I Have Proof(s)!

Wow, I really wrote a book! I mean, I knew that I wrote a book and everything, but it's sort of hard for me to picture until the galley is in my grubby hands, which it finally is today.

I've been too busy jumping around and running from room to room squealing, "I've got a book! I've got a book! Motherfucker, I really wrote a book!" to have sat down with it and looked at it closely. However, my preliminary pokes at various pages indicate that it looks cool. And, no matter what I write, I will always cringe when I look at it later and think about a better way I could have said something. Still, super awesome.

Now I just have to figure out how to get the comments on the galley back to the publisher. I suppose this should be obvious, but I've never worked with a proof before. Do I notate my corrections (like forgetting to thank my brother-in-law for helping me get the photos ready to include?) in the margins on the page itself, or do I attach a post it note thingy? Am I supposed to use official proofreader markings, ('cause if so, I better fucking learn them pronto)?

The galley came with no coverletter or any other explanation of the process, so I'll ring the editor tomorrow. For now, I'm going to continue skipping to and from the dining room to the living room, and vice verse. Whooooooeeee! I wrote a book!

Safe Places: Perceptions vs. Reality

Until I left for college, I lived with my family in the uppity northern suburbs of Chicago. When I was an ambitious junior high student, I decided that I wanted to attend Northwestern University, which is only about 15 minutes from the home which my parents purchased six months before I was born. This pleased my parents immensely. However, by the end of my sophomore year of high school, it occured to me that college would be an excellent opportunity to live in another city. I set my sights on Boston, New York City, and Washington, DC.

My dad forbid me to apply to school in New York. While working at a CPA firm in the mid-1980s, he was sent to the City once a year to do an audit for a client. He hated everything about it: the crowds, the dirt and grime, and the crime. Why on earth would he send his precious eldest daughter to Sodom when she could stay in Chicago or go to other nice places, like Boston or DC.

The irony is that by the time I applied to school in the fall of 1993, New York was already one of the safest cities in the world. DC has always had an outrageous murder rate; almost 2/3 of the metropolis were and are significantly more dangerous than New York. But since New York had not shed its image as the Rotting Big Apple, my dad thought that DC was a better place to live.

Today, I work in the South Bronx. Many people continue to associate the area with the arsons, burned out buildings, and air of desperation that pervaded it in the 1970s, when the Yankees played a championship game, Howard Cosell saw fires in the surrounding community and announced that the Bronx was burning. I walk through a housing project to get to my office from the subway (which is actually an elevated train up here, just like in Chicago). I've never felt threatened thus far. Yet, I read on CNN that 15 people were shot and killed in Chicago in the past two weeks. I'm not sure there's been one murder in the entire City of New York in the same time frame. (Probably there was, but I refuse to watch the doom-and-gloom that is the local news, and I didn't notice anything in the Metro section of the Times).

Perceptions and fear play a big role in how we live our lives. Although my childhood community is held up as a paragon of educational excellence, I frequently think about how racism and classism influenced the educational opportunities that were offered to my best friend, who has half Dominican, versus me, who lived on the "wrong side of the highway (as did my BF)," versus the wealthier kids. When people say that they are afraid to go to Israel because of terrorism, I think about how my friend from high school moved to Israel after college. While she was back in the US for a visit with her Israeli boyfriend, the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center flew over her head as she boarded a ferry to the Statue of Liberty. It is the only terrorist attack she ever experienced; her boyfriend said he would never return to the US because it was too dangerous here. When people in Europe hear that I am from Chicago, they ask me about Al Capone.

In a media saturated culture, it is hard to get away from perceptions. I found that it took me years to really understand New York, and now I am scared of the dark empty sidewalk of the subrubs when I visit my parents. How do you decide where to go and what to do?

More Terms for Today's Equation

Tack these terms onto my previous equation for a new sum:

+ Irrational lunatics
+ Unseasonable cold
- It is not Monday
----------------------------------
Ready to stab someone

It All Adds Up to Extra Crabbiness with a Side of Bitch

Today's equation:

Had less than 6 hours of sleep Sun. night
+ Did not sleep well last night
+ Ragging it
+ Raining outside
+ Sitting in my cell (tiny office with no natural light, although there is an interior window missing glass that looks into the hallway where people congregate near the photocopier, printer, and shredder)
+ Performing menial data entry tasks that are boring
+ Nervous about book (supposed to receive galley last Friday; now hoping it'll be tomorrow)
+ Anxious about wait list
__________________________

Exceptionally crabby and on edge

Learning to Be a Compassionate Conservative

For my 7th grade social studies enrichment project, I devised a board game about homelessness. The game was inspired by an article I read in People magazine about four or five people and how they became homeless. Using only their real life stories, people went around the board and tried to find a permanent place to live. I even cut out the people's pictures from the magazine and made them into the men.

After playing the game for a little while, several of my fellow "gifted" classmates became frustrated by all the bad luck that happened on each turn. Just when they thought they were making progress, there would be some set back, again, based on the real life stories told in the article.

"How do you win?" one guy demanded to know.

I frowned. "I don't think it's possible."

"This is the dumbest game ever," he sneered. "I quit."

And that is the type of "compassionate" conservatism that pervaded the community I grew up in. People refused to believe that not everyone was born into an advantaged situation, and thus if they were homeless, it was their fault. Plus, if only someone worked hard enough, they would be fine.

Granted, we were only in junior high, so I can't entirely fault my classmates for their naivety. At the same time, I seemed able to grasp the concept and as one of the dumbest smart people in my school, I barely was admitted into the gifted program, so I'm not sure why the "best and the brightest" were unable to wrap their little minds around the idea that society really screws some people. Now might be a good time to point out that Donald Rumsfeld grew up in that area, so perhaps it is a collective willful stupidity that only a few of us are fortunate enough to avoid.

And, with that little commentary, I am off to get an offensively expensive hair cut.

Something's Fishy in Here

A good general rule of thumb is to be wary of "fresh fish" in areas in that are not near bodies of water (other than polluted rivers). Disregarding this nugget of wisdom on Saturday, Steph, Husband, and I headed to a sushi restaurant for lunch at the King of Prussia Mall. Right in the entryway was a large fish tank:



I had a difficult time using Husband's camera phone, so in case the contents of the tank are not obvious from this blurry shot, I'll enumerate: those ain't fish. The tank is instead filled with empty bottles of alcohol. (This had no bearing on my poor camera skills, by the way.) Despite this glaring warning to turn back, we asked for a table for three. Here's Steph eagerly awaiting her bento box:



Isn't she adorable? Miraculously, none of us got food poisoning, and somehow the sushi was even OK tasting.

While waiting for my fishy meal, I did some math. I learned about the King of Prussia Mall and decided I must visit this enormous paean to shopping someday when I was approximately 16 years old and working at Chiron Publications. (A bookstore that seems to no longer be there frequently special ordered exciting titles like In the Ever After or Uncursing the Dark for customers, and I processed the orders.) Currently, I am 32. This means that it took me exactly half of my life to achieve my goal and go to this mall. I don't know if that is impressive or pathetic, but I can't say that I felt I accomplished anything important on my trip. It was fun, though.

Hate Clinton? Hate Obama? McCain is Not the Solution in November

Lately I've been extremely distressed by statements made from people who I respect and love. I partially blame this on the vile campaigns run by the Democrats these days (and in particular, quite frankly, the Clinton camp) as they use cut-and-burn methods to secure the party's nomination. Whichever candidate you currently support, hear this: if that candidate does not become the Democrat on the ballot in November, thus prompting you to vote for McCain (or as bad, not vote at all), I will doubt your sanity and/or commitment to fairness, equality, and justice.

Personally, I loathe Hillary Clinton. Ever since she ignored my advice to return to our mutual past home state of Illinois and run for Senate there to fill a Republican seat instead of heading to our mutual current home state to run for Senate, she has made decisions that lead me to question what her values really are. (OK, to be accurate, the first question marks were raised in my mind when she backed Pres. Clinton's stupid welfare reform bill.) Increasingly, I suspect that she would trade away almost anything in order to gain power.

Yet. If she is the Democratic nominee in November, I will vote for her. She is intelligent and thoughtful, and while I don't entirely trust her, I certainly believe that she is a better candidate for the country than John McCain. McCain does not support reproductive rights; he wants to cut taxes for the rich (again - although we've seen what a fucking failure that is in terms of our budget and economy); he'll stay in Iraq until pigs fly (and Muslims and Jews eat flying pig pork) rather than find alternate solutions; and he thinks it is perfectly OK to pay women less than men as long as we get more education and training. Even if you are somehow brainwashed into thinking that McCain is better for Israel than either Democrat (let's be real - Bush has done Israel no favors and probably made the situation worse for average Israelis, and no politician is going to abandon the only democracy in the middle east), you have to admit that neither of them support unequal pay for equal work.

Forget your delusions. If you vote for McCain (or don't vote at all), you are voting against your interests. Bah.