George, Lew, my father. Two generational contemporaries dead within days, one dead almost 30 years ago recalled by fluke in the same week.
George was a humorous cyberfriend I never met in the flesh, but I had a good sense of his character.
Lew would not have died in the arms of his wife if I had not told him, years ago, that she planned to dump him as a boyfriend. And if he had not redoubled his campaign to win her heart.
My father's death was a tragedy for the personal mess he left in his wake, but it's a psychic mess I had long ago cleaned up until I ran into someone who asked me if I had heard of a man by the same name ... my father, by the details.
Then there's my own death, of which I have dreamed. I dreamed of everyone carrying on just fine without me. (Drat!) No funeral cortege to Arlington, no heads of state flying in. Nothing. Just another nobody gone.
Death talk is unfashionable in this society, in which we proclaim the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet death is a reality of life. Closer when those not far from one's own age begin to die.
Now you know why I haven't posted anything. I was thinking about death.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
A Gift for TANF Mothers
The term "welfare mother" has been so loaded that I chose for the heading the bureaucratic abbreviation of the current program. After all, ever since Ronald Reagan invented out of whole cloth a public aid cheater in Chicago, some people deem a welfare mom as practically a criminal -- all to justify sending poor mothers with infants to work outside the home.
Indeed, I found myself nodding when, during a visit to Washington a few years ago, the head of the United Kingdom's social programs under Tony Blair made clear that, forcing a mother with children under six to leave home to perform mindless low-skill work was so horrifying to the British public, that it had never been even suggested in Parliament.
What we have done since 1996 to poor women heading households with children in the United States is unspeakable. What we did before wasn't much better.
Now we tell them to go out get the first menial job they can, or else we'll cut them off the cash from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (the TANF in the heading) -- and amount ranging from about $230 a month in Mississippi to about $950 in New York.That's below poverty? Add SNAP (the new name for food stamps) and public housing subsidies. It comes close to the poverty line. Not much more.
Since when is making sure a child is fed, loved, cared for -- in a word, mothering -- less important than flipping burgers or sitting at a cash register?
Conservatives argue that these women make lousy mothers, since they are all on [add drug of the day here] and work as [insert sexual occupations serving conservative customers here]. Or they're lazy and uneducated and [add whisper] black.
In fact, most welfare mothers are white. Let's factually adjust the picture just enough to conjure up an image to which most Americans, even the stupidest, will react to with a smidgen of compassion. A poor white woman is a WPA work of art, no?
But even if we think the worst of welfare mothers, isn't the drugs, prostitution, compulsive TV watching, etc., largely a result of nurture rather than nature? Couldn't this behavior be changed?
Imagine a modern equivalent of a "sewing circle": a daily, neighborhood gathering of TANF moms with non-TANF peers and an older, motherly role model who had raised children of her own.There would be opportunities for peer-to-peer problem solving, career exploration, even eventual job search or home-brewed microenterprises (yes, I know all the lingo).
Wouldn't that be much, much better than merely throwing them out into the labor market with no skills? Wouldn't that be better than denying cash, food, housing? Throwing them and their children out like garbage?
Some brave people are attempting things like this, but it's far from being national policy with serious resources. That should be our Mother's Day's gift to all TANF moms.
Indeed, I found myself nodding when, during a visit to Washington a few years ago, the head of the United Kingdom's social programs under Tony Blair made clear that, forcing a mother with children under six to leave home to perform mindless low-skill work was so horrifying to the British public, that it had never been even suggested in Parliament.
What we have done since 1996 to poor women heading households with children in the United States is unspeakable. What we did before wasn't much better.
Now we tell them to go out get the first menial job they can, or else we'll cut them off the cash from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (the TANF in the heading) -- and amount ranging from about $230 a month in Mississippi to about $950 in New York.That's below poverty? Add SNAP (the new name for food stamps) and public housing subsidies. It comes close to the poverty line. Not much more.
Since when is making sure a child is fed, loved, cared for -- in a word, mothering -- less important than flipping burgers or sitting at a cash register?
Conservatives argue that these women make lousy mothers, since they are all on [add drug of the day here] and work as [insert sexual occupations serving conservative customers here]. Or they're lazy and uneducated and [add whisper] black.
In fact, most welfare mothers are white. Let's factually adjust the picture just enough to conjure up an image to which most Americans, even the stupidest, will react to with a smidgen of compassion. A poor white woman is a WPA work of art, no?
But even if we think the worst of welfare mothers, isn't the drugs, prostitution, compulsive TV watching, etc., largely a result of nurture rather than nature? Couldn't this behavior be changed?
Imagine a modern equivalent of a "sewing circle": a daily, neighborhood gathering of TANF moms with non-TANF peers and an older, motherly role model who had raised children of her own.There would be opportunities for peer-to-peer problem solving, career exploration, even eventual job search or home-brewed microenterprises (yes, I know all the lingo).
Wouldn't that be much, much better than merely throwing them out into the labor market with no skills? Wouldn't that be better than denying cash, food, housing? Throwing them and their children out like garbage?
Some brave people are attempting things like this, but it's far from being national policy with serious resources. That should be our Mother's Day's gift to all TANF moms.
Friday, May 08, 2009
Gay Style?
I am going to get killed here, but Andy of V and A in Milan prompted me to finally give vent to an idea I have had for many years when he wrote, in what seemed like a bit of exasperation, "I have been called the straightest of gay men."
The topic of our sermon, boys and girls, is: Is there a gay style and if so what should it be? This could also be: Is there a "straight" style and what should that be?
This is interesting to me, someone who is often taken in cyberspace to be a woman (see latest in the comments section here), even though I am of the male persuasion (although I have expressed an interest in becoming lesbian, for which I have been told I have an aptitude). Perhaps the confusion arises because I don't punctuate every sentence with "eff'in A!"?
This is also interesting because I was there when a college roommate declared himself gay at 3 am, after an evening at the local gay alliance; unfortunately, I had a final exam the next morning and really needed the sleep, so that discussion was postponed, much to his drunken chagrin.
CR, as I'll call him, had been up to that point a normal, average ... um, what am I saying? He liked opera, fer cryin' out loud! (OK, so my father loved opera -- his Italian heritage -- and that's why I hate it, but that's a whole other story).
All right, what I mean is that CR didn't have any noticeable mannerisms in his gesture or voice. He wasn't "affeminate."
Fast forward to a few years ago, when I hired him at what was his fast-approaching middle age (he is a few years older than I am). All of a sudden, he behaved like a typical 40-ish female secretary of the 1950s.
You know, the kind that has her hair up in a bouffant and whose fingers taper into painted claws and whose mouth and cheeks are rouged and powdered and whose perfume can be smelled a mile away. One day she quits in a huff and her desk drawers are found to be filled to the rafters with tissue paper and various female cosmetic and medical supplies. Gary Larson used to draw her to great effect (see here).
No, CR didn't look like one. He just talked like one, freaked out like one (you won't believe his antics on 9/11 ... OK, so we were a block from the White House, but honestly!) and generally behaved in a way that completely belied his physical appearance as a tall, lean, Brahmin WASP man.
What is it about a man's sexual preference for other men that demands behavior that apes the worst stereotypes of a traditional woman? I mean, most women today are more "macho" than that!
Give me a woman who knows how to handle a power drill any day.
Frankly, I have no answer. I am relieved to learn that Andy, a gay man, doesn't seem to have an answer, either. It shows that it's a not just me, a straight guy, asking an unreasonable question.
The topic of our sermon, boys and girls, is: Is there a gay style and if so what should it be? This could also be: Is there a "straight" style and what should that be?
This is interesting to me, someone who is often taken in cyberspace to be a woman (see latest in the comments section here), even though I am of the male persuasion (although I have expressed an interest in becoming lesbian, for which I have been told I have an aptitude). Perhaps the confusion arises because I don't punctuate every sentence with "eff'in A!"?
This is also interesting because I was there when a college roommate declared himself gay at 3 am, after an evening at the local gay alliance; unfortunately, I had a final exam the next morning and really needed the sleep, so that discussion was postponed, much to his drunken chagrin.
CR, as I'll call him, had been up to that point a normal, average ... um, what am I saying? He liked opera, fer cryin' out loud! (OK, so my father loved opera -- his Italian heritage -- and that's why I hate it, but that's a whole other story).
All right, what I mean is that CR didn't have any noticeable mannerisms in his gesture or voice. He wasn't "affeminate."
Fast forward to a few years ago, when I hired him at what was his fast-approaching middle age (he is a few years older than I am). All of a sudden, he behaved like a typical 40-ish female secretary of the 1950s.
You know, the kind that has her hair up in a bouffant and whose fingers taper into painted claws and whose mouth and cheeks are rouged and powdered and whose perfume can be smelled a mile away. One day she quits in a huff and her desk drawers are found to be filled to the rafters with tissue paper and various female cosmetic and medical supplies. Gary Larson used to draw her to great effect (see here).
No, CR didn't look like one. He just talked like one, freaked out like one (you won't believe his antics on 9/11 ... OK, so we were a block from the White House, but honestly!) and generally behaved in a way that completely belied his physical appearance as a tall, lean, Brahmin WASP man.
What is it about a man's sexual preference for other men that demands behavior that apes the worst stereotypes of a traditional woman? I mean, most women today are more "macho" than that!
Give me a woman who knows how to handle a power drill any day.
Frankly, I have no answer. I am relieved to learn that Andy, a gay man, doesn't seem to have an answer, either. It shows that it's a not just me, a straight guy, asking an unreasonable question.
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