“I thought we were beyond all this…”

Cincinnati’s pervasive tensions around race, class, and gender inequality were omnipresent for those of us who lived there in 2001. In particular, the successive shootings of unarmed African American men by police officers was something of a shock–seriously, how many were there in a row since 2000? Too many, so when Tim Thomas fell in April, the city erupted in protest and unrest.  Hundreds, later thousands, of community members came together to organize nonviolent protests, and early on, we gathered in churches. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth lived in Cincinnati then, and it was his legacy (among many others) which inspired many of us who never thought we’d have occasion to march for civil rights to get involved. It was life-changing, humbling and permanently affected my perspective on public affairs and our society. Divisions still run too deep, and as painful, uncomfortable, and sometimes confusing it is, I believe it is up to us to grapple with that idealistic vision of Dr. King: to be judged by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin. What does that really mean? That is an ongoing distillation.

Interviewed at the time about unrest in the city where he had lived since the 1960s, Rev. Shuttlesworth said of Cincinnati that “I thought we were beyond all this” in reference to (as I recall, anyway) the destruction, fires, and more violent components of those few days in April. It was sickening and sobering to realize that we weren’t.

Learning of Shuttlesworth’s death on Wednesday (along with Steve Jobs and Derrick Bell) brought to mind some old Irish superstition about deaths occurring in threes. What a tremendous, momentous loss for us all with these. But of the three, it was the loss of Shuttlesworth which gave me an emotional pause, thanks to those intense days ten years ago.

new boozy city

My favorite bit of narration from Prohibition, Parts II & III:

Consumption dropped in every major city, and everywhere in the United States, except in New York City, where it went up. New Yorkers then as now did NOT enjoy being told what to do and took to drinking in defiance.

Heh. Yeah, I could’ve guessed.

Another favorite tale: a woman at grad school in Cambridge (Radcliffe?) applied that intellectual talent (with a roommate) to making homemade beer. It blew up, thus spoiling an otherwise promising weekend, no doubt.

All of these stories–up to and including the spawn of what we now know as the mob–make for quite the tale of “crime, corruption and hypocrisy.”

Oh, and did anyone else catch the right to privacy first articulated thanks to Justice Brandeis?  Or a hero of New York politics, Al Smith? Imagine a politician today standing up for his or her convictions regardless of losing a general election, because that’s what Smith did after denouncing the strengthening KKK.

It was quite something hearing from The New Yorker’s Lois Long (aka “Lipstick”) who could be a blogger recapping her night somewhere on the Lower East Side circa 2011 : these are the tales which cemented the legendary flappers in New York’s imagination, I’m sure.

At last, Burns gets back to gender in the 1920′s, and brings up a phenomenon you’ll see again in the wake of 2nd wave American feminism: an incredibly politicized generation of feminist activists appalled at the sexualized behavior of their daughters. My delightful discovery, thanks to this doc, was that of Pauline Sabin, the blue-blood Republican who stood for repeal and against the Women’s Christian Temperance Union because she felt offended that they purported to stand for all American women.

Definitely worth a viewing–so put this one in your queue for a winter’s weekend, if not sooner! I’m impressed at Burns’ brevity here: there is more than enough material to have gone on far longer, and this film is fairly “tight” for him, clocking in at around six hours. It’s also genuinely insightful in terms of how long certain political and cultural debates have been with us as a nation, which is to say–as always–longer than we thought.

prohibition, part 1

It was interesting to see so many of the issues I’ve worked on in policy and feminist history show up throughout the first installment of Ken Burns’ Prohibition.

Kudos to Burns for tracing the history of women’s activism in terms of the temperance movement in the 19th century–they are absolutely intertwined. It is amazing to reread the history of temperance seeing “alcohol” as code for domestic violence, marital rape and financial ruin if paychecks were brought directly to taverns where they could be cashed and spent in full. This did not encompass every single drinker’s behavior, thank goodness, but it has always interested me to think about how easily we can use one identifiable so-called “evil” as a stand-in for far more amorphous social problems (then and now).

Last year, I spent a lot of time doing research on New York’s alcohol policy, and the same arguments from the 19th century about the city’s “vice neighborhoods” now appear as battles over the efficacy of allowing “nightlife districts”. Watching Burns’ documentary, you see history repeat itself over and over again. In America, fights over alcohol  have been going on in the background of our politics forever–one way or another.

so much to say

Hola!

Tonight I have the greatest sociological experiment of our time (Jersey Shore–what?) and a Britney appearance at the VMA’s to offer solace after the utterly wacky proceedings of the past week.

Procedurally, the earthquake and Hurricane Irene reflect how interconnected this region is in ways which can confound emergency planning. The earthquake is just plain unsettling, a queasy greeting from earth setting the tone for the entire week. That afternoon, while scrolling through Twitter on my phone, I noted references to some hurricane headed our way by the weekend. WHAT? I thought. That would be even crazier than another round of SamRon!

Cut to Friday, when I surveyed the office where I’m a temp to make sure we’d moved equipment away from windows and cleaned out the refrigerator. Most of the others were working from home, and it was eerily quiet inside the building. Out on the street, though? People were rolling carts (think “grandma carts”, my beloved suburbanites!) with toilet paper, drinking water, and food. Target was out of flashlights and batteries. I ended up rerunning the same kinds of prep at home, and still had my usual weekend errands to do in case we were flooded or the power went out.

I didn’t understand the need to buy whole cases of things. I mean, honestly, during the blackout we had a rough initial few hours but after a day or two, went to the bodegas to find household needs. I didn’t mess around with the grocery store for water this time, either. I went to my corner bodega, where the guys had plenty of gallon jugs with no price gouging. Win!

Tonight I’m just tired of the whole situation, and relieved that I don’t live in NJ anymore, or up in the Catskills, or Westchester or Dutchess counties upstate where the damage looks far worse. I’m upset that I feel as though I didn’t have a weekend, but I’m hardly alone in that sentiment. It will make Labor Day weekend even better.

domestic goddess

This weekend in KD’s food:

 

blueberry pie

chicken francaise

fish & chips and stolen bites of a friend’s McDonnell’s curry over a pot of tea (getting our Irish on)

bits of a Cadbury caramel bar, Trader Joe’s dark chocolate with caramel and sea salt, Trader Joe’s jelly beans

white cheddar popcorn

chips and guac

Samuel Adams Summer Ale

pancakes

Yum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

private life

Last week’s great read: Private Lives, by Jane Smiley. Smiley’s 2010 novel is a portrait of a woman from St. Louis who marries an eccentric scientist and moves with him to California, spanning from the 1880s through World War II. It is an unusual story in that I have not seen a novel which bridges this particular time period before, and with interesting implications. Smiley’s narrator enters life referencing grandparents’ behavior during and after the Civil War, and her husband’s actions during WWII provides the narrative’s crisis point. Critics also pointed out, correctly, that this is another work in Smiley’s oeuvre examining the sometimes troubled nature of women’s roles in marriage, certainly as it was then structured. Elizabeth is very nearly sent into an arranged marriage, or at the least one without a lot of what we might consider romance. My interest in this novel was also piqued by its location, near San Francisco. Owing to the historical period of this story, the characters are also touched tragically by the great earthquake of 1908. Smiley’s rendering of that event is particularly gripped with despair.

say the magic words…

JOB. Or more generally,

Jobs with BENEFITS.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?  I think that would solve my very own debt ceiling problem, much less everyone else’s.

I’m working on that. In the meantime, between temping and freelancing where possible and unpacking, this past weekend it was time to go and celebrate the graduation of two of my cousins from high school and college. This meant that about 700 people would gather under tents to drink beer and marvel at how all of the people who used to be kids are pairing up and having broods of their own. My cousin’s daughter seemed incredulous at the idea that her mom and I played together when we were her age. “Mom isn’t little!” she said. “And you’re older!”

Indeed.

My 18-month old niece is such a night owl that while we were at my parents’ place she just kept going, getting up, would not lie down or go the f# to sleep even when she was staggering over her own body weight, as she did not want to miss anything. Finally she leaned forward arranged two blankies for herself, and fell forward onto them in a tired slump. Which is pretty much my fantasy for August. As is finishing the list of emails, letters and phone calls I owe friends. Tonight I actually read my Twitter feed at the laundromat, where I made sure to wash the blanket I plan to pass out into myself in a couple of weeks. So yes, “job with benefits” and “sleep” = fairytale August/September around here.