When I recently saw my mom and asked her what she thought of the Obama campaign, she twirled her arms like a cheerleader and was like, "GOOOOOOOOOOO, BAMA!", and on the "BAMA!" she put out her fists above her head like she was a cheerleader holding pompoms.
In Sister Claudette Marie Muhammad's recent book "Memories" -- she's a huge higher-up in the Nation of Islam, and recent wrote her memoirs, which are both wonderful and frustrating, since she's done so many interesting things in her life but she never goes into as much detail as you want, I would read a thousand-page book by her -- she was remembering back in her pre-NOI days in the early-to-mid-70s when she was a secretary on capitol hill and was instrumental in getting an art exhibit "Beauty of the Ghetto" to Washington:
Mrs. Ethel Kennedy also became one of the key sponsors. She hosted a luncheon meeting at her home for [the artist] Ernie [Barnes] and myself. Served at the luncheon meeting was southern fried chicken. I laughed at myself, "White folk will be White folk," Mrs. Kennedy serving fried chicken to her Black guests.
I had seen ads up for this book everywhere and got my university library to order it for me, we're the only library in the world to have it, as far as I can tell from comprehensive online catalogues I've looked at.
This morning I was sitting outside in the coffee shop courtyard near me studying, and some guy started setting up speakers and chairs for some kind of event, and next thing I know I'm surrounded by a few families and black retired women listening to smooth jazz while the guy plays the sax. There was one younger black woman there too who was dancing a lot, and she sat down for one song, and right at the end when all the older black women were clapping since the musician was holding out this really sweet long sax note, the woman who had just sat down noticed she had broke a sweat and so took off her jean jacket, and since she was in front everyone saw it and all the older black women started clapping for her, and the one next to her, this really nice-looking lady in a straw hat and linen shirt and flow-y black pants, was like, "Was that last too much for you sister, let me help you out," and she started fanning her while the other black ladies clapped the harder.
Tomorrow I go to Gary to campaign again for Obama; I'm going door-to-door canvassing with my neighbor from the Law School, we're doing both a morning and an afternoon shift.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Tidbits.
My mom was saying that back when she was pregnant with my older brother, her and my grandmother were walking around the Southland mall when this impaired person passed by, and my grandmother took her head and was like, "Don't look, don't look!", and when my mom asked why, my grandmother said it was because she'd make her baby retarded.
My mom also said that back when she used to be a stewardess, the worst airline customers overall were New York Jews on the New York-Detroit flight, since you had to do dinner and cocktails in an hour-and-a-half, and after having to go through all the pain of getting the kosher meals from the caterers after the New York Jews had made a big fuss about having to have kosher food, a lot of them'd usually look at the non-kosher chicken or fish dishes the people beside or ahead of them were getting and and think it looked good so they'd lie and say they'd ordered that and get that instead, so you'd have all these leftover kosher dishes that no one wanted when you got to the customers at the back of the plane.
Also, my mom and dad were recently at a wedding reception for the daughter of our neighbors around the lake, and while they were sitting outside on a picnic table eating, the parents of a girl I went to high school with walked up the driveway holding hands, and when my dad looked up from his food he saw that and was like, "What the fuck...?", and when my mom looked and laughed too, my dad was like, "That's jacked." When they left, my dad took my mom's hand, just to be a dick.
On another note, Woody Allen's new movie "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is like the best Woody Allen movie I've seen in years, and isn't just an overwrought piece of shit about rich New York couples having empty marriages and affairs. I laughed a lot, and even thought Scarlett Johansson was good.
On another note still, I recently learned that French Canadians use a lot of religious swear words, and not just "Jesus" or "Mary" either, but things like "tabernacle!" and "sacarament!", so when French people hear this, they're like, "'tabernacle'?, what the fuck."
As my one friend says, "tabernacle" sounds like a candy or something, as in, "I remember my grandmother used to make the best tabernacle. Chipped a tooth on it once, even!"
My mom also said that back when she used to be a stewardess, the worst airline customers overall were New York Jews on the New York-Detroit flight, since you had to do dinner and cocktails in an hour-and-a-half, and after having to go through all the pain of getting the kosher meals from the caterers after the New York Jews had made a big fuss about having to have kosher food, a lot of them'd usually look at the non-kosher chicken or fish dishes the people beside or ahead of them were getting and and think it looked good so they'd lie and say they'd ordered that and get that instead, so you'd have all these leftover kosher dishes that no one wanted when you got to the customers at the back of the plane.
Also, my mom and dad were recently at a wedding reception for the daughter of our neighbors around the lake, and while they were sitting outside on a picnic table eating, the parents of a girl I went to high school with walked up the driveway holding hands, and when my dad looked up from his food he saw that and was like, "What the fuck...?", and when my mom looked and laughed too, my dad was like, "That's jacked." When they left, my dad took my mom's hand, just to be a dick.
On another note, Woody Allen's new movie "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is like the best Woody Allen movie I've seen in years, and isn't just an overwrought piece of shit about rich New York couples having empty marriages and affairs. I laughed a lot, and even thought Scarlett Johansson was good.
On another note still, I recently learned that French Canadians use a lot of religious swear words, and not just "Jesus" or "Mary" either, but things like "tabernacle!" and "sacarament!", so when French people hear this, they're like, "'tabernacle'?, what the fuck."
As my one friend says, "tabernacle" sounds like a candy or something, as in, "I remember my grandmother used to make the best tabernacle. Chipped a tooth on it once, even!"
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Catholics...
So I've been reading this fantastic book "Catholicism and American Freedom" this past week, and it's made me realize how much I would have hated the pre-Vatican II church. It shows how much the church changed as a result of Vatican II that I can't imagine being in an authoritarian church where freedom of conscience isn't really a given.
On another note, I called a friend in Vermont and found out that he's going to be going to New Hampshire soon to campaign for Obama, and I called the Obama campaign office in a town an hour away from my hometown and discovered that my hometown is having an office open up tomorrow, with phonebanking starting at 7pm, even though it's a town of 6,000 in a county of 20,000! Like my mom said, Obama's got his shit together, and he had his shit together to beat Clinton in the primary, so you know he's going to have his shit together as president.
On another note, I called a friend in Vermont and found out that he's going to be going to New Hampshire soon to campaign for Obama, and I called the Obama campaign office in a town an hour away from my hometown and discovered that my hometown is having an office open up tomorrow, with phonebanking starting at 7pm, even though it's a town of 6,000 in a county of 20,000! Like my mom said, Obama's got his shit together, and he had his shit together to beat Clinton in the primary, so you know he's going to have his shit together as president.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Restaurants and organizers.
Yesterday me and a friend biked down to try out that new soul food restaurant where the owner had given me a free sample of bread pudding after I talked with him at an intersection where I was stopped on my bike and he was going from car to car handing out free fliers, only, when we got there, we discovered the place is closed Mondays and Saturdays, so instead my friend suggested we go up to this other restaurant he's been to before, so we went there.
The place was founded in 1918 and by the subway stop in this bad part of town, and we walked in the restaurant and we were the only white people there. I got smothered pork chops, and my friend got pancakes and turkey sausage, and when some black ladies at the next table got up and left their cornbread muffins untouched, we asked the (black) waitress next time she swung by if we could get them, and she was like, "Sure," and walked over and picked up a plate of two muffins and came back and put them down between us and was like, "I'm not getting the other two since the lady left other garbage on her plate."
Later, my friend said that when he had been an interim pastor at his church last summer, a community organizer had taken him there for lunch, and he said he never even knew about the restaurant even though it's two blocks south of his house, since there's a racial line in town that people just don't cross. That made me really pissed off about Sarah Palin, about how she's so out of touch where she mocks community organizers and the serous social problems they deal with... I wonder how diverse her town in Alaska is, and if it has a native presence.
The place was founded in 1918 and by the subway stop in this bad part of town, and we walked in the restaurant and we were the only white people there. I got smothered pork chops, and my friend got pancakes and turkey sausage, and when some black ladies at the next table got up and left their cornbread muffins untouched, we asked the (black) waitress next time she swung by if we could get them, and she was like, "Sure," and walked over and picked up a plate of two muffins and came back and put them down between us and was like, "I'm not getting the other two since the lady left other garbage on her plate."
Later, my friend said that when he had been an interim pastor at his church last summer, a community organizer had taken him there for lunch, and he said he never even knew about the restaurant even though it's two blocks south of his house, since there's a racial line in town that people just don't cross. That made me really pissed off about Sarah Palin, about how she's so out of touch where she mocks community organizers and the serous social problems they deal with... I wonder how diverse her town in Alaska is, and if it has a native presence.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Some reactions to Palin: blackfolk, my mother, my godmother, etc.
I have been doing my most to tell blackfolk I know or bump into about Sarah Palin's calling Aleuts and other native Alaskans "snow Arabs' and her comment "So Sambo beat the bitch" when she found out that Obama beat Clinton in the Democratic primary.
Most recently, when I was waiting to board an Amtrak train on Friday morning, there was this college-age black guy ahead of me in line, and ahead of him a short and kind of fat 30-year old black woman, and when the overhead tv started showing clips of Sarah Palin's one ABC interview from the previous night, the lady started shaking her head all critically, and when I was like, "Not a fan?", she was like, "Nuh-uh, not really," and the college-age black guy shrugged and was like, "Who is this woman," so I took that cue and got all fervent and was like, "Want to hear some bullshit?".
First, I told them about the Palin-supported Wasilla policy on billing raped women for their forensic kits - "So, I was like, not only do you get raped, but you get charged $1200 if your insurance doesn't cover it, and of course everyone has insurance!" - but that didn't get much effect, so I went on to topic number two and told them about Sarah Palin calling native Alaskans "snow arabs", and when the black woman started shaking her head and being like "my", I was like, "And that's not all," and told them about her "So Sambo beat the bitch" comment. The woman was like, "Where did you read that?", so I told her, and since by that time we were boarding the train and she had to get on a different car since she was going to a different town, she squeeze my arm and was like, "Thank you."
Also, my one older black lady friend who works at the library sent me a forward about how Palin is a weird VP pick and guarantees victory to Obama.
Anyhow, when I my mom met me at the train station outside Detroit, we started talking politics, and I was like, "You know, black people don't seem to like Sarah Palin."
"Good for black people," my mom was like,
"Why?", I was like.
"Because that means black people have a handle on it, Palin's a joke," my mom was like.
My godmother who is really erratic - she's more of a dem, but really did not like Obama since she's averse to a lot of black Detroit politicians who she thinks are race-baiters; she's also a little questionable on race sometimes herself, I remember her being once like, "Oh I always knew there was something a little off with that woman, then I found out she had married an Arab" -- got going on Palin during our visit, too, which both me and my mom found surprising.
First, though, my godmother had talked about this farewell party for a spacey teacher from her school, this choir teacher was leaving her job to go to Phoenix for sunlight and to write songs.
("I'm already cold," she told my godmother, who wondered what the fuck was up with this girl since she didn't have a job to go to and really needed health insurance.)
"She has that one condition, you know," my godmother was like, "They had to do all these surgeries and took out her brain and realigned her skull since she was born with that one thing where, you know, her face is all effed up, her face looks slanted and you just want to go up and adjust it."
After that, when Palin got brought up, my godmother was like, "That woman could not run a fucking nothing! And did you see that poor retarded baby at that convention, up on stage so late at night in such a noisy hall with all those people around? It broke my heart, what was that woman thinking?", and my mom said she had thought the exact same thing right away too when she saw a video clip of Palin's speech and the camera had panned to her family. Then both my godmother and my mom said that how could the family manage when Palin's husband works too, and that the Obamas had it arranged better where Michelle is staying home now and her mom comes to help too when Michelle has to be on the campaign trail, and that that family seemed to have it a lot more together with figuring out child care arrangements around campaigning.
My mom's other friend is on the liberal side but occasionally votes Republican (her husband makes a lot of money), and she's never been hugely pro-choice, but Sarah Palin's not being for abortion in cases of rape and incest makes her completely question her sanity.
Most recently, when I was waiting to board an Amtrak train on Friday morning, there was this college-age black guy ahead of me in line, and ahead of him a short and kind of fat 30-year old black woman, and when the overhead tv started showing clips of Sarah Palin's one ABC interview from the previous night, the lady started shaking her head all critically, and when I was like, "Not a fan?", she was like, "Nuh-uh, not really," and the college-age black guy shrugged and was like, "Who is this woman," so I took that cue and got all fervent and was like, "Want to hear some bullshit?".
First, I told them about the Palin-supported Wasilla policy on billing raped women for their forensic kits - "So, I was like, not only do you get raped, but you get charged $1200 if your insurance doesn't cover it, and of course everyone has insurance!" - but that didn't get much effect, so I went on to topic number two and told them about Sarah Palin calling native Alaskans "snow arabs", and when the black woman started shaking her head and being like "my", I was like, "And that's not all," and told them about her "So Sambo beat the bitch" comment. The woman was like, "Where did you read that?", so I told her, and since by that time we were boarding the train and she had to get on a different car since she was going to a different town, she squeeze my arm and was like, "Thank you."
Also, my one older black lady friend who works at the library sent me a forward about how Palin is a weird VP pick and guarantees victory to Obama.
Anyhow, when I my mom met me at the train station outside Detroit, we started talking politics, and I was like, "You know, black people don't seem to like Sarah Palin."
"Good for black people," my mom was like,
"Why?", I was like.
"Because that means black people have a handle on it, Palin's a joke," my mom was like.
My godmother who is really erratic - she's more of a dem, but really did not like Obama since she's averse to a lot of black Detroit politicians who she thinks are race-baiters; she's also a little questionable on race sometimes herself, I remember her being once like, "Oh I always knew there was something a little off with that woman, then I found out she had married an Arab" -- got going on Palin during our visit, too, which both me and my mom found surprising.
First, though, my godmother had talked about this farewell party for a spacey teacher from her school, this choir teacher was leaving her job to go to Phoenix for sunlight and to write songs.
("I'm already cold," she told my godmother, who wondered what the fuck was up with this girl since she didn't have a job to go to and really needed health insurance.)
"She has that one condition, you know," my godmother was like, "They had to do all these surgeries and took out her brain and realigned her skull since she was born with that one thing where, you know, her face is all effed up, her face looks slanted and you just want to go up and adjust it."
After that, when Palin got brought up, my godmother was like, "That woman could not run a fucking nothing! And did you see that poor retarded baby at that convention, up on stage so late at night in such a noisy hall with all those people around? It broke my heart, what was that woman thinking?", and my mom said she had thought the exact same thing right away too when she saw a video clip of Palin's speech and the camera had panned to her family. Then both my godmother and my mom said that how could the family manage when Palin's husband works too, and that the Obamas had it arranged better where Michelle is staying home now and her mom comes to help too when Michelle has to be on the campaign trail, and that that family seemed to have it a lot more together with figuring out child care arrangements around campaigning.
My mom's other friend is on the liberal side but occasionally votes Republican (her husband makes a lot of money), and she's never been hugely pro-choice, but Sarah Palin's not being for abortion in cases of rape and incest makes her completely question her sanity.
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