Today in Ridiculous: New Bill to End Flight Delays!

26 Apr

Hear ye! Hear ye! Read all about it!  Today, the day before the Senate leaves town for a week, they did the unthinkable: they passed a bill.  Unanimously.  What did they pass, you might ask?  Well, I’ll tell you.  As the title of this blog suggests, they passed a new bill to end flight delays.  Oh, thank god.  Seriously, you guys, that is like the most pressing issue I could possibly imagine.  On time flights for all!

Okay so listen.  There was this one time when I was going to visit my extra-super-awesome friend Meredith in Portland, Oregon in like, I don’t know, 2008?  So long ago.  I had been working at a restaurant in the West Village where my schedule was as follows: Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights 6pm-2am or later if needed, Sunday, Monday nights 4pm-12am, or later if needed, and Tuesday lunch, 10:30am to 4pm.  At the same time I was training for a marathon and had speed workouts on Wednesday nights and long training runs on Saturday mornings.  Needless to say I had very little “me” time.  I was very excited for my 4-day Portland adventure, which I had scheduled months in advance.  The day of the trip I traveled, by subway, to JFK to catch my nonstop flight to Portland.  Upon arrival, I was informed that my flight had been cancelled due to “lack of crew.”  Um, what? Instead, they flew me to Washington, DC to catch a connecting flight to Portland.  Fine.  When I arrived in DC they told me there was no flight to Portland, so I would have to spend the night in DC, fly to Chicago the next day and then on to Portland from there.  I would arrived at 4pm on Saturday, about 32 hours after I walked out the front door of my apartment building in Brooklyn.  Not going to work.  I asked the lady if I could just fly back to New York and change my trip.  No, because, somehow, flying to DC because the company had fucked up and then, as a result, flying back to New York would have used up the tickets I bought plus my free ticket and so I would have basically just flown to and from DC just for fun.*  Finally, after much attitude on the part of me, she got me on a flight to San Francisco for that night. I would then spend the night in San Fran at the airline’s expense, and then fly on to Portland the next morning. I would arrive there at 10am.  Twenty-six hours after leaving my house.  I took it, but not after I gave the lady a piece of my mind which resulted in me getting escorted out of the line by security.  It was not my finest moment.

Anyway, that whole experience sucked.  (The trip to Portland was, as expected, so great! I want to go back!  Meredith, when can I come back?!) Anyway, so I get it, flight delays are awful.  But seriously?  THIS is the thing we are so excited about?  That the Senate managed to pass a bill to “ease impacts of cuts on air traffic?”  Okay, so let me just give you a couple of really fun little quotes from this article I read in, where else, The New York Times.**

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said “I am so happy that we were able to work together across the aisle in a bipartisan way to solve this problem.  It’s nice to know when we work together we can really solve problems.”

I just have to say that I am pretty sure that I learned the lesson of working together in like, kindergarten, but some people just take a little longer.  Also, I would just like to say that cuts to air traffic control that results in flight delays certainly results in inconveniences but I would hardly call this a problem.  Problems, to me, are cuts to education, to social security, to infrastructure development and maintenance.  You know, stuff like that.  But what do I know.

And Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, had these words: “At some point, we have to admit the best thing is to find another $2 trillion in debt reduction by looking at revenue, closing some loopholes and bringing down the debt with some spending cuts, but not ones like this.”

Oh, no, not cuts like that!  Never cuts like that!  I mean, cuts to air traffic control is totally insane and I can’t believe we ever in a million years thought about doing it, let alone actually did it.  I know!  Let’s take money from other parts of the transportation budget and just, you know, move it to air traffic.  Like, let’s not invest in high speed rail.  That was a dumb idea, anyway.***

Then there’s this. Republicans are accusing the Obama administration of “mismanagement of the cuts, at best and intentional infliction of pain at worst” (emphasis mine).  And then also, this: “Republicans — and some Democrats — have been pushing for much of the month for a rescue of the air traffic control system, charging that President Obama was intentionally extracting maximum pain on the traveling public to illustrate the costs of the cuts, called sequestration.”

I know that last paragraph is redundant but I feel like if The Times can have both those sentences in one article, so can I.  Anyway, here’s the thing.  Maybe the Senate wants to prove to the American public that, after the debacle involving the failure of the background check bill which 90% of the population supported yet still couldn’t get through the Senate because Senators are “doing what their constituents want” (!!!!!) that it can actually accomplish something.  Well done, Senate, you get a gold star.  But give me a break.  I mean, sure, when I fly I want on-time departure and on-time arrival.  I think we all do.  But let’s not act as though we are solving some huge, life-shaking issue.  Let’s not be so sensationalist that we start talking about how Obama is intentionally fucking with your life, travelers, to show you that spending cuts suck. What this is to me is the whining of a bunch of people in the leisure class who are pissed that their lives are inconvenienced by something that they themselves pushed for.  They wanted spending cuts, they just didn’t want it to impact them.  So why don’t we go ahead and solve this problem and let all our spending cuts occur on the backs of the poor.  So carry on, travel class!  We’ll get this economy back on track but don’t worry, you won’t feel a thing.

*I was young and stupid back then and didn’t know the full potential of letter writing.  If this happened today, I would write the shit out of some letters (and, obviously, post them here).

**I know it might not seem like it but I do, in fact, read things other than The Times.  I read The New Yorker.  Also, books.  Also, all of the comments written on that grumpy cat internet meme.  I want that cat.

***I don’t know that this is where the money is actually coming from but I am feeling especially snarky this morning so, whatever.

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April, You Stink

25 Apr

April is not my month, never has been.  For some reason, however, I always forget what bad luck April seems to bring.  All I can do is think about the sun on my face, the trees in bloom, the longer and longer days, the coming of summer.  I plan visits to the beach and a good vacation.  I put my winter coats away, vowing to not wear them again until the cold returns in the fall, not caring if this means I am a little chilly here and there.  I always approach April with so much optimism and am so shocked when April, once again, fails me.  What is it with April?

April was the month, three years ago, when I had my heart broken.  Rather than being out enjoying the beautiful weather, running around the park, eating outside, I spent days crying on my bathroom floor.  I remember walking outside the day after it happened, the day when I felt like the floor was ripped out from under my feet, and being angry at April.  Being angry at the perfect weather.  I felt resentment towards the warm breeze and the beautiful flowers.  How can they all be so pretty, so alive, when I felt so miserable?  How can the world just, continue?

April is also the month of horrible (domestic) things, most recently the Boston Marathon bombing.  But there’s also the Virgina Tech Massacre, Waco, the Oklahoma City Bombing.  Something about April, I don’t know.  Maybe all the energy people had stored up over the winter, maybe all the anger, just comes barreling out at this first sign of Spring and optimism.  Maybe all the time spent cooped up indoors was spent planning out evil rather than dreaming about warmer days.  Maybe it’s a resentment towards the happiness of others.  Who knows.  But there is something about April.

This April for me has been tough.  It always seems to be.  It’s been topsy-turvy and unpredictable.  But it has also been great. I had my best blog day ever, albeit a blog written about an event I wish never happened, a blog I wish I never had to write.  I participated in a conference at school and, at the risk of sounding self-impressed, I killed it.  I started making some serious progress in my thesis and have started to believe I might actually be able to finish this thing. I discovered that OB has started selling the Ultras again, which basically improves my life exponentially.  Bought two boxes yesterday.

So, April, I am glad you are almost over, I’m not going to lie.  But this year, I think I will remember you for the good you brought rather than the bad and maybe that change in outlook towards you will change your treatment towards me. I will approach you with optimism, tempered with trepidation.   I won’t forget the bad, like I sometimes do, but I will choose to cast it aside.  We’ll see how this works.  Guess we’ll have to wait until next year to find out.

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This Week Sort of Felt Like the World was Ending

20 Apr

Important!  This piece is me working out some of my conflicting thoughts about what has transpired over the last week.  I hope in reading this, people understand that I feel relieved that the suspects have both been taken off the streets, although I do regret that one of them was killed.  I feel relieved, but I do not feel happy, or celebratory.  What they are accused of having done was undoubtedly horrific.  But I am worried that, once again, we as a society are going to miss a very crucial moment in political time to ask hard questions about why this has happened.  Please keep that in mind as you read.

This has been a really awful and confusing week and I feel, to put it simply, quite conflicted.  When those bombs went off in Boston on Monday I, along with everyone else, was totally shocked.  I had come home from a run to text messages from friends asking me if I knew and if I was alright – some people thought it possible that I was there.  I spent the next two hours in my sweaty running clothes glued to a live stream, hungering for any information at all that would give a clue of who could have done something so horrible, and why.  I know I was not alone.  This week has seen me scouring news sources, reading every single update about the explosion, the victims, the hunt for clues as to the identities of the perpetrators.  I knew that, in a busy shopping district dotted with high-end stores, there would undoubtedly be images captured on video, it was only a matter of time.  And then the time came.

To see the images of these men who were suspected to have out carried out this gruesome attack was mixed.  I was glad that some headway had been made, that there were suspects in mind but at the same time I was sad.  I knew that the attack had happened, I knew that nothing I could think or say could take us back to Monday morning, to a time when these men could have been thwarted or changed their minds.  But seeing them and knowing full well that if they were caught alive their lives would be ruined, along with the lives of so many that were ruined on Monday, made me think:  another two casualties.  Intellectually, I knew it was too late and they would face justice, as they should.  But as a human being, I couldn’t help but think about what it was that inspired them, and specifically, what flipped the younger brother who, by all accounts, had always seemed a good kid.  I felt sad that we, the inhabitants of the world, lost him to this evil.

Thursday was a particularly hard night for all of us, I think.  Information was coming out, but haltingly.  Barely anyone was covering the shooting at MIT.  No one was saying whether or not it was connected to the Monday bombing.  It really felt like, combined with the failure of the background check bill in the Senate and the plant explosion in Texas, the world was ending.  Nothing made any sense.  Everything, everywhere seemed completely out of control.  I waited with baited breath for the next thing to happen, for the next report to come out, for it to be in New York, or DC, for it to be something big.  Thankfully, the thing I was waiting for never happened, it never came.

And then Friday. I spent the day glancing at my Twitter feed, checking the New York Times website, looking up at CNN at work until the second brother, a 19-year-old kid, was found hiding in a boat in someones backyard.  The whole city had been shut down, militarized, and there he was, in a boat on the grass.  And now we’re safe.

But I wonder, are we really? When I wrote my thoughts about Boston on Tuesday, I wondered, among other things, about what sort of security implications the bombing would have for marathons, the spectators and the runners, going forward.  Now that one bother is dead and the other is in custody, now that the imminent threat is gone, I am more worried than ever before.  We have a moment right now where everyone is listening, both domestically and internationally.  We have a moment, right now, where we can have a really serious conversation about why this happened and I don’t just mean why the brothers decided to do what they did I mean why, in a bigger context, what sort of social, economic, political, racial, historical factors might have played a role.  President Obama, in his statement after the younger brother was captured, asked

“Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?”

It’s a good question.  It’s a big question, and important one.  Probably bigger and more important than most people think at first.  What is it that makes people like the Tsarnaev brothers, like Major Nidal Malik Hasan of Ford Hood, like Najibullah Zazi who planned the failed 2009 attack on the New York City subway system go from seemingly normal, adjusted people to not? At some point we have to stop pointing the finger at them, at Islam, at whatever.  At some point we have to turn the mirror on ourselves.

Think about Sunil Tripathi, the missing Brown student, who was at first thought to be one of the bombers, largely thanks to Reddit.  And then think of Salah Eddine Barhoum who was questioned soon after the bombings.  I can’t imagine the kind of impact it must have on a young person’s life to have their face wrongly associated with such an awful event.  And the impact it has on other young people of color who see this unfolding before their eyes and realize that could have been them, they could have been accused.  I doubt it makes a lot of people feel terribly American.  I doubt it makes them happy or feel safe.

And then there’s this increased use of the suspension of Miranda rights, thanks in large part to the Obama administration, that has been supported by many of the same senators who voted no on the background check bill.

So as I said, I feel conflicted.  I want to know why these brothers did what they did, too.  I want to have some answers.  But I also want to have some harder conversations and I’m really afraid that, once again, we will miss the boat.

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To Boston from a Runner

16 Apr

I am a runner.

It has taken me a really long time to say that.  I always thought that runners were the people faster than me, who ran more than me.  I thought they were people who made a living off of it or who at least won an award here and there.  But yesterday, after coming back from a run, I spent two hours in my sweaty clothes, glued to a livestream on my computer and reaching out to everyone I know who lives in Boston or has family there.  I fielded text messages from people asking if I knew, hoping I wasn’t in the race.  This is not to say that I have more of a right to be devastated about what happened at the finish line of one of the most celebrated marathons in the world.  It is just to say that for a second I thought, god, what if I was there.

My first thought when looking at the video was about the time on the finishing clock.  It read 4:09 when the first bomb went off.  Anyone who has run a marathon knows that around the 4 hour mark, plus and minus about 15-20 minutes, is when most people finish.  It is when the road is especially crowded; when runners are especially focused and fading; when spectators are especially excited, scanning the thousands of finishers for their friends and loved ones.  It was, in that way, a perfect attack.  It hit when emotions were at their peak, when the potential for casualties was highest.

So now I am reminded once again that we live in what some call a “post-9/11 world” and the marathon is the latest casualty.  Security will be tighter, I would imagine.  Will they monitor our bags more closely?  Will we have to take off our shoes when we enter the corrals lest we smuggle in an explosive?  Will spectators have to go through metal detectors?  The magic, I am afraid, will be gone.

Marathon Day in New York City is like a holiday for me.  I wake up early, I rush to my corner, I jump up and down to keep warm while I wait to be amazed by the elite runners and the tens of thousands that come after them.  I stand there for hours and I cheer until my hands hurt from clapping and my voice hurts from screaming.  It’s a day when people achieve a seemingly impossible distance.  When camaraderie is built between people who have never before met and who will likely never meet again.  It is a day when everyone gets to prove to themselves that all the work they did — those early mornings, those painful miles, those track workouts and hill repeats — was all worth it.  Now the beauty of it, the innocence of it, the simplicity of it, will forever be tainted.

We now live in a world where it seems unreasonable to not have escape roots for possible bombings at all major events.  To not have armed guards at entrances to schools and stadiums.  Maybe some of you think the way we act internationally made this inevitable.  Maybe you think our grief over Boston, over all the people maimed, scarred and killed, is hypocritical because we don’t pay that much attention to the scores of innocent people killed by the United States every year.  And you know what, you are partially right.  Our country is in the wrong a lot.  But the thing is, it is unreasonable to expect people not to be devastated and scared by this.  The point is, I think, that all lives are of equal value.  That does not mean we should feel less compassion for people killed for no reason in Boston because our government regularly and needlessly kills people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria.  It means we should feel more compassion for those killed abroad because we know what senseless violence feels like now.  Again.  We know what it is to be confused and petrified and angry.

So, I am a runner.  And I will run again tomorrow.  And I will be out there cheering the marathoners on come November here in New York and I will qualify, and run, the Boston Marathon.  Because that’s what runners do, we keep right on running.  And that’s what people do, we keep going on.

So all my love to Boston.  To the runners, the spectators, the families, friends, loved ones of all those impacted.  You are in my thoughts.  You will be on my mind through all the many miles I will run this spring.  And hopefully I will be there cheering or running sometime soon.

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What do I know from Yoops?

11 Apr

So today when I was walking east on 33rd Street towards my long, long, LONG overdue* waxing appointment I heard something weird.  I was walking by a hotel (or maybe a fancy apartment building?  But probably a hotel because who in their right mind would want to spend a lot of money to live like 2 blocks from Penn Station) and outside there were two door guys talking.  They were both definitely born and raised in New York City somewhere.  Anyway, they were in the midst of a very heated conversation when one of them says to the other,

“Well, I wanted to get yoops to pick up the package but then I called the guy and the guy said that it was probably FedEx that was doing it and not yoops.  I don’t know.  I told the guy I think yoops is better.”

Okay.  So as I walked away I started thinking about why it might be that this guy calls the company yoops rather than U.P.S. like the rest of us.  I came up with the following few possibilities:

1.  It’s like his cute little thing that he does.  Kind of like the way that I say “water” which, admittedly, is a little less choice and a little more accent (and not terribly cute) but still.  It’s like when someone says something about Carl and then you’re like “who’s Carl?” and they’re like “Oh, you know Carl.  He’s the one that says yoops” and at that moment you know exactly who Carl is.

2.  He doesn’t like acronyms and so therefore just doesn’t use them.  He’d be all “well, there was this debate up at the ‘un’-security council the other day” or “I wonder whether ‘who’ is going to approve that new drug for malaria” or “ohmgah! Did you see the new Carie Diaries?!”**

3.  Maybe he doesn’t realize that it is actually called UPS and at first all his friends and family thought that he was just making a joke and they kept letting him do it and then they realized that he was serious but they had been letting him make a fool of himself for this many years and they sort of feel like assholes pointing it out now.

4.  Maybe ‘yoops’ is actually a thing that people say but nobody ever told me about it.

So, yea, that’s it for today.  Other than the fact that I have Funkadelic’s “Freak of the Week” stuck in my head which, all things considered, isn’t so bad.

*You know it is overdue when your waxing lady, who you have been seeing regularly for the past 6 years, takes a look at you and goes, “Oh, Rebekah…”

**Apparently in my mind ‘Carl’ is simultaneously an international affairs student and a 15 year-old girl.

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Two Storms, Two Gardens and a Thesis Topic

9 Apr

Update!  They posted the piece along with my original abstract on the journal website.  You can read it here, if you want.  Or you can just read it on this site.  Although my site doesn’t have an accompanying photograph or an abstract.

Later this month I am participating in a conference at my school during which I will be presenting some ideas on a topic that is sort of connected to what I am writing my thesis about.  Anyway, seeing as how I am a touch behind in the thesis writing process (surprise, surprise!) applying for admittance into this conference was perhaps not my best ever idea but there you have it.  As part of my participation, I had to write a 5-7 page paper on my topic, which I turned in yesterday, along with a short bio and a little teaser about what I plan on talking about to get people excited, or warn them, or something.  So I did all that and then I got an email from the staff of the school’s academic journal, which is apparently partnering with the conference organizer, asking me for a short piece about what had gotten me interested in the topic I decided to write on in the first place so they could publish it alongside the abstract I sent in as my conference application a few weeks ago.  If they like it, anyway.  So, I wrote that and then I decided well, if they decide not to publish it, then I would feel as though it was a semi-wasted effort so in an attempt to prevent that from happening, I am going to post it here!  So, here it is.  The story of why I got interested in my conference topic via the story of how I got interested in my thesis topic.  Enjoy.

The day after Hurricane Sandy left large swaths of New York and New Jersey damaged, burnt and under water, I took a walk down to the Red Hook neighborhood in Brooklyn to survey the damage.  I was shocked by what I saw – three foot high water marks on the public housing buildings, puddles the size of small ponds, piles of drenched belongings stacked on the sidewalks, cars that had floated from their parking spaces and had landed, water-logged, in the middle of normally heavy-trafficked streets.  I thought about the long road ahead for the people of Red Hook and other seriously impacted neighborhoods.  Quickly, my mind raced backwards to August of 2005 and the destruction wrought on the city of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  I thought back to the images and stories that spewed out of that storm-ravaged city during the weeks, months, even years following the storm.  I started thinking about what it takes to repair.  Or, more specifically, who it takes.  I thought about the aid money flowing into New York from all corners of the globe.  I thought about how long that money would continue to come our way, what areas would receive most of it, what areas would soon be forgotten.  I thought about the Lower Ninth Ward.

During my walk through Red Hook on Tuesday, October 30th I started questioning my own thoughts about the abilities and, perhaps more importantly, the priorities of the United States government.  I am a staunch believer in the importance of a big government.  In the modern, capitalist society that we have created, I think the role of the government is largely to protect the people from the injustice of the unfettered market.  For years, I have been avoiding the reality that rather than being a beacon of hope for the millions of people forgotten by capitalism, the government has become a protector of the system at all costs.  The government has become a partner in further disempowering those most devoid of power to begin with.  I finally realized that if areas like the Lower Ninth Ward and Red Hook wait for the government to clean up a mess that is largely, through the persistence of its racist and classist policies and rhetoric, its own doing, they will be waiting forever.  Indeed, the Lower Ninth Ward, almost 8 years later, still has not gotten even close to the kind of sustained help as the French Quarter despite the fact that it sustained significantly more damage.

Once the waters and the aid money recede we are left only with ourselves and our desire to rebuild.  I began looking into similar movements in the Lower Ninth Ward and Red Hook that incorporated my own interest:  agriculture.  What I found were two separate organizations – The Backyard Gardener’s Network in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans and Added Value in Red Hook, Brooklyn – both working to better their own neighborhoods in the aftermath of the storm through community gardening and youth empowerment in agriculture respectively.  This idea of using community gardening and urban agriculture as a means through which a neighborhood can build bonds, power, and resilience in the face of future disaster became my thesis.  Through my reading and interviews, I began to delve into the idea that the same structural racism that undergirded the poor response by the United States government, particularly in the case of Katrina and the Lower Nine, actually exists in our current conversation regarding urban agriculture.  This idea of certain people’s lives being hidden from the public eye is not something unique to disaster deterrence and response, but is something that works its way into a lot of what we do and what we talk about.  It exists in the interstices of lived and documented reality.  Urban agriculture is not something that is new but is instead something that has been happening in urban centers for generations and yet that experience has largely been omitted in our current narrative.  My idea was to use this conference as a way to delve a little deeper into a topic that is of great interest to me but which is only tangentially connected to what my thesis is principally concerned with analyzing.

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I Think the NRA is Missing Something with this “National Model School Shield Program” Thing

2 Apr

On December 14, 2012 I walked into the laundry mat near my house and was faced with the same gruesome news report that people all over the country, the world even, were greeted with: the deaths of 20 first graders and 6 educators at the hands of a 20-year-old man suffering from a mental disorder who then, as is the norm it seems, killed himself.  And all this after he had put a bullet in his mother’s head. It was horrific.  It was one of those days that really just makes you wonder what is wrong people that they are capable of such atrocities.  It makes you question the idea of ever having children if having them means they will to enter a world in which this sort of event happens.  It was heartbreaking and nauseating and continues to be so today, 3 1/2 months after the event itself.  It also spurred those words that I have begun to hate so much for their lack of meaning:  never again.  It’s almost like that’s the thing politicians have to say to make the public believe they are actually going to aggressively go after an issue, and the comment they can reflect back on when they try to convince themselves and the country that their completely impotent, sorry excuses for policies that in reality do absolutely nothing were worth the months of useless, partisan conversation we had to endure.  And so here we are again.

I honestly am at a loss today.  I have reflected back on Newtown and the idea that maybe we need to consider the state of our mental health infrastructure and the way in which we have been raising our boys here.  And then I talked a little bit about gun control legislation here.  And so now today I am going to do what I should have done months ago when Wayne LaPierre made a statement regarding Newtown following a week of complete and total silence from the NRA. (Silence which, by the way, he claimed was out of respect for the victims and their families but really, I would venture to make a guess, has more to do with benefiting the NRA than anything else.) For those of you who aren’t masochistic and didn’t listen to the entire press conference the day it was given, and for those of you who can’t, or won’t read the complete transcript I linked above, I will give you a series of small quotes from which you can glean the basic gist:

“How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?… We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses — even sports stadiums — are all protected by armed security…The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun…. With all the foreign aid, with all the money in the federal budget, we can’t afford to put a police officer in every school?… I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.”

Okay.  So, we all laughed and we all thought he was crazy, but in the back of our minds we were thinking, well, I was thinking anyway, what if this idea gets some traction?  What if people actually think this is reasonable?  And, surprise!  Today the New York Times published an article entitled “Under Heavy Security, N.R.A Details School Guards Plan.”  This plan is a 225-page document full of proposals to improve school security, including the suggestion by LaPierre —  who, by the way, was not present at the press conference — to have security stationed at schools.  At this conference, for “safety,” was a bomb-sniffing yellow lab and a dozen officers in both plain clothes and uniform, one of which admonished photographers to “remain stationary” until the press conference was over.  (Sounds to me like a little paranoia if I’m being completely honest.)  Is this what they want for our schools? Is this what they want for our students?  For our children?  I think that even in the effort to theoretically make our children more safe, the presence of all of this fire power and all of this assumption of danger makes for a slightly scarier, more sinister learning environment.

But let’s just say that we say, yes!  Let’s put guns in the schools!  But then we would have to ask the smart Mr. LaPierre where all that money would come from.  It’s true, the US does spend a considerable amount of money, about $50 billion annually, on foreign aid.  And guess what countries receive the lion’s share of aid.  Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Mexico and Columbia.  Thinking about what we have put those countries through in the last decade or so with our preemptive actions and our wars on drugs, we owe them a few billion easy.  And all the money in the federal budget? I’m pretty sure we’re actually in a situation where we have to decrease our budget by something like $1.6 trillion.  In order to do that do you know what’s getting cut?  Are we significantly going to cut our defense budget?  Are we going to raise taxes considerably on the richest Americans?  Are we going to deal with the expensive and unfair add-ons to so many bills that make their ways through congress?  I’d venture a guess and say no.  What we are going to do is cut down on social spending.  We’re going to pull money out of welfare, infrastructure, Medicare and Medicaid, the US Postal Service and, you guessed it, education.  So then what are we supposed to do?  Not buy new books, cut teacher’s salaries, get rid of free busing?  Or are we going to put it on the school district itself to decide whether and how to employ these security guards at schools?  And if we do that, what happens is that the wealthiest neighborhoods that, normally, don’t experience violence on a regular basis are going to have security guards and schools in neighborhoods in places like Chicago’s south side,* districts that lose students to shootings every single year, will likely go without.  So if we do go ahead and support this plan, which I personally think is an insultingly obvious play by the NRA to increase its own power and revenue, what we will end up with is a ridiculously classist and racist band-aid response to an issue that really should have spurred an assault weapons ban, a limit on magazine size, a discussion about mental health in this country, an understanding of how our gendered approach to, well, everything is incredibly damaging to both men and women and how our capitalist system has resulted in an incredibly individualistic culture that just exacerbates all the problems I just listed.

Or we can just take the easy way out and do absolutely nothing of any significance, like usual.  Never again my ass.

*Probably some schools in this neighborhood actually do have security given the recent history of gun violence in the area but a very brief search on the topic yielded no definitive information.  The point is that if the onus of responsibility for providing armed security lies on the schools, then many schools with less available funds will opt not to provide it.  For those that do, it necessarily means that the money has to come from somewhere else.  Schools in inner city areas, ie schools in areas with lower property values and therefore lower taxes, tend to have lots more students and much less funding than public schools like the one I went to in New Jersey, and so if they do opt for security the money that they do allocate for that purpose has a bigger impact because there was no extra money to begin with.  So access to money for, well, teaching significantly decreases.

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An Open Letter to my Student Loan Provider

28 Mar

Dear Nelnet, (Or, as I affectionately call you, Numbnut),

I would like to begin this letter to you, Numbnut, by pointing out that I have in fact been making regular payments on my student loans despite the fact that I have yet to go into repayment — well, until last week and without proper warning.  I have been expecting some sort of appreciation, some sort of lowering of my monthly bill that at this point must be paid starting on January 1, 2014.  But do I get any recognition?  Any significant changes to my AutoPay amount?  No.  I get pointless and angering emails.  Which is why I am writing to you today.

Yesterday I received an email from you entitled “Questions about paying your student loans? We can help.”  It seemed promising.  I opened the email, hoping against hope for the message to reveal something like “Out of millions of indebted students in the United States, Warren Buffet has chosen you to be the recipient of a grant that will pay your loans off in full and allow you to travel the globe for the foreseeable future.”  In lieu of that news, I would have taken some advice on ways to scam the system and somehow lower my 6.8% interest rate or some tips on working my loan payments into my monthly budget without skimping on the things I love (books! wine! overpriced clothes from Made Well!).  But no.  What I got was a few phone numbers and the following statement of email intent:

“We wanted to check in to ensure you are having the best student loan experience possible.”

Well, since you are “checking in,” let me be honest with you.  No, Numbnut, I am not having the best student loan experience possible.  You know what would make it better?  The aforementioned note about Warren Buffet.  Or perhaps having someone explain to me why it is that I am paying 6.8% on the cost of borrowing money to go back to school (which you all said we should do because the job market was/is terrible and this will better prepare us for the future meanwhile the future is here and, um, where’s your half of the agreement?) while the interest rate on my savings account is at something like .7% AKA nothing.  Maybe you could tell me why I took money out with CitiGroup, had it bought up by the government, and then somehow had it sold to you, Numbnut, without my approval or consent.  Maybe rather than taking on systemic issues, you can explain to me why, although the people I talk to at your call center are unbelievably friendly, they have absolutely no idea what they are doing.  When I called last week to inquire as to why my interest payment, which had been hovering around $35-$45 every two weeks or so suddenly shot up to $150 after a mere 10 days I was put on hold for at least 5 minutes — a cost I was paying because you are not toll free — at which point the very friendly, though ill-informed, call center guy hemmed and hawed through an explanation that basically amounted to “I have no idea.”    Maybe you could use the exorbitant interest rates being paid by me and my co-students, the interest rates you are presumably making money on, and actually teach your call center people how to do their jobs.  It doesn’t help that they are available 24/7 if they are completely ignorant, like the rest of us, about what you do and how it works.

I could keep going, Numbnut, but I think you get the point.  I think you and your cohorts are hustlers taking advantage of millions of people who wanted to propel themselves forward by getting their BA, BFA, MA, MFA, PhD, JD, MD, DVM and whatever other combinations of letters people might want to acquire.  I think this whole system is going to blow up in your face and mine when countless students default on their ballooning student loan debts.  I think when that happens people are going to bemoan the fact that we are awash in bankrupted lawyers and doctors and librarians when what we really need are people with “real skills.”  Honestly, I think this whole thing is a racket that will only serve to increase income inequality and lower the quality of life, not only for people who can’t find jobs but for those that can — with student loan debt amounting into the hundreds of thousands for some people, job choices becomes less contingent on what you believe and more contingent on your ability to pay off your monthly loan bills.

So, no, I am not content.  I will grumble every single time I make a payment, as I have been doing for the past year, because I am fully aware that I am being hoodwinked and that there is nothing I can do about it.  So don’t insult my intelligence.  This system is rigged in your favor and you will benefit for as long as it continues to function.  Do your thing.  But don’t act like you give a shit about my “experience.”  All you care about is the money.  That’s called capitalism.  You can expect your next payment at the beginning of the month.

Sincerely,

Rebekah

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Yes, Skeevy Cycler, That was Me who Called you an Asshole in the Park Today

25 Mar

So there I was blissfully* running during the late March weather event when, after topping the Prospect Park Hill (which I maintain is much harder than Cat Hill that all the Central Park runners are always griping about), I heard two men behind me, rapidly approaching.  I figured they must be on bikes.  I figured correctly.  Given that it was windy, and they were on the move, some of what they were saying was a little garbled but what I heard was something along the lines of

…blah, blah, blah…I would love that ass for Christmas…blah, blah, blah…so hot.

Obviously, I was annoyed.  Also, my ass happened to be the only ass in their line of vision and it was, at that moment, safely nestled inside a pair of CW-X compression pants.**   Anyway, it was only for a split second that I thought they might have been addressing their comments my way.  More than likely, they were just talking bullshit (albeit offensive bullshit) and my presence was completely coincidental.  Either way, I wasn’t planning on saying  anything at all and instead had resigned myself to just rolling my eyes aggressively and angrily mumbling to myself when I saw who one of the cyclers was.  It was the Skeezy Cycler.  I have intended to write about this guy forever because he has been pissing me off for years, literally.  I bet other women who make a habit of running in Prospect Park know who I am talking about.  He rides around with big groups of other cyclers, wears a red and black tri-suit, has longish brown-grey hair and looks to me like he might be Argentinian, of the Italian variety.  Skeezy Cycler checks out nearly every female runner he sees looping the park, multiple times if you are out there long enough and he happens to lap you.  He has been doing this to me for-fucking-ever and I have been holding a grudge.  Well, when I noticed that one of the dudes was none other than Skeezy Cycler (which I knew because he obviously checked me out for the millionth time), I literally could not help myself.  My mouth went off before I knew what was happening and I said, somewhat loudly,

You guys are assholes.

They then slowed down their bikes, looked over at me and exchanged a perplexed

What did she just say? Did you hear that?

and then, thankfully, rode on.  I was not really up for an altercation right then seeing as how it was snowing and I was cold, but I would have finished what I started had it been necessary.  Anyway, once it became clear they weren’t coming back I came to the realization that the man who had secretly been my nemesis for like half a decade, was now actually my real life nemesis, like, out in the open.  And he would know it was me in the future because I, like him, am hard to miss.  I am not distinguished by my leering but, instead, by the hair that goes down to my ass. Not common.  So I thought to myself why not go stealth and get a hair cut?  But then I was like, why let the Skeezy Cycler win?  Don’t cut your hair to hide from the likes of him.  But then I thought, yeah but what if he calls me a bitch next time he sees me.  Or, worse yet, what if he spits on my when he passes me by!  This might seem an outlandish fear except that it has happened to me before.  Not by him but still. Once you’ve been spit on (twice, in my case, and by the same guy) you are never really the same.  Anyway, ultimately I decided, no, maybe he would be an adult about it and ride up alongside me and say, kindly,

Was that you who called me an asshole the other day?

And then I would say the following:

Yes, it was me who called you an asshole the other day and here’s why.  I have been seeing you for years around the park and I have noticed that you skeezily check out most female runners as you ride by and you know what?  That is not flattering.  That is rude.  We are not out here to impress you.  We are out here clearing our minds, getting in shape, training for a race.  We are working hard on our bodies to feel good and to look good, mostly for ourselves but also for our partners.  Maybe you think it is harmless what you are doing, over and over again, but let me tell you it isn’t.  Some women might not notice, but for others of us, it pisses is off and insults us and makes us feel slightly less human.  We deal with it out on the streets all day, every day, so let us have the park as a zone of safety.  So yes, that was me that called you an asshole and I meant it, I just feel a little bad I caught your buddy in the crossfire.  So, next time you see me, you can wave, or say “hey Rebekah” or “nice pace” or whatever encouraging comment you come up with and I will wave back and return the favor, but for crying out loud stop making me refer to you in my non-running life as the Skeezy Cycler.  Stop making me dread seeing you.  In short, stop being such a dick.  For crying out loud, stop staring.  Staring is rude.

*Actually, it was hailing so not-so-blissfully

**That picture is provided so you can understand why I might have felt slightly uncomfortable about their comments. Furthermore, at this time I would like to point out that I bought my pair of these pants on sale and they were worth every penny.  I would even pay full price for them!  To be honest, I used look sideways at people who wore them but they are oh so awesome for cold weather running.

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At which point I am (not) surprised that we will continue to not ban assault weapons

21 Mar

Sometimes I am left wondering about the overall sanity of this country.

I just read an article in The New York Times about the ongoing attempts of California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is pretty much my hero, to reinstate the ban on assault weapons that W. let expire in 2004.  Her journey, according to the article, ended on Monday when she stormed from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office after he informed her that the ban would not be included in a gun-regulation measure that is to hit the Senate floor in April.  The conversation surrounding this ban catapulted into mainstream conversation after the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut this past December that left 20 young kids dead along with 6 staff members as well as the killer, Adam Lanza.  You can watch a rather moving report about recent information that was released concerning the mass shooting here, presented by Rachel Maddow.  Beware.  This is not happy-making.

Anyway, the point of all this is that this bill on assault weapons had basically no chance of passing.  None whatsoever.  Despite support by both President Obama and Vice President Biden.  Honestly, I just don’t understand what the big deal is.  Banning assault rifles does not mean people can’t hunt.  It does not mean people can’t protect themselves and their families.  It does not mean people can’t collect some of the other hundreds (thousands?) or kinds of available weaponry.  It simply means that people won’t be able to legally purchase a gun that would then allow them to walk into an elementary school (or a movie theater, or a mall, or a high school) and kill dozens of people in mere minutes.  I mean, to me, and maybe I am just being crazy here, that doesn’t seem like such a big thing to give up.  Like, at all.  So here are a couple of arguments (okay, maybe just the same argument) that I read a lot and hear a lot and that I think are stupid.  So I am going to talk about them.

Argument:  It’s our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Answer:  Okay, so, the first thing is, and I know we have all heard this a kajillion times and so probably I am wasting my breath, but when that was initially written into the Constitution I am pretty sure that “arms” basically ended at things like muskets, and cannons, and bayonets, and the flintlock pistol (which I had never heard of but then I Googled “weapons used during the American Revolution” and there it was).  People used to fight in formation, for crying out loud.  So, back then when it was written, it made sense, given the recent history, to write a provision into the Constitution to address the legitimate concern of the people that they might have to protect themselves from their own government and also that they actually stood a chance of winning.  But now, here in 2013, even if there was a legitimate concern that we would have to protect ourselves from our own government, we would most certainly lose.  Because you know what? Even with all the assault rifles we still would not be as well trained, or as well armed, as the United States military.  In 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States spent $711 billion, or 4.7% of GDP, on defense.  A lot of that money was spent on, you got it, weaponry.  So, honestly, if People with Unnecessary Guns were to decide that they were going to stand up to the United States government in an attempt to topple it or whatever the fuck, those People with Unnecessary Guns would not stand a snowball’s chance in hell.  They would be blown to smithereens, and a Bushmaster .223 would do nothing to save them.

Argument:  It’s our Second Amendment right to have guns!

Answer:  I know, I already said that.  I know that’s not the only argument (it can’t be, right?!) but it seems to be the only one I ever hear).  But, I have another response!  How about people’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  I am pretty sure that more often than not you get none of those things after you have been shot in the head multiple times.  I just don’t understand how this argument that people have a right to guns seems to always trump the argument that people have the right to actually live.  Because, last time I checked, you do need to actually be alive to even be able to appreciate your right to have guns, am I right?  It just seems like when someone who is unbalanced, or vengeful, or whatever gets some crazy scary, fast-shooting, so many bullets gun and goes into some venue full of people and shoots them all, we hear from all these people who are all

“No!  But if someone had a gun then none of this ever would have happened!”

which is patently false because, most of the time, when people have guns in circumstances like these, they don’t use them because they are afraid of being identified as the killer, or shooting someone by accident, or maybe they are too busy protecting themselves or others using their bodies or whatever else to really think about it.  That’s why usually these things end in the killer killing himself, not being killed by a potential victim. Anyway, we also hear about how scary it is, and sad, and unnecessary.  What we don’t hear enough of is that, because people can get guns, powerful guns, with such ease and in such great quantity, other people, sometimes even children, are stripped of their right to life.  To me, life seems like the trump card.  The right to life should just win.

You want your Bushmaster?  Well, guess what?  I want my breath, and the use of my legs, and a full functioning brain.  Settle for a fucking handgun.

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