn't quite the same.  watched high and low in which i actually got to see some scenes filmed on the first bullet trains -- quite different from today's bullet trains.  i'd like to think that one day we too could get bold again, make big technological leaps forward in our infrastructure. 

tonight i heard the sox beat the yankees.  poetic moment:  mike myers (aka eeyore) gives up a three-run homer to ortiz which sails over the head of johnny damon in center field before being caught by papelbon in the bullpen.  fenway fans cheer "johhhhnyyy.... johhhhnyyy!"  hah.