Back from vacation

I have previously been on vacations where I posted full blogs every day. Not only did that not happen this time, but I did not even post daily songs (interrupting a carefully planned month, but I will get to that later).

I think I wished everyone a happy birthday, but half of those were late.

A big part of that was technology. I no longer have a laptop, and my phone is not particularly reliable. Even if it did not frequently lose internet connections, I have not put in the time to sorting out all of the app logins, and I don't like working with a phone size keyboard.

Even without the technological issues, posting blogs from the road requires pre-writing; that just didn't happen. There were too many other things going on, and I was too tired.

I didn't even read as much as I meant to.

It is easy to ascribe it to getting older, which is totally a thing that I have done. I am also working with different (fewer) resources than I have for past levels of productivity.

However, I am also better at being gentle with myself.

There is the necessity factor, but you can give in to the necessary and still kick yourself. I am not.

I let my mind wander and had deep thoughts, some of which I recorded later. Others may still pop up.

I rested, which was needed. I also got lots of steps in, which is opposite of resting, but was a nice change in routine.

Being okay with doing less is also something that happened with getting older, though it was not automatic. It was part of that process of shifting priorities, and dropping things that felt like needs but really weren't.

I'm glad to be back in the mix, but I am glad for the break.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2022: Movies

This phase of my studies was inspired by a thread on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MPaarlberg/status/1560397489156624384 

The first tweet says:

I teach an undergrad class on Latin American politics that incorporates films as a supplement to the readings. Since it's course prep time, I'll share the films I assign, by country, and links where currently available here:

That is right up my alley.

It is also fourteen movies. I knew it would be setting myself up for failure to try and get them all in within a reasonable time period. (I can sometimes be honest about my bandwidth.) Also, some of them will be hard to get.

I did see which ones were available through different library services, and picked five.

And I did not finish La Dictadura Perfecta, Mexico (2014). I did not think about checking for English subtitles, and the DVD I got did not have them. My Spanish is currently too rusty for that.

The movie started with a scene in English with Spanish subtitles which I understood perfectly. In it, Mexico's president makes a huge gaffe while speaking with the US ambassador. Having already watched Cartel Land, it was obviously meant to be Nieto, who was only two years into his term when it was released. I will have to try watching later.

Cartel Land, United States, but mostly set in Mexico (2015)

The ultimate message of this one may be that there are no heroes. 

It starts interviewing one masked man talking about how he know manufacturing drugs is wrong, but they need the money; if they didn't do it, someone else would. Possibly true, but then you go to people devastated by the murder of family members because their boss did not pay his protection money. That's not just manufacturing drugs. Then you have a vigilante movement trying to clean up the cartels from their areas, but they grow gradually more corrupt until most of them work for the government, except for the one who ends up in jail. By the time you see that masked man again, there isn't much room left for sympathy.

Meantime, we meet a vigilante border patrol group on the US side. Their founder was initially was mad about jobs lost to immigrants, but realizes there is a bigger picture without appreciably changing.

I do wonder if El Doctor's vigilante group could have been better if they had focused just on their town instead of expanding, but everyone has their own personal level of corruption. The built-in government corruption does not help.

Juan de Los Muertos, Cuba (2010)

I don't generally like zombie movies. I admit this one is funny, much like the similarly named Shaun of the Dead (2004). I think it also gives a good idea of how Cubans are survivors, along with what they have survived, and their love for their island. 

It is also drenched in machismo. The only woman who gets any respect is Juan's daughter, and that still does not involve much character development for her. For him, a great part of his love is not wanting anyone to touch her. 

All of that goes pretty well with some of the other things I found when reading more about Cuba.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/01/machismo.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-bossy-gallito-and-medio-pollito.html

El secreto de sus ojos, Argentina (2009)

In Spanish classes I have seen La Historia Oficial (1985) three times, only matched in frequency by El Norte (1984), a joint US/UK venture, but taking place in Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States. Both were Academy Award winners.

I mention that because the later win for El secreto... made Argentina the first Latin American country to win Best Foreign Language film twice. Do today's Spanish students (or those of a few years ago) watch it?

The two Argentinian films give different views of the past. El secreto starts ten years before La historia and deals directly with crime and corruption. La historia... is more domestic, though that corruption is always in the background. However -- and maybe this is because it concludes in 1999 and was released another ten years after that -- El secreto is much more optimistic. After all the death and disappearance and trouble, for those who are still alive, it is still possible to believe in happiness for them.

Maybe sometimes you just need to endure.

Machuca, Chile (2004)

There is an aspect of this film that I want to spend more time on in a separate post. For now, I just want to mention certain images.

This film covers the end of Salvador Allende's time in office. Changes seem to be coming, and then are harshly stopped.

There is a wall with graffiti seen that is added to, and then completely erased. 

You also see a large shantytown several times. It lies between an empty field and a mountain range. We visit the shacks and know some of the residents, but we also see the residents being rounded up and their possessions being destroyed. The last time we see the field and the mountains, some soccer nets have been added to the field, but there is no sign that those homes or those people were ever there.

It does not make you confident that this is a country that will be able to deal with its past.

Unsung: Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam (2013)

This year I discovered this series that goes into the history of various bands. I thought I would just throw in this episode, because Lisa Lisa's success was an inspiration for many Puerto Rican girls from Hell's Kitchen.

It was interesting, but probably less scandalous than some bands' stories. 

One thing that was nice was understanding the relationship between Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam and Full Force, which had been kind of confusing. So Lisa Velez participated in auditions for Full Force when they were looking for women vocalists. 

Full Force were performers, but they were also producers and they worked with a lot of different musicians. They assembled Cult Jam with Lisa Lisa by combining her with Spanador Moseley and Mike Hughes. and wrote some of their hits, but also sometimes were "with" Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam.

Now you know!

2022 in review

With Christmas cards coming in, a couple of them had letters. I ended up writing a few letters myself in reply, but I hadn't written a general letter for a while. 

Actually, what seems to be most on trend is sending pictures. I did get this idea of trying to get all of the households three people and six cats into one photo, but I am not sure it could be accomplished without bloodshed. 

Of course, the best source of information on me is probably this blog, but it isn't always personal and it doesn't cover everything. Still, dear readers, for anything you missed, here is how the last year went...

Biggest letdown: Due to good prices and incurable optimism, I bought tickets for a concert in Portugal: A-ha and Duran Duran together! They were already far in advance, and then it was postponed twice, but finally it was going to happen and we were getting all booked. I was finding cool things to see while there, and then... not only was COVID not really getting better, but Portugal had the 4th highest rate of monkeypox and airline schedules were all messed up with people getting stranded. It started to feel like a very bad idea. We canceled. 

Then, during the time we should have been gone I picked up a bad cold, and our mother fell twice in one day and required some assistance, so it was definitely better that we were home, but getting our hopes up and losing some deposit was still greatly frustrating.

Key learnings: For work I wrapped up the year by training on Medicare Advantage plans (it does count as a promotion), but earlier in the year I learned how to get INR results for Mom. This test measures how long it takes blood to clot, which is necessary for patients on some anticoagulants. Getting someone to administer the test to Mom was getting harder, and I believed I could do it (mostly correctly; sometimes it takes more than one poke). That has solved one big problem, and it also gives a purpose to visits which is kind of helpful. Dealing with dementia is hard.

Saddest change: Our dog Adele died. Apart from the grief of any pet loss -- and Adele was a very good and sweet girl -- we have not been without a dog since 1978. Our number of dogs and cats has fluctuated over time, but currently with the six cats, it's hard to imagine that even the best dog would have an easy introduction into that. 

We get found by animals in need pretty regularly, and I believe at some point a dog will find us again. We will make it work then, but for now that is an absence that we feel.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/09/making-room-for-grief-and-healing.html

Biggest project: We replaced the floors in the house with vinyl plank. Functioning as an unofficial animal rescue was hard on the carpets, and they were pretty old anyway. The house was built in 1971 and most of the carpets had only been replaced once. We like the new look, and it was good to find out that the house has good bones. Other things will need to be replaced (some are already there), but the house is solid and we are blessed to have it.

Biggest personal change: I had a pretty big emotional breakthrough in June, except it didn't really feel big once it happened. That big sense of overpowering pain that I had been holding off was allowed to come forth. It came down to my father never being happy with me, and me not being able to fix that, so me trying to fix everything else. Most of that was fairly well known; it was just putting them together.

There is no longer a flood of tears hiding behind a dam, but I do feel things more now. That includes grief about the dog, but most of all the grief about my mother's dementia, and that state of her being here and not here. Nothing can really be ignored anymore, so I am more present, but it is bearable.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/10/all-better.html

Those are the highlights. Well, I guess some of them are low lights, but ultimately it is all life. As this posts I will be turning 51, and that is comfortable. 

There are things lost with age. For example, in college I remember pulling all-nighters and I would actually have more energy, and be kind of bouncing of the walls. That ship has sailed.

Otherwise, though, it is so much more comfortable to be mature, and to be over things that don't matter, wiser about what matters in general. It is great to have no need left to impress anyone (unless I start job hunting again). As much as I can see things that I could have done better, I would not want to go back.

I do still color my hair, largely from a desire not to look like a certain aunt I am said to resemble. I know her going gray early was separate from her judgment and gossiping, but in my mind they are all associated, and I will rage for the dyeing of the white.

There is still plenty to figure out, especially in terms of how to maintain relationships and community ties while COVID is really not done, and yet most people are acting like it is done. However, we are trying a vacation again this Saturday. It is domestic and familiar, so with a much lower chance of complication. I have completely given up the cloth masks for KN95 masks now, but so far, so good.

Love,
Gina

 

P.S.

For updates on the vacation, and lots of post about cool things in Oregon, you can also check sporktogo.blogspot.com.

Queen Sugar's Farewell: Everyone Matters

Queen Sugar is done. I have watched all the episodes, and all the specials.

I have written about Queen Sugar a lot, because it has resonated with me a lot.

(You can find one of the posts with links to multiple others at https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/04/upon-finishing-viewing-of-another.html.)

The only other series that I have spent comparable posts on was Grimm. In a cruel irony, one of the early things I responded to was the importance placed on minor characters and the respect given. The show kept becoming more callous and less clever, until in the last season I was only still watching because it was the last season.

Queen Sugar did not do that.

I suspect a lot of the credit for that goes to Ava DuVernay. One of the specials was a feature on the women who directed episodes of the show. All 42 were women. While many had directed independent films, or directed in other countries, and were capable of doing the work, getting their foot in the door for series work was still elusive. That opportunity mattered for them, but also, it shows caring, and an interest in expanding opportunity, the behind the scenes matching what was on the screen.

https://variety.com/lists/queen-sugar-42-women-directors-ava-duvernay/

On-screen, first of all, it is important that it is not just the Bordelons that get their land, but that Miss Parthena can get hers, and that Cardale has help when his land is threatened by flooding. It couldn't have worked without the co-op, but as some of the hidden obstacles emerge the importance of that unity only becomes more obvious.

It matters that the Avila family was reunited, but also that it is the Avila family, with all of the ways they have been tied to the Bordelons across the seasons.

Those threads of connection and the importance of each one became more clear in the final season as familiar faces returned. 

Ra's friend Toine was doing great, with a new child and a new career path. Remy was doing well domestically and professionally. In fact, he was able to help the Bordelons one more time. Jacob was doing well business-wise, but appeared to be white-knuckling it emotionally on account of his family ties. He seemed in a much better position at the end of the last episode. 

Even without getting to see him, we hear that "Too Sweet" is doing well.

Hey, there's Micah's grandmother! The way she collects him but then also supports him... it is not just that she is there, but that her being there matters. And Micah gets to see Keke again, and get past the awkward breakup to comfortable adulthood.

It would have required additional episodes to bring back all of Nova's past loves, but there were three that were very important.

Obviously we needed to see Calvin again. That closure and goodbye was important, even if it was not permanent.

Chantal was an interesting return, because I remember when she first came around thinking it could never work; she was too pushy and Nova was the wrong person for that. That impression was not wrong, but Chantal would sometimes return and make Nova bristle while being correct. She did that one more time, and was the best person to do it.

Having never seen Nova's first girl crush, that was not exactly a return. It still taught us more about Nova, and gave us a glimpse into Ernest's coming around, which was huge for Nova.

That leads to the last thing. 

The importance of the late Ernest to his children, grandchildren, sister, and friends was always clear, but that was rounded out in the finale as Prosper relayed conversations that helped.

As much as that was about the relationship with Ernest -- and things that Ernest said -- because he was gone they could only have come from someone who who had heard it. Prosper was needed.

That may be a reason to say some things now, while you are together, but it was also the culmination of what we can do for each other.

We need each other.

And we all matter.

Who built that?

Getting back to Keeler's judgments about who is or is not Native American, there are a few things worth pointing out. 

After her accusations against Sacheen Littlefeather first came out, some people were posting about abuse against the Yaqui people that could have disrupted ties. This included enslavement on plantations, forced removal with a high death rate, and concentration camps that broke up families.

For Buffy Sainte-Marie, she was taken from her birth family as part of the Sixties Scoop, where it was government policy to take Indigenous infants from their families and place them with other (white) families (though her adopted mother identified as part Mi'kmaq).

That was a Canadian program, designed to get those children assimilated. Officially, the United States tried to do that more by termination, where a tribe's status could be lost as a way of boosting those now former members to assimilation, though it was also convenient for pulling money and land away.

And, if the US did not officially have an adopting out policy, Native American children are over-represented in foster care. There was recently a high profile case against the Indian Child Welfare Act, one of the few pieces of legislation in place that that to keep children connected to their tribal organizations.

Remember, the point of Critical Race Theory -- before it became a term for anything possibly acknowledging racism -- is to know that the absence of having racism codified by law does not automatically mean there is no racism entrenched historically and systemically.

I will also add there is a whole thing about "City Natives" and how moving off the reservations can cut their ties.

As destructive as blood quantum rules can be, those were imposed by government that really did not want living, breathing tribe members around. If it supported anti-Blackness by eliminating people who had been accepted into the tribe but whose descent was not purely tribal, so much the better.

This is not to say that certain people may not be terrible, or that you can't have people of Indigenous descent (or Latin American descent or Asian descent) be racist or be anti-Black... those are totally things that happen.

It is to say that the fault lies in white supremacy. We should remember that because our path to a better world is overthrowing white supremacy. 

There may be painful realizations along this path, but hey, no pain, no gain, right?

Now, a word about DNA tests. 

I had mentioned Tina Turner having some Native ancestry. A DNA test showed it was only 1%. If you work out the family tree, though, and you have someone right there who was a member of the tribe, should the DNA count that much? If one of her sisters took the test, would the percentage be the same?

I don't know, but let's look at Elizabeth Warren. Her results indicated an ancestor 6-10 generations back. That seemed to support her family beliefs, though no one was happy with the claim. 

As someone who had no affiliations with a tribe, who was identified as white, and who did not face the discrimination that comes with the Native American experience, no, she should not have identified as such. Perhaps it did not help her career, but if it made Harvard feel better to list her as such, or for the State Bar to show a diverse candidate taking and passing the exam, well, that's gross. It fakes achieving the effect that those programs are supposed to be achieving.

Finally, let's remember that ad for a DNA test where a woman found a percentage of Indian blood and was so excited she started buying pots and blankets, apparently without any regard to tribe. I remember that irritating some people.

That irritation is totally fair, but I also remember thinking what if she had been adopted, and didn't know, or maybe one of her parents had gone to a boarding school and lost their connections? Maybe something could be restored.

I have a friend who had Native American roots she knew nothing about, not because of any of the possible reasons mentioned, but just a bitter divorce that severed some family ties. Having reconnected, and finding aunts and uncles and sharing time with them has been a good thing.

I will never forget meeting a woman who has no idea what happened to her son (those would be more typical reasons), and hoping that there will be a way for her to find out.

It can go so many ways, but they will all involve caring about people and community over caring about potential profits and privileges. 

It will take overcoming white supremacy. 

That is a job for all of us.

Dreaming of a non-white Christmas... December's Daily Songs

From the articles I linked to last week, one of the artists listed as having Native American roots was Jimi Hendrix:

https://coloradosound.org/5-musicians-indigenous-roots-national-native-american-heritage-month/ 

While many of the other things I have read have led me to be skeptical of part-Cherokee grandmothers, I have also read multiple rock bios where artists perceived as Black also list Native American ancestors. 

It got me thinking about how messy defining race can get. Now, there's a certain logic to that, given that race is artificially constructed anyway, but since it has real effects we still need to deal with it; maybe we can work our way to a healthy deconstruction.

Until we can get there, I figured I could have a month of seasonal songs pulling only from the four categories I use that have heritage months.

Now, that gets tricky. Looking at Hispanic Heritage, searching on those songs I got a few results from Spain. That would not count. Many of them could also count as Indigenous (though not to Jacqueline Keeler). Also, Mexican singer Yuri is pretty light-skinned and blonde, but then so is Leona Lewis, British singer with a father of Afro-Guyanese descent. (And she is not always blonde, but in the video for the song I used, she is.)

I should point out that mentioning race like that feels gross. Ironically, it goes along with not wanting to be racist, but avoiding any mention of race makes it easier for those who fully embrace racism to have their way. 

While racism is real and structural, one way I will counteract it is taking time to focus on those disadvantaged by it. I accept that I am not likely to do it perfectly.

For the songs, most of the songs by Black artists are ones I have used before, because they are favorites and I would hate to leave them out. That includes two by Stevie Wonder, and I found I have this little quartet of essential songs, representing different aspects of Christmas to me, and possibly only to me.

"This Christmas" by Donny Hathway represents getting together with friends and family, "What Christmas Means To Me" by Stevie Wonder is the fun and excitement of the holidays, whereas his "Someday At Christmas" is more the wishing for peace and goodwill. Finally, "Christmas Is The Time" by Low Rawls is more for the religious faith aspect. 

Is there overlap? Sure. Could you reasonably propose different songs? Absolutely. That's just how it felt for me.

The other thing is that I was reviewing Native American artists for November right before, so there were songs that I thought might make more sense for December as I was listening in November. That includes Mildred Bailey's "I've Got My Love To Keep My Warm", but also of course it made sense to use R. Carlos Nakai's "Solstice Prayer" on the Winter Solstice, right?

Then I remembered that the Wounded Knee Massacre happened shortly after Christmas, something I cannot forget because of the image of the injured being taken to a church still decorated for Christmas. There is a "Wounded Knee" song. Then I saw something about the Dakota 38, and their execution happened on December 26th. So, there were songs for them. 

(Though "Wounded Knee" went up a day late because I got confused on what day I was on, and that is embarrassing.)

Then I remembered Pearl Harbor, so it was appropriate to give that day to a Hawai'ian, though it is a Christmas song.

We pray and wish for peace and goodwill because we do not have it yet.

Also, that all gave me an idea for February, so there's that to look forward to.

12/1 “I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm” by Mildred Bailey
12/2 “Reindeer Herding Song” by Pamyua
12/3 “Pesces En El Rio” by Gaby Moreno
12/4 “Sagebrush Snow Winds” by Robert Mirabal
12/5 “Winter Wonderland” by Beabadoobee
12/6 “Joy To The World” by Yo-Yo Ma
12/7 “Betelehema Iki e (O Little Town of Bethlehem)” by Amy Hänaiali'i
12/8 “Native Drummer Boy” by Robert “Tree” Cody and Ruben Romero
12/9 “Ven A Mi Casa Esta Navidad” by Mijares
12/10 “This Christmas” by Donny Hathaway
12/11 “O Holy Night (Navajo)” by Jana Mashonee
12/12 “Double Saxophone Christmas Medley” by Grace Kelly
12/13 “Christmas Is The Time” by Lou Rawls
12/14 “Rodolfo El Reno” by Los Tigres Del Norte
12/15 “Campana Sobre Campana” by Yuri
12/16 “She'll Be My Everything For Christmas” by Los Lonely Boys
12/17 “Caroling, Caroling (Christmas Bells Are Ringing)” by Nat King Cole
12/18 “Who Would Imagine A King” by Whitney Houston
12/19 “Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano
12/20 “Groovy Xmas” by The Linda Lindas
12/21 “Solstice Prayer” by R. Carlos Nakai
12/22 “What Christmas Means To Me” by Stevie Wonder
12/23 “All Alone On Christmas” by Darlene Love
12/24 “One More Sleep” by Leona Lewis
12/25 “Christmas Must Be Tonight” by Robbie Robertson
12/26 “Dakota Hymn” by SATB Choir
12/27 “Campanas De Navidad” by Celia Cruz
12/28 “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” by Tina Guo
12/29 “Someday At Christmas” by Stevie Wonder
12/30 “Wounded Knee” by Walela
12/31 “Around The Fire” by Jennifer Chung

Native American identity for white people (by a white person)

From Emergency!, Season 2, Episode 5, "Peace Pipe"

Chet: I don't know what you're getting so uptight about. I've got some Indian
blood in me too, you know.

Johnny: Oh, wait a minute. Now, don't tell me. On your grandmother's side.

Chet: Yeah. That's right.

Johnny: And she was an Indian princess, a Cherokee most likely.

Chet: Hey, that's right. How'd you know that?

Johnny: We call it white man royalty syndrome.

This is one of my favorite episodes of Emergency!. I wish I knew more about the inspiration. I mean, I assume that the bit on anthropologists was inspired by Vine Deloria Jr.'s Custer Died For Your Sins, but it was a real enough issue that it may not have needed him as a reference. 

(I do wish they had not had Roy defend the jokes, but it was the '70s; maybe they felt pressure.)

If you recall, in Friday's post I was writing about selecting songs and musicians for Native American Heritage Month, and starting with some big names, but I ran into a snag.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/12/native-american-heritage-month-2022.html 

Going even further back, in June I had a post that in writing about the "slap" at the 2022 Oscars also referenced Sacheen Littlefeather's Oscar refusal on behalf of Marlon Brando at the 1973 Oscars, and later insistence that she was not really Indian.

Littlefeather died in October of this year. Shortly afterword, Jacqueline Keeler, a Navajo author, came out saying that she had interviewed Littlefeather's sisters and they said that they said they were not native.

There were some problems with it. This included waiting until after Littlefeather's death to say it. She was being honored by the Academy in September, so that would have been a reasonable time to say something. More glaring are tweets from one of the sisters saying that it was Keeler who told them that they were not native, which is not how Keeler represented the conversation. Also, Keeler seems to focus on international boundaries at the expense of tribal boundaries, for example feeling that Indigenous Canadians steal jobs from U.S. Native Americans, when you often have members of the same tribes on both sides of the border. So, saying that Littlefeather's roots are Mexican does not automatically cancel out the possibility of connection to Apache or Yaqui ancestry.

If you are more interested in Keeler herself, you can do some reading here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_lCuYR2FcZLzFcIu1nuyQqm1JG71vrdl/view

Apparently her next target is going to be Buffy Sainte-Marie. As you can imagine I have some feelings about that, but I also believe I am not the only one. I expect there to be push back. Counting on it, really. 

Without getting into that more at this time, I want to explore "white man royalty syndrome", and tell my own embarrassing story about it.

I was told that we were descended from Pocahontas, and repeated it when there was a family history project in 8th or 9th grade. Then I started looking at the records. I did not find any links to it, so I asked my father about that. 

The assumption came from a great-great grandfather having a child named Pocahontas, and assuming that was an obvious sign of descent, as opposed to fashionable trends and maybe trying to be different and certainly having a lot of children where running out of names would be a potential problem.

It is not uncommon for people to do this. I have found at least one author who mentions her mother having a similar delusion, and in late 19th century/early 20th century Oklahoma it was very common. That was partly due to a pride in the local history, and also a hope of being able to get in on claims as land was allotted. In fact, land speculators would search out people with names and birth places probable enough to possibly get land and tell them they were related.

(I think this happening so much in Oklahoma is why it is usually a Cherokee princess instead of some other tribe, but not us! We were Powhatan!)

What all of this did, though, is push actual Native Americans into the past, maybe as part of a cool, almost-mythical history, maybe as ancestors, but not as living people with present legal and moral claims.

I believe this will be followed by a much angrier post in a week, but getting back to the starting point, when everyone was talking about Keeler and "pretendians", some of the artists I had been planning on using (Cher) or did use (Rita Coolidge) were called "pretendians". I suddenly felt unsure about what I was doing.

However, it did give me an idea for what to do for the December daily songs. Friday's post will be about that.

Native American Heritage Month 2022 Daily Songs

In getting ready for song selection, I compiled a list of all of the Native American artists I had reviewed; I had been meaning to see who had new releases anyway.

It just wasn't feeling right. I didn't figure out what felt right until I was already four days in. 

The first two come from books that I will be reading soon, on Redbone and Robbie Robertson of The Band. Then of course Buffy Sainte-Marie has been familiar to me since I was a small child, and I actually have reviewed her. I always meant to get to Rita Coolidge for reviews.

I was starting off with the bigger names, and then there was an issue, which I will get into.

I ended up using Google searches to find completely different artists and listen to their top tens.

There was one set of results that came up without being linked to another site, and then three articles that I also used.

https://coloradosound.org/5-musicians-indigenous-roots-national-native-american-heritage-month/

https://www.wfmt.com/2021/11/24/7-native-american-musicians-you-should-know/

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/rumble-on-more-native-american-musicians-you-should-know/

For the listening in general, my favorites are probably Mic Jordan, Southern Scratch, and The Halluci Nation. There is a song that I found a bit late for Thanksgiving, but I am pretty sure I want to use it next year. I listened to Keith Secola's "NDN Kars" multiple times.

I loved finding a song based on a classic Star Trek episode: "Edith Keeler Must Die" by Arigon Starr. (Why not just take her into the future with you, Jim? She would have loved it!)

There is that familiar frustration of not getting to know the artists well enough, the way I did in my reviewing days. I get some familiarity with more artists, but less depth. I hope that will shift again.

I felt pretty good about this list, except then everyone was so new that I felt bad using Buffy Sainte-Marie; I had used her for daily songs multiple times before, making her my only repeat.

Then I repeated again for the last song! 

This was a double repeat, because not only have I used songs from Buffy and from Tanya Tagaq, but also I have used that specific song before. I resisted the urge to use it, and then I realized why I needed to use it.

Way back in 2014, I wrote a post that was not about Metallica or "Master of Puppets", but that was related enough that it was a good place to capture my insight on that song following symphonic rules. I had mentioned it some other places, but it was a neat thing for me to discover and I needed to memorialize it.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/02/being-music-writer-i-want-to-be.html

I needed to use “You Got To Run (Spirit of the Wind)” once more, and then when I posted about it memorialize how much and why I love this song. 

First of all, musically it is an enjoyable song. It also combined one of my old familiar musicians with someone that I found not just by starting to review bands, but by also trying to find diverse artists and stretch. 

In reviewing Tagaq originally, the material was mostly dark and discomfiting. Here there was a completely different energy, giving a fresh perspective. Part of that energy was when she calls "Standing Rock!" That was important too.

There was another time period where I was searching for new material among Native artists I had reviewed. At the time, no one had anything new released and it seemed like everyone was at Standing Rock. That is not to say that their time there was the reason there was no new music, nor that it would not be a a good reason if that were the case, but this song placed Standing Rock as a source of collaboration and inspiration.

It's not perfect. The lyrics are probably outdated. If it were written now, I don't think they'd use the "Whether you're woman or whether you're man", because there is more awareness of Two Spirit people now than there was then. The song nonetheless has a solid hold on my heart, and I needed to post about it. Done!

But there was a snag. It goes beyond media, so I will post about it on Tuesday. Maybe it will fit in one post.

Otherwise, here are November's songs:

11/1 “The Weight” by The Band
11/2 “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone
11/3 “The Circle Game” by Buffy Sainte-Marie
11/4 “We're All Alone” by Rita Coolidge
11/5 “Spirit Within” by Burning Sky
11/6  “Kahawi'tha” by Joanne Shenandoah
11/7“ Child of Fire” by Sihasin
11/8 “Lost With You” by Raye Zaragoza
11/9 “NDN Kars” by Keith Secola
11/10 “Superposition” by Nadjiwan
11/11 “Laid Back” by Cary Morin
11/12 “Bring It” by Debora Iyall
11/13 “Sacred Place” by Mary Youngblood
11/14 “Stone Tree” by Bill Miller
11/15 “Pistolero” by Buddy Red Bow
11/16 “Gopher's Cumbia” by Southern Scratch
11/17 “Edith Keeler Must Die” by Arigon Starr
11/18 “It Is A Good Day” by Spirit Nation
11/19 “Road Fever” by Blackfoot
11/20 “I'm a Warrior” by Shelley Morningsong
11/21 “Round Dance Song” by Joseph Fire Crow
11/22 “Young And Free” by Northern Cree
11/23 “Electric Pow Wow Drum” by The Halluci Nation
11/24 “Land Back” by OPLIAM
11/25 “For Portland” by Mic Jordan, feat. Santiago X
11/26 “Strangers In Our Own Land” by Prolific the Rapper
11/27 “Beauty Arrives” by Douglas Spotted Eagle
11/28 “Mirror” by Kelly Jackson
11/29 “Love Is Love” by Quantum Tangle
11/30 “You Got To Run (Spirit of the Wind)” by Buffy Sainte-Marie and Tanya Tagaq

Vincent

My sisters and I recently visited the Oregon Historical Society.

That sounds like the preface to a post on the travel blog. There will be posts there, but this is more about art.

We were there for the exhibits on Motown and the Jantzen Beach carousel, and also to see their Santa Land display, this year with an old Cinnamon Bear costume.

Something unexpected caught my eye.

It was a baseball bat on a base of toy cars with a photo on top and a timeline in the background. I did not really take in the timeline or the photo. 

It was part of the "I Am An American" exhibit, which I did not really know anything about in advance. It is by one of the featured individuals, artist Roberta Wong.

My first guess was that this represented someone's "All-American" childhood: baseball and cars, right?

(I have been reading about sports lately, so that may have influenced my thinking.)

Then I saw it was Vincent Chin.

Chin may very well have played with toy cars as a child and played baseball, but that's not what was being represented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Vincent_Chin

Chin was fatally beaten with a baseball bat by two auto-workers -- one recently laid off -- in Detroit. There was a lot of race-baiting in Detroit, supposedly based on Japanese competition leading to declining sales of US brands. Of course, Chin was also a Detroit resident, and of Chinese descent, not Japanese, but that's how hate crimes go. 

The trial was a gross miscarriage of justice and became an important point of civil rights activism for Asian Americans.

I would not have even known the name, except for the rise in anti-Asian American violence in the wake of COVID. Also, this year was the 40th anniversary.

Still, people know about the death for the most part, and not his life... except that he was killed on the night of his bachelor party, eight days away from getting married.

So, I don't know much about him as a person. I don't know if he was athletic or bookish or both, and yet there was still that familiar name, and the grim reminders.

I wanted to write about that now, because this exhibit is only up through January 8th, and that's not a lot of time to go see it. I am also writing because with that visit and some other recent visits (that will get reviewed on the travel blog), I have been thinking about art, and how it can work.

I saw the piece, and thought one incorrect thing. Then I saw more, and I got pulled in differently than simply knowing the background would have brought me in.

It's not just that there is an emotional difference, but there is also a shift in perspective. I feel something new about the death, but also I have a different perspective on it.

It's great when art is pretty, but the possibilities are much more.

https://www.ohs.org/museum/exhibits/i-am-an-american.cfm

https://www.portlandchinatownmuseum.org/exhibitions/vincent/ 

https://www.orartswatch.org/roberta-wong-conceptual-artist-tireless-advocate/

Christmas Break

No posts until Saturday (on the travel blog) this week. Be merry!

Read: Loveless and Gender Queer

On a post from July 13th, I mentioned that I needed to read Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer: A Memoir. I finished it July 22nd.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/07/reading-banned-books.html

Reading it was part of my interest in challenged books, but getting to it that soon also reflects a personal change in how I do things. If I am interested in a book and the library has it, I usually request it right away now, rather than adding it to the list. 

I mention that as a point of interest. In previous years no matter how many books I had read, the number on my To Read list didn't move, because I kept adding more. This year, my To Read list only has twenty additions from this year, and I have still made progress on the older items. I probably am more organized, but that immediate commitment makes a difference as well.

The other pertinent book was Loveless by Alice Oseman, finished on May 3rd.

I don't remember seeing anything about challenges to Loveless. I wouldn't have been surprised, but I think I just saw it on Goodreads or maybe Twitter and thought it seemed interesting.

I read books in groups because I think it helps me notice themes and make associations. Requesting books as they come up can make the order less deliberate, but things still work out.

Gender Queer is a memoir of Maia Kobabe, focusing on coming to terms with being nonbinary and asexual, while Loveless is a novel with an asexual but cisgender protagonist, Georgia.

My point goes beyond the obvious connection.

One turning point for Maia was finding pronouns that felt right, discovering and adopting Christine Elvorson's e/em/eir, and finding someone else who also used them.

In the other post, I wrote about the relief it could be to find out that you were not the only one. That played a role, but this went beyond relief; finally something felt right!

The other turning point for Maia was a change in dress, inspired by Johnny Weir. 

Previously uncomfortable leaning into femininity, Maia had tended toward very nondescript clothing. Maybe it was gender-neutral, but that could be overshadowed by how color neutral and flair neutral it was. Maybe that wasn't the truest reflection of self, but it seemed like the only possible self.

I may be projecting some there; it's been months since I read the book, and I have my own issues with choosing inoffensive, incognito dress, even if for different reasons.

For Maia, it was amazing to find ways to implement color and patterns and interest, not trying to be something e was not, so finding more fully what e was and is. A flamboyant man pointed in a direction, but it was Maia's own path. That's beautiful.

Referring once more to the banned books post, I had written how as much value as there is for people seeing themselves represented in book, there is also great importance in seeing others represented and understanding them better. 

In Loveless, part of Georgia's journey is finding other people like her, but another part is her friends trying to help her be "normal" by encouraging experimentation. That ends up causing a lot of embarrassment and hurt feelings.

It's not that Georgia was unwilling to try. She loves rom-coms and shipping fanfiction; how can romance not be something she is going to feel for herself? And how many people would even expect that being asexual and aromantic could be a thing?

That journey is important, but there was something else there.

Once Georgia was able to accept that romance could not be her be-all, end-all, she was able to do some very special things to show her friends that she loved them. Her life was not without love, but society  puts a lot of emphasis on that one type. Finding your way to romance can be a long and lonely haul. 

What if you didn't need that to have your day?

This has been a meandering post, I know. The reason for that is because it is bouncing back and forth between multiple things that are important but different. Let me try and sum up:

• Diverse books are important for those represented therein.
• Diverse books are important for those not represented therein.
• Strict enforcement of patriarchy hurts those who do not conform by their gender and sexuality.
• Strict enforcement of patriarchy also hurts the straights.

There is so much joy available if we don't chase it away.

Acceptance

A few weeks ago on the travel blog I wrote about a visit to Bonneville Dam:

https://sporktogo.blogspot.com/2022/11/columbia-river-gorge-bonneville-dam.html 

If you haven't been reading those posts, some time ago I started adding notes about COVID and accessibility. For the COVID one, I mentioned my frustration with these updates when it feels so much like no one is trying or even cares anymore. However (despite none of the staff being masked), there was a sign encouraging mask wearing, saying "Be A Life Hero."

My own frustration aside, I can at least commit to not spreading infection.

Regardless, I am not a hero, a rather disappointing realization not too long ago.

That is what I wanted to be, where I could swoop in and stop bad things from happening. Then a lot of bad things happened; seeing them coming did nothing for prevention.

It seems that my real ability is helping to mop up after the bad things happen.

That is valuable, just not what I was hoping for.

There are two things that relate, but one is more recent.

For the old one, well, you may recall me writing about finding out things about me that I am, and that I can't not be.

I am a caregiver, and a writer, and a historian.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/06/one-more-personal-truth.html 

I had written about that, but I don't think I ever wrote about trying to see one step beyond that, and where it would lead. I did do that, and the word that came back was "healer".

I thought "teacher" would have made more sense (going along with the history and writing), but there are multiple ways of teaching and healing.

Regardless, if my most essential traits lead me toward being a healer, that implies that the injuries are going to happen more than that I will be able to stop them.

The more recent thought was to look at how many things have been so bad for so long.

It's not that new bad things don't happen. If there are possibilities of preventing some things, let's do it, but there has been room for a lot of healing for a long time. 

It wasn't always obvious; often when people remember a previous era as more innocent, they are only remembering the things they didn't have to think about or know about.

There were always others who knew and couldn't avoid knowing if they tried.

I cannot fix that, but I do not have to spread it.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/04/messier-than-karma.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/06/through-overwhelm.html

Sports Movies

I am not actively working on it at this time, but among my other reading lists there is a sports-themed one.

Three of my other reading lists have books that relate to baseball. As I have a few baseball-related books on Kindle, I decided to go through the Kindle sports books in general. That started with The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies: Featuring the 100 Greatest Sports Movies of All Time by Ray Didinger and Glen MacNow.

I found plenty of room for disagreement, but I suppose that's inevitable. It does seem like a good time to go over the sports movies from the book that I've seen, and the ones I'm willing to see.

Seen:

#9 Caddyshack
#13 Pride of the Yankees
#16 Miracle
#21 When We Were Kings
#26 Major League
#49 Bend It Like Beckham
#51 The Karate Kid
#62 Invincible
#75 The Express
#77 Happy Gilmore
#82 The Sandlot
#87 Glory Road
#97 Cool Runnings

Willing to See:

#2 Hoosiers
#4 The Natural
#11 Field of Dreams
#14 Hoop Dreams
#15 Brian's Song
#16 Chariots of Fire*
#19 Remember the Titans
#20 Breaking Away
#22 A League Of Their Own
#34 The Rookie
#36 Heart Like A Wheel
#37 Jim Thorpe; All-American
#43 Murderball
#53 Without Limits
#57 Rudy
#70 We Are Marshall
#71 Damn Yankees
#80 Searching For Bobby Fischer
#83 The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
#86 Best In Show
#93 Lagaan: Once Upon A Time In India
#100 The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh

The asterisk by Chariots of Fire is that I did catch part of it on television once, and it was really boring. They mentioned that part as boring in the book, so maybe I just needed a little more patience.

Biggest disagreement: I did not like Caddyshack at all.

I know there are a lot of people who love it, but apathetic/obnoxious rich people triumphing over snooty rich people is not a great victory for me. It's nice the kid gets a scholarship. 

Perhaps it makes sense that my favorite part is the gopher, and that was their least favorite part. We just have different viewpoints.

One area of disagreement I understand is that often a movie's rating included how good the sports footage was. I get the sentiment, but that in itself is a good reason for Caddyshack to be ranked lower. That also led to...

Greatest Impact: I am more interested in seeing some movies now because of the sports action being praised.

There are a lot of these that I have never been against seeing (Hoosiers, Remember The Titans, We Are Marshall) and at least one (Brian's Song) that I have tried to see, but scheduling didn't work out. I am more interested in Heart Like A Wheel and The Natural -- both of which I knew existed -- based on the praise given.

Second Greatest Impact: I had never heard of Hank Greenberg before. He sounds interesting, but also I guess it was not just Sandy Koufax in that leaflet on Jewish Sports Heroes! (Airplane! reference.)

I would totally read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Sports-Legends-International-Hall/dp/1496201884

Greatest Need to Revisit: They got way different things out of The Express than I did. 

Now, our sensibilities have already proven to be different enough that any subsequent differences of opinion may simply relate to that, but I think it is worth re-watching.

Not included: I went through the table of contents and thought about movies that I had seen that were not there. Dodgeball and Blades of Glory were mentioned (in "Guilty Pleasures" and in reference to Will Farrell related to Talladega Nights) but there was nothing about The Blind Side.

That movie came out in 2009, so may have just been a timing issue. I could imagine them finding that the football action wasn't that great. 

I read all three related books after seeing the movie: one by Michael Oher, one by Leigh Anne Tuohy, and The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis. Lewis's book combines the stories of the people with changes in football where large, agile players became so valuable. That is barely covered in the movie, except at the beginning with Joe Theismann's career-ending leg injury.

I found those sections of the book fascinating but knew I was not getting enough out of it. My sisters skipped those passages over. Okay, everyone has their own interests. On that note...

Most Glaring Omission: Touching the Void (2003)

Look, if there is room for movies about golf, bowling, dog shows, poker, and chess (and room to call figure skating barely a sport!), then this documentary about mountain climbing that is gripping and suspenseful, giving you a feel for the activity and its appeal but also being terrifying... seriously, how did they miss that? Because there are no playoffs?

Appreciated: They explained the artistic license used in Cool Runnings. They did with Glory Road too, but I remember seeing a few articles on the movie at the time, and also there is a book (though not easy to find). With Cool Runnings, while I was sure there was a lot that was made up, there was no easy way of guessing what was what.

Long story short: two investors witnessed the annual pushcart derby, recruited the winner and three soldiers, and gave them a good coach and training in Canada. More plausible, less dramatic. 

While the first Jamaican bobsled team performed poorly at the Olympics, they were very popular and treated well, and souvenir T-shirt sales made it sustainable. Not as dramatic as contempt from Germans and a disgraced coach, but perhaps it reflects better on humanity.

In conclusion: While I did not love the read, I might have enough love for sports and movies that after I do get through my sports reading list (which will not be any time soon), I will re-read this and see if I have changed my mind about any of the movies.

But I will not change my mind about Caddyshack.

Upcoming sports books: 

Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss
Bat 6 by Virgina Euwer Wolff
Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race by Larry Colton
Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World's Most Loved (and Hated) Team edited by Rob Fleder
Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation by Michael Powell

Crystal Ball

Recently I was thinking about a certain relationship and wondering about its future. The impression came to me that nothing was going to happen for another five years.

I do not think that five years is an exact prediction, but more an indicator that it is not the immediate future.

Though initially discouraging, it was also freeing: don't worry about it for now.

There are two connected ideas that I will share.

I think the reason that the time period I felt was "five years" is because I have some other five year plan things going on. That partially comes from job interview questions. 

I have some 5 year goals related to study and things. One is that in 2027 I want to take the MCAT, LSAT and GMAT.

Yes, that is a vanity thing, and to the tune of about $900, but I want to know how I would do. I have in mind that part of that will be a major aptitude test, where perhaps it gives the next phase of my life some direction.

Sure, when I had that ten year plan it was shot to pieces, but you can't stop having plans just because life doesn't obey them.

(I cannot imagine any GMAT score that would motivate me to get an MBA, but the other two potential courses of study do have some appeal.)

The other thought is more about a change in mindset.

In the past, whenever I had something in the future the goal was always to lose weight by then, that being the magic bullet.

That is not actually a good goal, in terms of feasibility or mental health or even physical health, which raises the question of what is a good goal? 

How do I want to be different in five years?

I do have some thoughts there.

Certainly the way I annoy myself the most now is procrastination. I can also see that sometimes when I do that, I have hangups that I am avoiding dealing with. I would like to see improvement there. I do better sometimes, but there is room for more consistency.

In addition, I can see that one frequent obstacle is that sometimes I really need to ask for help but I do not want to. I have made some progress here, but there is room for more.

Which I guess means that my real goal is to continue in the direction I am headed, but maybe faster since there is more clarity.

Finally, in terms of goals that are good for health... as impossible as it seems to have really good health while I am working in a call center, for the next five weeks I will be in training, and I have a vacation a week after that.

This is as good a time as any to try and take better care of myself. The stress will come back, but maybe I can rearrange some things before it does, and maybe that will help.

That's where I'm at.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2022 songs

Reminder that Fridays will now feature posts on books, movies and music, starting with music.

Most recently, I have posted about combining Black Music Month with Pride Month to focus on queer Black musicians in June, and then continuing my focus on individual years of the 80s.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/07/black-music-month-pride-month.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/08/musical-interlude.html

During that time I was also doing Black Music Month reading (which I haven't actually finished yet) but it got me thinking about Motown, especially.

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15th (the anniversary of the Grito de Dolores) through October 15th, and then Native American Heritage Month is in November. I was thinking that between the two, I would do Motown songs. Halloween would be "Supertition" by Stevie Wonder.  

It did not work out that way.

It's been a while since I have had time to do regular reviews, but I can still generally listen to the top ten for various artists and choose a song.

My listening for this month started with a list of musicians mentioned by Sandra Cisneros in A House of My Own. That gave me 18 artists, and I assumed I was looking to fill about 30 days. 

Well, I had also read this book, Aztlan and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War. It had a poem in the book that was kind of humorously comparing Californian and Texan tastes, but that gave me another 5 bands. 

(Actually it gave me 6, because I wrote down the name of a reporter, Ruben Salazar, but when I was pulling up the list I forgot that he was a reporter, not a musician. There is a musician with that name, and why not give him a song?)

Then I remembered that I had taken down some band names from The First Rule of Punk by Celia C Perez also. I had reviewed some of those bands when I was still doing reviews. That gave me another 4 bands, plus I got this flautist because there was a Google Doodle, and why not?

But then I started thinking about the bands I had reviewed or used for songs at other times, because I had encountered them some other way. I wanted to bring them in.

That is why, musically, Hispanic Heritage Month extended all the way through to October 31st. Carlos Santana's "Black Magic Woman" is kind of spooky, right?

Besides, I made last October super Halloween-themed.

That's the amazing thing, and I have written this before, but whatever I dive deep into, there is always more available. So there are more Halloween songs, or more songs in a certain genre, or more songs honoring a heritage. 

Yes, I need to periodically go back to my rock (and some of these songs were rock, but not all), but I never tire of finding things I did not know.

Speaking of that, one of the books read (for Hispanic Heritage Month, not Black Music Month) was Decoding Despacito: An Oral History of Latin Music by Leila Cobo. There is a lot to listen to from that, but I need to go back to it later, after I have listened to other things. It pulls from a lot of genres I am unfamiliar with, and so I was not able to get as much out of it as was offered. 

As far as that goes, I could know more about all of these artists. Going through ten songs once and picking a song is nowhere near the understanding you get after going through the entire catalog three times.

There is always more, but in general I like it that way.

The star of the month ended up being former classmate Pablo Ojeda: showing up four times, as himself and as part of Toque Libre, Sabroso, and Rubberneck.

Daily songs:

9/15 “Oblivion” by Astor Piazolla
9/16 “Amor y Control” by Rubén Blades
9/17 “Bamboléo” by Gipsy Kings
9/18 “Gracias a la Vida” by Violeta Parra
9/19 “Altura” by Inti Illimani
9/20 “Maria Bonita” by Agustín Lara
9/21 “Sabor a Mi” by Trio Los Panchos con Eydie Gormé
9/22 “Ni por favor” by Pedro Infante
9/23 “Will the Wolf Survive?” by Los Lobos
9/24 “La Maza” by Mercedes Sosa
9/25 “Soy Rebelde” by Lydia Mendoza
9/26 “Rio Ancho” by Paco de Lucia
9/27 “Paloma Negra” by Lola Beltrán
9/28 “Ojalá” by Silvio Rodriguez
9/29 “Rie y Llora” by Celia Cruz
9/30 “No discutamos” by Lucha Villa
10/1 “Homeboy's Boogie” by Dr. Loco's Rockin' Jalapeño Band
10/2 “La Sal de la Tierra” by Juan Peña El Lebrijiano
10/3 “I Want To Be Loved” by The Royal Jesters
10/4 “Capaz de Todo” by Ruben Salazar
10/5 “Yo Ser Perder” by Snowball & Co
10/6 “Prenda Del Alma” by Los Alegres De Teran
10/7 “Las Nubes” by Little Joe y La Familia
10/8 “Soy Yo” by Bomba Estéreo
10/9 “Maybe Tonight” by Nestor Torres
10/10 “I'm Enough (I Want More) by Downtown Boys
10/11 “Volver, Volver” by Piñata Protest
10/12 “Risk It” by Alice Bag
10/13 “Blue Sofa” by The Plugz
10/14 “That Laid Back Feel” by Pablo Ojeda
10/15 "Será Porque Te Amo" by Los Tigrillos
10/16 “Necessity of Loving” by Luiz Santos
10/17 “Como Un Trueno” by Illegales
10/18 “Volver A Amar” by Jose Aguilar con Banda Sinaloense
10/19 “Nothing There” by Sabroso
10/20 “I Miss You” by Alturas
10/21 “Waterloo Sunset” by Jesse Valenzuela
10/22 “She Knows It” by The Zeros
10/23 “Color Esperanza 2020” by Various Artists
10/24 “Oubliette” by Aurelio Voltaire
10/25 “In Your Arms” by Toque Libre
10/26 “No Tengo Dinero” by Juan Gabriel
10/27 “Nunca, Nunca Más” by Asha
10/28 “Cover Me” by Rubberneck
10/29 “Come On, Let's Go” by Ritchie Valens
10/30 “Baa Baa Bamba” by Emilio Delgado, performing as Luis on Sesame Street
10/31 “Black Magic Woman” by Santana

As Rock & Roll saves me

Yes, this is a day earlier than I have been posting. I am trying a little change. 

While I talk about it more on the Sunday blog, I am a religious person. When I talk about "saving"... no, rock and roll is not saving me from death and sin. That is an important distinction. It still really helps me in an important way.

As I have been listening to many new musician and bands for various reasons for a few months now -- much of which I really like -- in this difficult life and world I periodically need to get back to the songs that are for me. They lift me up and revive me. For the most part they would be classified as rock pretty reliably, though one can always quibble about genres.

I need that music. A life without it would be much more miserable than is necessary.

I realize there are people who automatically find that rock is the devil's music, and I don't respect that opinion, even though the rock sometimes references the sex and the drugs.

I also know that my taste is my own, and there is room for disagreement. Without hating them, I am not a really big fan of the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, and I stand by that firmly.

Now if I haven't lost everyone by my unique combination of religiosity and musical tastes (I can only be me), here is a lesson.

I was recently listening to one of my favorite playlists, and being made so happy by it. It occurred to me that it is a shame that I am so bad at playing music. I can hear things in my head that I can never manage to get out, there is not a lot of aptitude even with practice, and (despite the occasional spirited karaoke delivery) I am not really a good singer.

Not only that, but in addition to finding a lot of music through media, I personally know a lot of amazing musicians. Some have a deep understanding of music theory and for some it is much more instinctive. Some have studied and some are self-taught. With all of their variety, I am not like them.

At times in the past I could see a value in appreciating them, because everyone likes to get appreciated and I am good at that, but I still wish I could do it.

This time, just as I found my lack of ability a pity, it came to me that it can be good to like things and want things that we are not good at. 

Maybe it's good for humility (there's a good religious quality), or for persistence or resignation or for perspective on a larger picture where no one has all gifts but everyone can contribute.

It's okay that I am who and how I am. 

And I am grateful for rock. It often emerges from messy lives, but have you seen my life? It fits.

Now, about that listening and new thing I am trying... I have a lot of book and music material that I have not posted. That mainly relates to the various reading months I do, with a good 136 books (some children's) and movies that I could write about, as well as at least two music posts I could easily do.

I am going to try working those in on Friday now. I am switching the type of  post that I have been doing from Wednesday to Tuesday to spread them out a little.  

I hope it won't be overextending myself, but I am at least going to try it.

I have this idea that as I read more and write about everything that I will be able to create excellent reading lists for various purposes and audiences, and I am not there yet. 

It is okay that I am not good at everything I care about.

I am nonetheless pretty good at reading. And listening to rock.

In the way

Prior to my first trip to Italy in 2006, I had only met one aunt, who had been to visit us in the States three times over the years. As the only one without children, she had a little more ability to travel.

Even having spent time with her as a child and teenager, it was different seeing her as an adult and with a better grasp of Italian. I remember her watching me study one morning and saying "Ragazza stupenda!" ("Marvelous girl!", roughly.)

Spending time with people who will love you and appreciate you is amazing and good for the soul, but I was 34 before it happened. That beloved uncle only lived two more years after that. Of all of the beloved aunts and uncles, only one is left.

(The ties are not broken as there are many cousins.)

There are two reasons for my delay, and they do eventually relate.

The first one is the money. We were not a family that could afford to just hop on airplanes, and you can't drive to Italy. As it was, my first flight ever was on my way to the Missionary Training Center at the age of 21, and I had been considering the train before I learned that there was a travel agency that gave missionaries discount tickets.

When I was young we were still able to drive to some pretty cool places. When I have been doing better at some times in my life I have flown to some pretty cool places; I am luckier than lots of people. Economic inequality is nonetheless a real thing, and meritocracy is a myth. 

We should all have opportunities to connect with places and people.

I still could have gone sooner. The other chance that could have worked was when my mother and sisters went. I was focusing on college at the time, so it would have been a challenge, but probably not impossible.

In fact, I was reluctant to go because I was fat. At that time I was still trying to put off everything until I could no longer be fat. Then people would accept me more, and I would not hate pictures of the experience; every aspect of my life was going to be better once I lost weight!

Only I never did.

My extended family loved and accepted me as a fat person. 

(I'm not saying they didn't have any concerns about it, and I did hate that, but that didn't happen until the second trip.)

It was easy to hold off on meeting new people or going new places or even relating to people I already knew in new ways, because my life had to wait to start until I was worthy of it.

Yes, I tried for a long time to lose weight, and gained weight in that time. Stamina and muscle tone fluctuated, but the presence of fat never did. 

Since I stopped trying, I have evened out, but I have evened out as fat. 

It has surprisingly little to do with my health,  unless you know how much of what is generally believed comes via financing by the diet industry, and then it is less surprising. (Hey, there's capitalism again, along with the economic inequality part.)

It is not a moral judgment on my character, though you will find people who believe it is, and at 36 I still did.

That stigma on fatness -- which I fully accepted -- really held me back, without improving my life in any way. It has affected how other people see me. For some it still does, but the bigger impact was on what I did and how I navigated.

It did limit my ability to connect with others.

It isn't always the stigma on fat, because it can be race or class or gender or sexuality or so many other things that shouldn't be reasons to hate each other or abuse each other or have contempt for each other, and yet, here we are.

And obviously, these twin forces of capitalism and bigotry can be folded into dominator culture, that enemy of all that is good.

If what the world needs now is love (I maintain it is), dominator culture is what we are up against. 

It is personal, but it is also very political and religious and economic.

Mr. Rogers again

Back to Won't You Be My Neighbor..  there was another part that stayed with me, regarding his interaction with François Clemmons, the actor who played Officer Clemmons, a character I did not remember at all.

One of the key episodes featuring Officer Clemmons was from 1969, before I was born. The two men share a pool and a towel, just for cooling their feet, but sending a timely message about resistance to integrating pools. The scene was revisited in 1993, well after I had stopped watching.

https://www.biography.com/news/mister-rogers-officer-clemmons-pool

Won't You Be My Neighbor discusses that, and also François needing to stay closeted to keep his place on the show. I don't know if that led to the other story that made such an impression on me.

Mr. Rogers said to Officer Clemmons once, as part of a scene, “I love you just the way you are.” After, François asked, “Fred, were you talking to me?” “Yes, I've been telling you for two years, and you finally heard me."

They had known each other much longer than two years, so I don't know why there had been that length of time to receive the message. This is the man who sang the song "Many Ways to Say I Love You", so there could have been a wide range of efforts.

François said that he had never had a man say that to him before, including his father and stepfather. In that moment Mr. Rogers became a surrogate father to him.

Maybe two years before was when Fred realized that's what François needed.

I don't know that it's exactly a second chance, but there can be other love, at other times and in others ways, sometimes maybe similar ones.

My grandparents had all died before I was born, but there was a couple we knew from church that I really loved. I remember asking if I could call them Grandma and Grandpa. They said yes, but more than that they took it seriously. They never forgot a birthday after that, for any of us, and they were there for important events. They had five children of their own, and I am not sure how many grandchildren, but they accepted the extra five.

My mother left Italy as a young bride just before she turned 18. One aunt made it to visit us three times, but most of her family, even though we would hear things about them, was really unknown.

Finally, at the age of 34, I made it to Italy for the first time. All of them became vivid and real and beloved, but there was something else.

One of my uncles came to pick us up at the airport, along with the aunt I knew. Though this was his first time ever seeing me, I was instantly loved. He greeted me, "Gina! With a smile like the sun."

Later, we were talking about how things were with our father, with this actually being not long after the last disowning. I tried explaining it as best as I could, knowing it sounds wrong. He just said, "Ah Gina," but with such sympathy in his voice. His care was tangible.

With my father's family, it's not like I thought that anyone wished me harm, but love would seem like a pretty strong term. Here there was love and warmth and it was amazing.

Some people will be kind of glib about "found" family. Yes, it is a wonderful thing to happen, but there are no guarantees. When it happens, it is something to cherish.

I may not have had that consistent, reliable support that they'd asked about, but it wasn't all desolation either. I believe there can be more of that.

Deciding

A few years ago I went through many books relating to death and dementia and wholeness, and wasn't sure that it gave me what I needed.

At one point, I noticed that my reading list had a lot of books by Asian-American authors focused on fraught parental relationships. I really noticed when I got to one title, thought I had already read it, and realized, no, that was a different one.

I also had several books with "daughter" in the title. My bright idea was to read the books by the Asian-American authors, then the books with "daughter" in the titles, and then I would see what thoughts came up.

(If it is not already obvious, many of my feelings about death, dementia, and emotional wounds are strongly related to my daughter-hood.)

Now, if my reading ever followed its scheduled path and I only worked on one list at a time... actually, I don't know if I could even recognize my life. Regardless, other books got interspersed, and it appears that fraught parental relationships are more common than not, not bounded by race and ethnicity.

It is not unusual that you can love someone and they can love you, deeply and sincerely, and yet you can cause each other a lot of pain.

It does not always end the relationships. Often it shouldn't.

When I posted about not being in contact with my father, I did not get any negative comments; people were supportive and that is great. I did want to spend a little more time on that decision process, though, in case anyone else is dealing with doubts.

It was kind of in the the last message I sent: dealing with him is so emotionally hard and draining that it becomes physically stressful. If it were harmful to me but good for him, that might be a reason to do it anyway. Back when we were still trying, there was no sign that it made him any happier or better.

When others have pushed back in the past, the general point is that someday he will die, and I will regret it. 

I use that reasoning myself for a completely different scenario, when I discuss visiting Mom with siblings. They find those visits hard, as do I. It is not her fault, and it is questionable how much good it does her. No, she does not know she is seeing her family. We can give her some extra attention, but it may not make a difference. However, someday she will die, and we don't know if we will get much advance notice. Will we be able to live with it if we haven't seen her?  

I will feel bad about my father's death, but I already feel bad about his life. The biggest reason I don't see him is to spare me additional pain. I could be miscalculating, but I don't think so. 

Life is full of uncertainty and all we can do is the best we can. That should mean doing it with kindness and honesty, and that kindness should not only be directed outward from the self, but include the self.

When I was going over all of this before, it was important to me that I go over things that my parents did for me, and also good memories. 

The part that was horrible with my father was how few good memories I could find. Even when he was not actively causing pain, so much of the time there was this air of oppression. In the time before he left, he would leave at 6 in the morning and might not come back until 9 or 10 at night, implausible when he was working and more so when he was unemployed. 

We knew it was not right, and that he had been having a long term affair was not really a surprise, but it was still easy to accept because it was so much of a relief when he wasn't around. 

It wasn't good for him either; he started a late night drinking habit during this time period, but that was something that only he could change. I can accept that he didn't know how, but not that he wouldn't try, and not that he won't even be honest about it now.

I will add that one of the key things that he did provide was financial support and home maintenance throughout my childhood and adolescence. I don't need someone to do that for me now.

However, having recently dealt with home repairs, and being reminded of how overwhelming they feel, does that relate to him? When my inner voice for work-related issues is so harsh, and job issues devastate me so much, does that go back to him? Because yes, I have a pretty nasty inner critic in general, but it is worse for work-related things.

Some of these very harsh parents in the memoirs nonetheless had a lot of good memories and moments with their children too. That must have helped. Some of those parents are also dead now, which may help in a different way. 

I only know how it is for me, and how I am navigating now. Part of the honesty for me is being able to speak it, and not feel a shame and embarrassment about what I could never control.

Part of my kindness is that I will not hold a grudge against him. I do understand and have empathy for some of the things that led him to be this way. It also includes kindness to me in that I am not doing that to myself.

I don't need an apology to forgive him and move on with my life, but for that life to contain him there would need to be more good in the past or promise of change for the future, that was then carried out, even with slip ups. 

Because having boundaries means knowing that sometimes people will lie, and you do need to evaluate whether the efforts are enough, or sincere, or just ineffective but improving, or all of the range in between. Then you can see if new time is mostly good, or better, or subtly worse.

In my case, there is no trying, so there is nothing to evaluate. I know there are better possibilities, but I accept where we are.

Finally, if anyone is curious about the books...

Fraught parental relationships:

by Asian-American authors:
The Magical Language of Others by E. J. Koh
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
Crying In H-Mart by Michelle Zauner
Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir by Eddie Huang
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
(plus there are some I have not gotten to yet, and some YA that kind of relates ...)

not by Asian-American authors:
Will by Will Smith
Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery by Casey Parks

(The best parents read about recently were Michelle Obama's in Becoming.)

Daughter books: (I have not read any of these yet, but I will.)
Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution by Randal Keynes
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss

An analogy taken from real life

In a process that is going much more quickly than my emotional growth and healing, we are replacing all the floors in the house. 

The house is a year older than I am, and maybe we have other similarities. However, they might finish today, and I certainly will not.

We are not doing the skilled work, but there has still been a lot for us to do. Everything needs to be moved away and moved back -- possibly with a few temporary moves in between -- for the floors to come up.

I have a few new bruises. I felt them before they appeared, but the one that really hurt took longer to appear than the other. I don't know why it was like that, but I could tell it was coming.

We are switching from mostly carpets to all vinyl plank. This is very practical with our penchant for taking in animals, including ones with certain problems.

It looks great, but there is some getting used to it, which we have barely started yet since everything is still in an uproar. One difference is that the sound reverberates more; the carpet dampened that some. It makes perfect sense but I had not thought of it before.

The contractors have had to remove all the carpet and padding, take care of any flooring issues underneath, and then install the planks. That part is done and now the baseboards are being applied, which also requires some removals and a lot of fitting.

This house is comparatively old, which means it has seen some wear. However, it was also built pretty sturdy. We have been pleasantly surprised to discover no dry rot. There was an area that was missing some boards underneath, apparently from when insulation was added. That took care of some creaking, but the biggest help for that was tightening loose boards, of which there were many. Still, the wood was solid; it just needed some reinforcement. 

There is so much garbage to haul away!

I also have been looking below and finding all sorts of things coming up, some with some pain (not always when and how I expect it). It really does make some things feel different, and maybe amplified.

The amazing thing is that I appear to be pretty sturdy. I am not sure where that came from.

A lot of garbage does come up.

And I will not be done tonight.

(I am aware of the C. S. Lewis analogy. It is more involved.)