For Christmas, I made a donation in my religious right wing, homophobic brother’s name to the Ali Forney Center in New York City. The Ali Forney Center is a GLBT youth homeless shelter, providing food and shelter for teens who were thrown out of their own homes for being gay. According to the Center’s website, at least “25% of [GLBT teens] are rejected by their families, and many end up homeless on the streets. Homeless LGBT teens are more likely than straight homeless teens to be subjected to violence on the streets, and in the homeless shelter system. They suffer from inordinate rates of mental illness, trauma, HIV infection and substance abuse. by their families.”

In creating his card, I included a printout of all of this information. My brother, upon reading this, called it “a liberal cause.” While he did not say the words aloud, his mocking tone and the expression he exchanged with my sister-in-law when handing her the card, said exactly what he thought of it. His tone said that such a problem was far from himself and he did not want to think about it or concern himself with the idea. His expression said that I had gone to the Dark Side and become a liberal. He, himself a preacher, did not care about the suffering of rejected, homeless children. I, in giving him such a gift, became a temptation daring him to accept any part of the GLBT community or to recognize the harm hatred and intolerance does to our society–to children.

Since Christmas, I have been left walking a strange line between sadness, anger, and confusion that anyone could be so hateful. I even included the love thy neighbor as thyself verse snipped straight from a Bible I bought at the library a while back. I knew he would not appreciate the gift. I expected him to make cruel jokes or even say that gay people deserved to die–after all, he’s never had problems not only saying this, but writing it in a public forum. He yanked my oldest niece out of public school a few years ago to homeschool her, after all, when she came out as bi. Instead of the maelstrom I expected to converge in our parents’ living room Christmas afternoon, however, I find myself wondering what, exactly, is a liberal cause?

Many months ago, I wrote in this forum what it meant to be conservative, expecting to soon follow up with what it meant to be liberal. I think it is finally time that I actually got around to doing this.

The word liberal was first used in 1375 to describe a type of school known as “artis liberalis.” By 1422, this was called liberal sciences–grammar, art, physics, and astronomy. The Oxford-English Dictionary defines this version of the word as “the disctintive epithet of those ‘arts’ or ’sciences’ that were considered ‘worthy of a free man;’ opposed to servile or mechanical.”

The second version of this word, according to the OED, means “free in bestowing; bountiful, generous, open-hearted.” This was used as early as 1387. The OED here cites Charles Dickens, who wrote over the poor of Victorian England (“Please, sir, may I have a little more?”), and John Ruskin, an Evangelical Christian Socialist from Victorian England.

The third version means “free from restraint; free in speech or action. In 16-17th centuries, often in a bad sense: Unrestrained by prudence or decorum, licentious” (1490). Next, it means “of passage, etc: freely permitted” (1530) and “of construction and interpretation: inclining to laxity or indulgence; not rigorous” (1778). Perhaps the most interesting version, however, is the fourth: “free from narrow prejudice; open-mnded, candid” (1782) and “free from bigotry or unreasonable prejudice in favor of traditional opinions or established institutions; open to the reception of new ideas or proposals of reform” (1823). In the included quotes, these last two forms of liberalism have been cited from a willingness to experiment with new arthritis medications, to certain camps of Jewish and Christian dogma. There are two more definitions–one referring to government and the other to combinations of liberal with other words (“liberal-anarchism,” etc)–but I think, perhaps, we get the idea.

What does it mean to be liberal, then, and what does it mean to think being liberal is a bad thing? Each use of the word in regards to people is meant to convey the idea of being freely-giving of one’s self or one’s things, or to be open to differences within people and situations. Is one who is not liberal, then, a Scrooge or a Grinch? No, not necessarily, as both of these are inherently connected with capitalism or materialistic goods. Being either says nothing about one’s ability to be open-minded or forward-thinking, after all.

Perhaps what he really meant was that such a charity most certainly be fueled by East Coast Ivy League paper-pushing elitists that worship sporadic Sundays at Congregationalist or UU churches that heartily accepted the tenets of Transcendentalism, abolitionism, civil rights, and gay marriage–in a culture that bred Kennedy’s, Harriet Beecher Stowe,  Henry David Thoreau, and educated the Unabomber. Yes, those free-loving nose-pushing rude Yankees, come time and time again to tame the South against racial inequality viewed as “local culture” even after legal segregation was outlawed. Is that what you’re saying, Big Brother? That some people are just different from you, and that this is wrong, and you can never accept them or admit that it is a sad fact that some families throw their children out on the streets for being gay, and that you, even as a self-defined Christian with the Biblical call to help widows and orphans, cannot help those less fortunate than you on Christmas because you’d rather get some cd or dvd or gift card?

It’s been a while since I’ve actually updated this blog–October, to be specific. I’ve been busy. Here’s what’s happening:

I’m still continuing the 365 days of photos. Today was day 108. As I can’t post it for privacy reasons, here was yesterday’s–looking down/the Arkansas Delta:

I went home for Christmas and have been charged with showing the rest of the world what Arkansas looks like since Most People don’t have any idea. I’m not sure I did the greatest job in taking appropriate photos to show this, but here are a few. Hover over the photos or click on them for captions.

I feel like sharing yet another poem by yours truly. Steal it and die, etc etc. (Why is it I get the most artistic stuff done when I have the littlest time?) And I’m still on hiatus. I am.

the gift

i was given a gift once
without a bow
it was much too big for my small frame
its creases hung off my shoulders like elephant folds
but momma said
i would grow into it

when i was young
i was reckless with it
like a princess monaco car
driven too fast
emergency brakes squealing
over a european cliff

to tell the truth
i’ve nearly broken it before
and watched as it was slowly stitched back up
and painted with an alcohol that made me sneeze

perhaps i would have
liked to return it for a newer model
and played with it all the day
until the glitter was gone

but if i’ve learned one thing
it’s that the stitches and the scars
give it a dolly parton coat of many colors character
my gift is patched and cracked
and held together with crazy quilt stitches

but when i hold it
i hear a girl giggle in my memory
as she plays beauty shop with her mother
i taste my granny’s turnip greens
one thanksgiving afternoon
bitter and sugary on my tongue
i watch a mother
kneel over her baby’s grave
and pour vase rain water onto the ground
i  feel the itch
of the lacy dress worn
in a preschool picture
because mom said it looked cute
and i am happy for how unique
my gift appears

TheKickable

While I am still on hiatus until further notice, I’ve written a poem and feel like sharing it. Steal it and die, etc etc.

the church of christ

the woman in the mirror
stares at the bags under her eyes

they said daddy had the cancer
and her momma knew
he’d be called home just like her baby boy
on that heavenary phone

classmates gather around the corner
“she’s a bitch, and
she’ll always be a bitch,” they say

mother mary may i
watch another bible school boy
kiss  a colt one september morning
the way he had so often
courted his marching band trumpet
may i watch them
fall like camo comrades in a war for our souls

the sinner in the pulpit
says his savior did not die for me
while inviting me to save my soul

as i went down in the river to pray
i saw my life flash before me
like the chlorinated world that nearly drowned me
one branson vacation

did your lord deliver daniel
by doing crooked daily deeds
by making us meet our setting suns
down the barrel of your jesus gun

farther along we’ll understand why
you fuck your daughters
because they’re daughters of eve
and expect them to smile

can we need thee every hour
and be washed in the blood
of someone who loves me not
daisy petals at his feet

you raised me on a steady diet
of hate and silence
like granola prison bars
to eat away my soul
and make me anorexic for love

jesus loves me
this i know has a question mark

god is an accountant
keeping track of the revolutionary 144,000
straight white non-denominational men
lighting a cross on fire for family values

i’ll fly away on a jet plane
to a blue state that’s never heard of you
and never be your prodigal masochistic daughter
that knows she cannot pray
or speak
or think
birthing another adam to hate thy neighbors

TheKickable

This blog is on hiatus until Christmas break–or possibly after Christmas, as I will be traveling. At any rate, I am too busy to update this blog right now, no matter how much I might want. See you all in over a month.

Thursday marked the end of week seven of the 365 photo challenge. Last week’s themes: up on top, oops, eyes, door, home is where the heart is, backlighting, and recessionary economics.

Recently, I had to do an oral history project for one of my classes. Thereafter, I decided to interview my parents about basically everything I could imagine. This idea found me researching significant events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to formulate questions. In the midst of doing this, I found myself realizing why my parents have such different ways of looking at certain things than I do.

My parents grew up during the Cold War era in rural Arkansas, far away from the stirrings of  potential McCarthy Communists or Vietnam protests. My dad is a Vietnam veteran, in fact, and my mom a former schoolteacher and librarian who, when I say she’s been outside the South in her lifetime, I mean she’s been to Branson, Missouri even more times than me.

The story of my parents has always interested me–I suppose because they’re my parents, and to understand a large part of myself is to understand where they have come from. As a little girl, I would sometimes dig through my family’s old photographs, which often caused my mother to yell at me to stop getting into stuff. As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a deep sense of wanting to know my own history. Perhaps I am selfish. More likely, however, this came from my parents’ own efforts when I was growing up: every vacation was a history field trip. I spent my childhood in ghost towns, graveyards, and archives. When I was five or six, my brother recreated a model of the entire downtown from the year 1901 from Sanborn maps stretched all over his bedroom. This was displayed at the county fair and the town’s spring festival for a couple of years thereafter and I remember having to sit with him and sometimes the rest of the historical association while passersby patted him on the back for his efforts and I asked my mom things like “can we get a snowcone now?” My brother became interested in history the same year that I was born, and our parents quite willingly fostered this interest. In second grade, my brother, then a Freshman in college, came to my class to give a slideshow about local historical buildings and how local history is important, too. The thank-you card from our class hung on his bedroom wall for years until my mother recreated his bedroom into a schoolroom after she started homeschooling me.

In creating questions for my mother, I found myself thinking about how different I’m sure her answers would be to certain questions than myself. Some things, I expect her to not even know about, even though she reads the newspaper from cover to cover every morning and has in my entire memory. Other things, I find myself knowing I would have such a different response because I was a child at the time. For instance: “Tell me what you remember about the Oklahoma City bombing.” I was nine years old at the time of the bombing. I remember thinking that a girl I had been friends with in third grade, LaToya, had moved to Oklahoma and being worried that she had been killed. I remember a special in the daily paper publishing the entire list of the dead, and my mother reading it on the front porch and saying how terrible it was. I remember my sister and I watching firemen carrying burned babies from the building on tv and her telling me that “there’s a little good in every evil; a little evil in every good,” and that no person was completely evil or good, and giving the example that even gang members can be good people and do good things.

I ask when my mother first heard about 9/11. I had just turned sixteen the week before 9/11. It was a Tuesday, and the fair was in town. My dad turned on the tv at about 8 or 9 o’clock and I remember Mom and I watching for a while too. I remember watching the second plane hit on live television. I had never heard of the World Trade Center. New York, after all, was so far away, it was a place only of imagination. Mom and I left to set up our 4-H fair booth, which had a patriotic theme. We won best of show because of this. That night, my parents and I went to the singing at the fair and I remember there being an especial amount of patriotic songs in light of what had happened. I remember leaving the building at about sunset and looking up at the waving flag and thinking that, far away, there were flags flying in New York and DC, too, and far away, people I never knew were dead, dying, and hurt.

It’s strange to think of the differing perspectives of people you’ve known your entire lives and who, for some of these questions, were there with you when you, too, experienced something. One of my questions for my mother is whether she watched the OJ Simpson car chase or trials. I know she watched the car chase because I remember watching it with my entire family. I was eight, and I remember wondering who would ever name their child Orange Juice. I remember my dad being totally enthralled by the whole thing and leaning forward in interest towards the tv. I remember becoming bored at one point and playing on the front porch, only to come back in and find that it was still the same old thing of some car going down a great big Interstate really slowly with a bunch of cops behind him.

I never really thought of how my parents must have seen any of these things, having experienced so much more of life and history than myself. What did my parents think, watching these acts of terrorism and violence? Did it remind them of so many other bombings of the twentieth century? Did it remind them of the turbulent ’60s, when they were my age and every important person appeared to be getting assassinated or otherwise shot at? Suddenly, I find myself realizing quite profoundly that, despite being a historian, my own viewpoints are limited by my youth and my own opinions.

Thursday ended week six of the 365 day photo challenge. Last week’s themes: heart’s desire, photograph, make your own theme #3, reading material, handwriting, furry, and hangs on a wall.

Kleenex has launched a new website entitled “Get Mommed,” where you can choose a mom to give you “extra care” this cold and flu season. You have your choices of race, ethnicities, socio-economic statuses . . . Are you gagging yet? ‘Cause I am.

I’m sorry, Kleenex, but I already have a mom, and I don’t see her featured there. Maybe that’s because my mom uses Puffs because, until recently, Kleenex deforested virgin rain forests in British Columbia to make their product. So, I’m sorry, hippie Amber. My mom’s more socially aware about products than you, and I’m sorry, Asian Sue, but my mom is as much of a hard-nosed bitch as you (I can say that, you can’t), but she hates Asians ever since she got tired of eating at Chinese restaurants with Dad and I. And, most of all, I’m sorry, Southern Magnolia, but, while I’m sure my mom would find you as adorable as Minnie Pearl, my mom thinks any sort of dancing “conjures up the devil,” and she would find the idea of being a debutante uppity (thank god). But, if you had a tv show like Paula Deene, she would not only watch you, but dvr you and refuse to ever delete you even when the thing was full of you, Paula Deene, John Wayne, Johnny Cash, and Dad’s “This Old House.”

Where is the stereotype of my mom, Kleenex? Where is the country-Southern accented, green-eyed, gray-haired, crooked-toothed (because braces were too expensive) arthritic woman that, in my childhood, sometimes weeped uncontrollably in quiet moments over her dead son, who has a terrible Celtic temper and the best fried squash or broccoli and cheese casserole ever made; who loved her children so much that she prematurely ended her career as a teacher and a librarian to stay home with us and turn our childhoods into education-boot-camp because she wanted us to be able to have the most possibilities in life, but who was too prideful to send us to things like therapy even when she recognized how abusive her eldest son was or her after her youngest’s suicide attempts?

I’ll tell you where she is. She’s at home, in Arkansas–and you can’t have her, ’cause she’s mine.