Waiting (Nearly 7 PM)

Waiting, sitting and waiting. Hate that hate this. This. Sitting around waiting for a meeting that was supposed to happen almost 30 minutes ago(!) Waiting waiting waiting for meetings tense discussions scoldings repetition boredom nervousness jealousy fear endless bottomless boredom again. And no dinner. Stuck. Waiting.

Nothing ever comes of this. An hour or more of grumpy-parent managers and bratty-worker bees, every one of them waiting for the closing bell waiting for
freedom from
routine
ridicule
remorseless
rapacious
repetition
and red-eyed
tight-lipped
angry
boredom
boring meetings
and waiting still
hating this.

Breathe.
Yawn.
Stretch.
Think slow sweet smooth thoughts.
Dream.

Dream about something else before you flip. Dream about......quiet childhood mornings and peaceful family evenings with Gramma's comfy-bony warm brown knees, her dainty dancer's feet in dirty pink slippers and always her gossamer soft faded rose housecoat, pockets stuffed with folded kleenex, Daily Defender clippings and ancient bobby pins. Her hands on my shoulders, playing with my hair, rubbing my back. So easy in Gramma's company watching TV, refuge from classroom rules and mean girls (daytime) and uptight anxious mom (nighttime). Missing her so much right now. Missing everyday her faded roses, her bony knees, her absentminded murmurs, sighs of resignation, mischievous chuckles and her strong fine hands. Missing everything about her and hating this wait.

Hope there's afterlife after this. Hope I see Gramma and make her laugh again. Hope there's satellite in heaven and Hollywood Squares, The Edge of Night, Gunsmoke, and The Jeffersons are on a continuous loop!

Everybody's Reading Zane

So what do you think of the urban books phenomenon? You know—those mostly paperback and softcover trade novels published by Zane and Triple Crown and the like—even Essence magazine is getting on that gravy train—that are written for and heavily marketed to young black readers? You’ve seen them by now I know, they are a huge publishing trend and tend to feature on their covers either sexed-up, uber-glam young black women, with titles like Whore, Bitch, Around the Way Girls, Gettin' Buck Wild and In Cahootz, or fierce, muscled, broody-looking young black men, with titles like Blow, The Ski Mask Way, Thugs And the Women Who Love Them and A Hustler's Son.

I don’t know quite what to make of this development and indeed there is some ongoing controversy within the library system nationwide about these books, with some librarians simply refusing to carry them and others doing so reluctantly, trying to decide how to classify them and whether to make them available to young readers. We carry a lot of these titles with more coming in every week, and they seem to vary in quality, with some written with some polish and verve, and some pretty raw and crude.

I’ve tried to read a few of them, curious to understand what they’re about and what their exploding popularity means. As a rule, they’re generally trashy, soft-core porn, an updated inner-city twist on the bodice-ripper romance novel, with characters—mostly women; most of these books seem to be aimed at young minority women—who live in a sex-and-violence universe of one kind or another. These books are VERY popular with girls and teen-to-twenty-something black women (and increasingly, the same age group of black males) who assert that they “tell it like it is” about life.

Well… yes, they do. If yours is a ghetto-underclass sort of life, that is. The books do reflect certain bleak realities, though I think more than that what they do, really, is exploit that world, in the way gangsta rap both glamorized and exploited a kind of black life experience, slickly packaging and marketing it back to both the black community and, especially, naïve suburban white kids attracted to an existence foreign to them and unnerving to their parents.

It makes me uneasy that even younger, middle-schoolers are now coming in looking for these books. These kids are always a little shy and embarrassed when asking for help in finding them, as though afraid we’re going to tell their mamas what they’re reading, and they usually don’t even know what specifically to ask for—they never have a title or author name in mind—it’s always just “Y’all got any Zane books?” Apparently one title serves as well as the next, and that alone worries me. There’s a mindlessness in this kind of reading. To me urban books are the literary equivalent of junk food—fast and tasty but not very healthy, especially as a mainstay.

Yet I wonder if I’m overreacting, or possibly missing something about the books’ appeal. What are young readers looking for in urban books? Are girls drawn to headstrong women characters who, against daunting odds, manage to make their own success in the world? I notice some of the books feature—mostly as a tease, admittedly—girl-on-girl attraction and I wonder if that is particularly significant to a young minority reader trying to sort out gender identity or sexual orientation issues without drawing too much attention to her (or him) self.

We carry both fiction and nonfiction titles designed to reach out to young LGBTQ readers and in my shelving duties I’ve observed that those books are frequently pulled from the shelves by young patrons but seldom actually checked out (I’m always finding them in the wrong place). My guess is those books, by their very titles and cover art, are considered likely to provoke storms of censure from all quarters; sadly, for minority readers especially, they are thus radioactive. On the other hand everybody’s reading Zane.

Myth

Just finished reading a piece in Time magazine by Joe Klein in which he explores the phenomenon of “Palinmania” (or whatever he called it). As usual Klein is succinct in his pinpointing of the reasons Republican VP pick Sarah Palin has not just electrified the evangelical base but appears to have energized the GOP across the board, and in so doing probably changed the direction of the election. About a minute ago it was Barack Obama and his meteoric political fortunes the media couldn’t stop talking about, now it is Palin, and through her the resuscitation of John McCain and his chances for the White House.

All this, of course, is crushing news for the Democrats, most especially African-American Democrats, who saw an historic January inauguration so clearly we could practically reach out and touch it; now it seems, at this writing, to be slipping away.

I think this is bad news for the country as well. As Klein has assessed, it is nostalgia, in particular a nostalgia for a vanishing, Main Street, “Morning in America”-type past (that in fact never really existed) that Palin—the Sarah Palin we sort of-kind of know right now, at least—embodies for those so taken with her; a Reaganesque nostalgia with a twist: Rosie the Riveter Goes to Washington. She is selling herself—a ferociously determined GOP is selling her—as just an ordinary working mom (from a last-frontier-type state yet) who has made extraordinarily good; it is an Americana fantasy, it is the way Americans, white Americans especially, loooove to see themselves.

And it is an “uncomplicated” America--where people of color knew their place (mostly in the background or out of the picture entirely) and were okay with that as far as anyone bothered to know, an America as it was before those trouble-making, smarty-pants liberals with their radical notions about racial equality and queer identities and women’s rights started stirring things up--that Palin represents.

That America never had to contend with a Barack Obama, an urbane, educated black man with an exotic name and mixed-race life history to match, and what he represents. His is not the myth white Americans, of a certain age and upbringing anyway, know and love. If anything Obama and his candidacy signal a culturally complex, changing world, a world changing way too fast for an America more comfortable with fable than fact.

Race

There's a passage in "Edge of Midnight" (Should that title be in quotes by the way or italicized? I can never remember...), Bill Mann's bio of the late director John Schlesinger, where he talks about reading and listening to Schlesinger's diaries and comes across the director's memories of a trip to South Africa, and suddenly my mind went to race. These were not thoughts about the apartheid of that country, but rather past and recent struggle right here at home.

For some reason I thought about the 1977 broadcast of the groundbreaking mini-series Roots, and the way some (many?) white Americans reacted to it and to the African-Americans around them. I dimly recall a couple of stilted, awkward conversations with white acquaintances about episodes of the show; I remember reading accounts of white regret and discomfort, with a number of people saying stuff like "I didn't know", and rolling my eyes at that--You "didn't know"?? Seriously? So where have you and your relatives been living these past few decades, Pluto?--and my reaction being shared by many blacks I knew: Who are these people kidding?

Coincidentally I glanced at Bill's blog a short while ago and I see he's hopping mad about the way things are going for the Democrats. Wanted to post a comment teasing him about his shit-fit (Along the lines of: I'll bet it's a DREAM living with you, Bill; I'll lay odds Tim's hunkering down in the bathroom or somewhere until things quiet down :-)) but decided this may not be the moment; he's really that upset.

And reading Bill's post, I thought again about race, this time of course about Barack Obama's chances at being elected President of the U.S.

It doesn't look good.

Not that this is the first time I've had this feeling. As much as I've wanted to be hopeful and celebratory, I've nevertheless been very skeptical as to how ready this America truly is to elect a black man to the highest office in the land. This America. Not some mythical reconciled America of the distant future.

The mainstream media has been talking a lot about what Sarah Palin represents for Republicans, especially the evangelicals and (ahem) other "social conservatives." What she brings to the McCain campaign, what she (theoretically) offers the still disenchanted Hillary supporters. It seems to me there is something else Palin offers to those inclined to vote for her--excuse me--for John McCain, something the GOP is fully aware of and in fact counting on, and I keep waiting for the MSM to acknowledge it but, except for here and there around the edges, they're not doing so, at least not yet.

Miss Sarah offers white voters who are not thrilled with McCain but would frankly rather die before casting a vote for a black man, a way out.

She's new! She's fresh! She's young! (Younger even than Obama!) She's a wholesome, small-town, family-values All-American gal!

She's one of us!

Falling Behind

Frustrated right now because I meant to be somewhere else, running a fun errand or two for myself before starting work, but I ran out of time and can't do it now without risking making myself late... maybe Thursday. Hopefully Thursday, since one important thing I want to do is get a gift for my nephew's upcoming birthday. He will be 14 on Sunday.

14. A teenager. It doesn't seem possible that time has moved so quickly. I remember (vividly) when Col was a babe in his proud parents' arms, smiling shyly at everyone, charming everyone around him. I remember when he was toddling but still not talking, fascinated by keys and telephones... especially the afternoon my brother and I watched amused as he set about "locking" every door in the house, including a hallway closet.

"But why that door, sweetie?" I asked him, playfully. "That's just a storage closet, ya know?" He paused to look at me as though considering my question. In that moment my brother--his dad--and I must have had the same thought: if this were a cartoon there would be, in reply, a thought balloon over Colin's head.

As if on cue, Joe provided it. "Things... come out at night," he intoned and we cracked up as Colin grinned.

His other big thing was "talking" on the telephone. Col had a toy phone that had begun to lose its appeal as he noticed his parents taking incoming calls on the wireless grown-up phones around the apartment. So his parents gave him an old, cordless powder blue princess phone and we made a great game of answering it for him when it "rang" asking if he wanted the call or should "they" call back, and then handing him the receiver.

"Her-row?" Col would say importantly, his eyebrows up. Then as he noticed us all eavesdropping he'd turn away slightly and lower his voice to a conspiratorial whisper of garbled baby-babble. I don't think the word "cute" properly describes how sweetly hilarious it always was, but I suppose it will have to do until a better one comes along. And as ever, I'm swept with regret that no one thought to record priceless moments like that... how is it possible that not one of us in that loving circle of grandparents, aunts and uncles had the presence of mind to get a camcorder going?

I remember crisp, sunny days like this one when a pre-school Col, his affectionate black lab Baker and I would wander the neighborhood, searching for Tyrannosaurus Rex bones and the perfect playground (where other little kids were friendly back and you never had to wait your turn for the carousel horse). I miss our Tuesday morning jaunts to the local library for lively read-alongs, and searching Blockbuster shelves for Disney and Land Before Time videos we hadn't seen already a million times, I miss our bookstore trips and joining Dad at The Medici for a quick lunch or a sticky bun snack. I miss backyard games of catch, and watching Little Bear and Magic School Bus episodes with Col, miss putting him down for a nap and reading him a story as he did his best to fight off sleep. I miss... everything.

Now he's taller than me, sounds eerily like his late father on the phone and--last time I saw him anyway--resembles one of the Jonas brothers. I know I sound like my own grandmother saying this, but where on earth did the time go? How could the boy have grown up so fast? And where have I been as he's been doing that?

No Time (Again)

No time to write this morning; have to be at work earlier these days and now I have an unexpected errand to run before going in.

Also reading so many Daily Kos comments to Palin's speech last night--very lively and insightful stuff (The commenters, not Palin. She's a nasty little snot)--turned out to be more time-consuming than anticipated.

More later, if I'm not too bushed (Ugh. Let me find another word, quick) tonight.

Wednesday Morning Pages - E-Mail To A Friend

Christ almighty, G. I don't know what to make of this, do you?

At first I was delighted because I thought this VP pick so patently ridiculous that I was convinced McCain had, in effect, handed the election to Barack Obama. This is perfect, I thought, this is almost too easy!

But now I'm starting to worry. Maybe it is too easy... Palin IS a ludicrously unqualified choice, and this DOES say troubling things about McCain's judgement (or should) but will the mainstream media (always bending over backwards to try to disprove "liberal bias") allow McCain, Palin and the GOP to get away with spinning and lying their way past the hypocrises and contradictions?

The MSM after all have been such admirers of John McCain's "maverick" persona that they've seemed unwilling or unable to admit to themselves (and thus to the American public) that McCain has not been that person in years if he ever truly was. And then there's the Democrats, with their uncanny talent for "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory." Will Democratic leaders actually find a way to blow it, to screw up what should have been--after 8 years of the train wreck that has been the Bush presidency--a cakewalk to the White House?

Even more importantly, will the American people use common sense, recognize the disaster-in-the-making of a McCain-Palin administration and vote accordingly? Or will lingering racism about Obama and self-delusion about John McCain's supposed "experience" sabotage us? I'm just wondering if in November this country will give the Europeans yet another reason to shake their collective heads and wonder--again--what the hell the Americans are thinking.

When I consider all of that, I'm not sure of anything anymore