Category: Columns

by A feleségül

What is the true definition of love?

Webster’s dictionary says that it is “a deep and tender feeling of affection for or attachment or devotion to a person or persons.”

Then what is the definition of lust?

Again, quoting Webster, “lust is a desire to gratify the senses; bodily appetite; a sexual desire.”

Using these two definitions, it is difficult, as a youth, to determine whether one is “in love” or “in lust.” And, unfortunately, one may never be able to ascertain which is which.

A case in point: As an unhappy teenager, I was seeking acceptance any way I could get it. If a male told me he “loved me” I was ready to thank him any way I could, and usually meant going to bed with him.

Lately, it seems, when I get news from my beloved Sonoran Desert it’s filled with vibrations that chill my soul, tales of senate and assembly bills that threaten the well being of some of its citizens, tales of students being denied studies that motivate them to reach for great things in their lives, tales of books being banned that inspire critical thinking.

But the other day I received a bit of refreshing E-News from the College of Education at my alma mater, the University of Arizona, that made me feel vibes that made me want to sing “U of A! U of A!”

It was about UA athletes sharing fun and exercise with “little wildcats” during the university’s second annual Track and Field Day, teaching them how to become and stay healthy.

These first through fourth graders got to play outdoors in fresh air on a wonderful day, running and jumping in individual events and in relays, under the mentoring of superbly fit and well trained college athletes like some of them might become some day. My kind of story. A story of love and giving. I applaud the track team for gifting these kids with such a wonderful life experience.

I wrote in the guest book of her obituary:

Pearlie Mae. What can I say.
On my family tree.
A cousin but like a big sister to me.
Part of my history.
Here when I arrived.
Could always count on her love.
In my heart she will always reside.

She was a prominent member on our branch of the Windham/Windom family tree. Our grandmother’s Lillie (hers) and Alma (mine) were sisters. It’s hard believing that she’s now resting in peace with those two extraordinary women.

Her obituary states how selfless and loyal she was to family and friends and confidantes and I sure got a sense of that early on in life.

CUPERTINO, CALIF. — Giving new meaning to corporate social responsibility, Apple Inc. announced it is “bringing home” more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs currently held by workers in foreign countries.

“As a leading corporate citizen of the United States,” the company said in a press release, “Apple can’t help but feel some sort of responsibility to its fellow Americans. So why not start hiring them?”

Apple plans to spread the employment across ten different U.S. cities, bringing each city an average of 70,000 new jobs, all with full benefits, by the end of 2013.

“We basically just gave our outsourcing team a different task,” Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook told The OB Rag. “Instead of scouring third-world countries to find where workers come cheapest, we surveyed America to find areas where these new jobs would make the most sense.”

In last week’s column, I noted that Arizona lawmakers, with help from a right-wing think tank, were pushing union busting legislation more severe than Wisconsin’s. Not surprisingly, as John Nichols reported in The Nation, Arizona Republicans got a little pep talk from Governor Scott Walker himself:

Two days after Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected Governor John Kasich’s anti-labor agenda by a sixty-one to thirty-nine margin in a statewide referendum, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker jetted to Arizona to launch the next front in the national campaign to attack union rights. After meeting with former Vice President Dan Quayle, Walker was whisked over to the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, where he briefed a thousand Arizona conservatives on how they could attack “the big-government union bosses.”

“We need to make big, fundamental, permanent structural changes. It’s why we did what we did in Wisconsin,” declared Walker, who at the annual dinner of the right-wing Goldwater Institute said that compromising with unions was “bogus.” Comparing governors who have been attacking the collective-bargaining rights of public employees with the founders of the American experiment—“just like that group that gathered in Philadelphia”—

There’s a character
from old Minstrel Shows
who went by the name of Jim Crow,
white man in
black face
depicting what he considered to be,
a Negro,
all singy and dancey and grinny,
don’t you know,
but over time
in my mind
I configured the soul
of the rogue playing Jim Crow
as the mastermind
of all the crimes
against my gentes
I’ve seen in a lifetime,
a symbol of all our woes,
morphing into
“The Man”
I’ve come to know:
….

by Emilie Astolat

Breasts. It wasn’t too long ago that I told my 10-year-old stepdaughter she had to wear a different shirt because I could see details of her breasts beneath the one she had on.

I’m not sure when she started maturing sexually, but it’s definitely happening. Technically, according to all the books, they’re only buds. But the idea of her actually having them is so foreign they might as well be balloons.

For her birthday recently, I got her a book called The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls by Valorie Lee Schaefer. As the name implies, it describes and illustrates various bodily developments and what to do about each one.

In response to last Wednesday’s kick-off press conference for the Millionaires Tax Initiative here in San Diego, Channels 6 and 10 were careful to give well over half of the time in their stories to local right-wing libertarian anti-tax nut Richard Rider.

Rider, the chairman of the San Diego Tax Fighters, opined that:

“If people think that rich people are greedy, why would they think that they wouldn’t move out of state if the taxes got too high? . . . It’s a very interesting conflict in their reasoning.”

Other than mischaracterizing a call for the top 1% to pay their fair share to help support education and vital public services as an ad hominem attack on the greedy rich and making the evidence-free claim that an extra 3% in taxes will force Hollywood stars and CEO’s to strap their hot-tubs on their Mercedes and head for Arizona, he was spot on.

For those who are wondering, there is zero evidence to support the claim that higher individual or corporate tax rates in the past hurts job creation or forced a mass migration of afflicted plutocrats. Indeed as Warren Buffet has pointed out, there was actually more job creation when taxes were higher on the rich than they are now.

by Anais Child

By the time I get around to Christmas presents for My Beloved, our bank account is always in the negative and I have run out of creative ideas. Over the many years we have been together, Christmas isn’t a big deal when it comes to exchanging gifts. But this particular year, I wanted to do something … special. I wanted to do something … different.

The most different thing I could do was to enter the downtown Hustler. I had walked past it daily since it opened, but had never been inside…

The response to the small Occupy/anti-National Defense Authorization Act protest at the Democratic convention was indicative of where we are politically in many ways. Some delegates fearfully scurried away from the protesters, others angrily told them they were protesting the wrong party (although Obama did sign it), and others, still, stopped and expressed solidarity with Occupy.

As one activist who was there holding a Millionaires Tax banner outside the hall reported:

“It was like a Rorschach test. You could tell where folks were on the political spectrum by how they reacted. The thing that stood out to me was how the slickest suits in the crowd just walked by like we didn’t exist.”

Sitting at the Millionaires Tax table inside the hall at the Hilton (ironic no?), I overheard voices ridiculing Occupy, expressing dismay at being protested, or saying they were headed over to check out and/or join the action. As activists there to promote the Millionaires Tax initiative I/we were both inside and outside the event.

Oh, Governor Brewer, I look at a photo of you flashing such a sunny smile and I can’t help but think of a song Maya Angelou sings: “When it looked like the sun wouldn’t shine anymore, God Put a rainbow in the clouds.”

With that smile of yours you could surely put a rainbow in a people’s clouds but you’ve chosen instead, to literally, through a hateful bill called SB1070, turn your hounds on them. Your law gives “the law” the right to stop a range of brown folks, Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Mexicanos – on “reasonable suspicion.”

Whoa! “Reasonable suspicion” is a chilling term for some of us. I’m one of the most law abiding people I know and I have been “reasonably suspicious” on a number of occasions. Like I was suspected of being a thief one time based on a “burglar tool” (a screwdriver) being in my car. A house had been robbed in the “vicinity,” an area, in these kinds of situations, equal in size to the continental United States.

Friday, February 10, 2012 @ 7:00 AM. Went to get on the “35 bus” at the “temporary” bus stop on Orchard and Sunset Cliffs Blvd. only to find out that this temporary stop is temporarily shut down. How do I know this? Because there is a cute little “sleeve” covering the bus stop sign with an arrow running through it, signifying “no bus service.”

Was I given any notice about this? Were my three foreign language students that take this bus given any notice of the change? Hell no! Did they ride the 35 and 923 bus yesterday? Yes! Did they ride the bus the day before? Yes. Then why wasn’t there some indication that the route would be changed? Who is running the Metropolitan Bus Service? Idiots? It’s not like the bus riders are driving a car and can drive to the next bus stop. They had no idea where the next working bus stop would be.