Parenting and Governing, explained

My family and I live in a border town, which sounds very western-movie like, but is more just “taxes are higher on some things on this side of the river, and on other things on that side.” A river flows between Moorhead, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota, and some springs we struggle a little with getting the two states to cooperate to fight flooding in an equitable way, but otherwise, it’s just like living in any other city with other cities right beside it.

But now, with a world-wide pandemic, contrasts are becoming clearer.  Minnesota closed schools on March 15 and issued a stay-at-home order on March 27. North Dakota, meanwhile, held their High School State Basketball tournament as scheduled,  March 12-14. And while North Dakota did close schools on March 19 and, later, closed “non-essential businesses,” I watched the governor of North Dakota explain that with the wide open spaces of the ND prairie, there was no need to issue a stay-at-home order. He joked “We rarely come within 6 feet of each other, even at the grocery store, anyway!” He’s certain, he said, that North Dakotans would be smart and didn’t need the government to tell them to stay home. In fact, the governor’s team started an ad campaign that is literally just the words “North Dakota Smart.”

To illustrate how smart his state his, Governor Burgum waited until April 6 to issue an executive order to suspend visitation to long-term care facilities. That’s at least four days AFTER Fargo’s first confirmed case of Covid 19 in a long-term care facility tested positive. Governor Walz issued a similar executive order on March 18.

Just, you know. Think about that. It took Burgum almost three more weeks. Once this is over, North Dakotans, let me just gently suggest you get your elderly folks over to our side of the river, because while we don’t have a catchy ad slogan like “North Dakota Smart,” we know when it’s time to protect our elders, and when it’s time to joke about how few people live in our state anyway.

I was hopeful, then, when our local news sources told us that the mayors of Fargo and West Fargo were considering issuing an order to stay at home on a city wide basis. Because North Dakota may have lots of room to roam, but Fargo is a little more crowded. And without the governor’s leadership (in one press conference, he went on for several minutes about how many ND lakes are well-stocked with fish, so we really should make sure and go fishing. Just, you know, be smart about it), it really feels like people aren’t taking this seriously.

I watched Tuesday’s news conference with excitement, then, because if North Dakota is too smart to stay home, surely Fargo would bring the hammer down. And while technically, both Fargo and West Fargo did issue a stay-at-home order, they also quickly pointed out it didn’t really mean anything was different. West Fargo police admitted that they have no intent to stop people from doing whatever they want, essentially, and while Fargo police didn’t go that far (we’ll break up any big gathering at the park, or such things, they promised), mostly the mayor of Fargo said “Look, if you guys don’t stop socializing, if you don’t stop doing what no one in your government has the ovaries to tell you to stop doing, we might not get to have the fair this summer. Or Rib Fest. You don’t want that do you? I didn’t think so.”

Essentially, the leadership of North Dakota is an ornery dad driving a car, and he’s threatening to turn around if we don’t knock it off. But he won’t tell us specifically what we’re supposed to knock off, because, he says, we’re smart enough to know. And since it’s a pretty big car with lots of space, it’ll probably be fine anyway.

My dad was 43 when I was born, and he’d been an uncle for over 20 years by then. He loved being an uncle, and I think it gave him a sense of what it might be like to have his own kids. One of his favorite stories was from when my cousin, Curt, came from California to visit his Minnesota family. Curt was about 8 at the time, and really loved helping my dad and on the farm. One day, he was climbing up a big tractor that Dad had parked in the lumberyard, which we used like a giant garage. “Get down from there,” Dewey said, as Curt climbed higher up, over the tires and onto the outside of the cab, scaling the machinery like it was a jungle gym. “You’ll hurt yourself,” Dewey warned. But Curt wouldn’t listen (as was his way), and soon after fell to the hard, dirt-packed floor from about 10 feet up. He wasn’t hurt badly, but had the wind knocked out of him, and came up, finally, crying. “I told you to get down from there,” Uncle Dewey said, calmly. Through tears, Curt shouted “Yeah, but you didn’t MAKE me!”

I’ve been thinking of this story the last several weeks, now. I’m not exactly sure why Dad loved to tell it so much: to show that kids are kinda dumb, and it’s important to listen to our parents? To show that Curt was a bit of a character? To keep me from scaling tractors? I know my dad valued personal responsibility, and he found it hilarious that Curt could be mad at him, despite having been given ample warning.

The thing is, with a pandemic, governing is not like parenting. We can’t just let folks face natural consequences and accept that they might get hurt, but that’s their choice. Well, we can, but we really ought not to. This pandemic is like if Curt were climbing a tractor over a bunch of toddlers, or adorable puppies. Dewey would not have waited for Curt to get down, in that instance. When the innocent, like the elderly or immuno-compromised or puppies, were endangered, Dewey would’ve yanked Curt down by the back of his shirt, shown him the lives he could’ve taken, and made him sweep the dirt floor of the lumberyard for at least two hours to think about what he’d done.

I don’t know how to get Governor Burgum off the tractor he’s climbing, and I’m pretty sure we’re not gonna get to have the fair this year. I miss my dad, and I miss Curt, and I really, really, really hope that we’ll all get through this without much more than the wind knocked out of us. Maybe if we all stayed home and swept our floors awhile, we could buy ourselves more time.

 

My pandemic diary, part I

Oh, mercy, dear readers. Isn’t there an Irish curse that goes something like “May you live in interesting times”? Today, my shiny new husband and I decided to stay off Facebook and news sites and just try to relax a little. I found that when I had a few moments in my own head, I mostly wanted to talk to you guys. Then I remembered that my stupid blog will probably sprinkle this post with toe fungus ads. And then I thought “Well, if you write that it DEFINITELY will.” So here we are. Sorry about the toe fungus.

Day 1: (around March 2): I admit, I was late to this party. My spring break was just around the corner, and as often happens at that point in the semester, I was focused on getting through the next few days so I could have some glorious time at home. My attendance policy is fairly strict (you miss class, you lose points. the end), but I did speak to each of my classes the week before break and explain, clearly, that if students were sick, I did not want them to come to class (this has always been my policy, but I was reiterating it for those in the back). “Can we make up a quiz, then? What if a paper’s due?” I assured them that I would allow them to make up quizzes and would accept essays electronically. And pointed out that if they lied to me about it, karma would get them and rightly so. Students become a bit smug at what they perceive as some sort of victory. I just hope none of us get sick.

Day 2: Rich and I are pretty well stocked with groceries most of the time, because I was raised by Dewey Johnson who, as far as I recall, never had less than 6 months of food in his house at any given time. But we needed dog  food, and could stand to have a few more rolls of TP. After work I go to Costco and am surprised at how busy it is, but there are no limits and plenty of stock. I buy a month’s worth of TP, just to be on the safe side.

Day 3: I realize I’ve underestimated the number of Triscuits I’ll need if we are gonna to stay home for any period of time. I order refills on V and my meds, and get three more boxes of Triscuits at Target. Finishing up the week before break, I gather papers and ask students to avoid being filmed for Girls Gone Wild, if they can help it.

Day 6: Finally on spring break! Whoo! Minnesota sees its first case of the virus. Boo. I feel actual relief that my parents are both dead, because this looks like it could get nasty. I feel guilty for feeling relief.

This week, I learn a lot about small business ownership, even though Rich and I have already been together for three years. The supply chain is important, and customers are really, really important. If those customers can’t come out to buy comic books or play in events, the shop changes. A lot. Rich’s staff are so important to us, to the store. If North Dakota allows the shop to stay open, even while Minnesota has closed all non-essential businesses, how do we decide what to do? If the shop closes, there’s no money for payroll. If the shop doesn’t close, and staff gets exposed to this nastiness, how do we live with ourselves? If Rich brings it home to me and my asthma and my bad attitude, who’s gonna eat all these Triscuits?

I have white hot fury at our country’s leadership. I know a few of my students don’t have wifi at home, and I don’t know how they’ll manage the transition to online classes for the rest of the semester. I don’t know how I’ll manage the transition to online classes. I read about Italy’s hospitals and think of all the people I love who work in medicine, from nursing homes and hospitals to clinics and labs. My thoughts don’t have time to form paragraphs because I can’t stop refreshing Facebook and getting angry or weeping, in turn.

Right now I mostly have tenderness for everyone: may we come out of this on the other side with a better idea of how to care for each other. Let us learn how much better we need to do so that closing schools to stop a virus from spreading doesn’t suddenly reveal that so many of our children live with hunger that we have to invent new systems to get food to them. Let’s address domestic violence in a way that leads to real, transformative change. Let’s pay our grocery store staff fairly and be kinder to one another and learn how to not hoard stupid shit. Let’s get that incompetent cruel jackass out of the White House.

All right. Sending love to all of you, gentle readers. My classes are going online, so I have work to do, and I still haven’t graded all those papers from Day 3. We are well here, for now, running low on Triscuits, washing our hands, being good to each other. Thinking of you and yours.

May your Triscuits hold out and your toe fungus be manageable.

Crafty! Wedding, part 2

For the first post in this series, check out this post. Today, I bring you the much-anticipated craft post about our wedding.  Here we go!

First, the Best Women Bouquets: I love flowers as much as the next bride, but our theme was space/galaxy, and flowers can’t grow in space. So I polished my macrame skills and made moons for each lady to carry. They looked a little too sparse, so I added hand-made satin flowers. And to make each one personal, I added buttons or pins connected to each person.

Here, some of them hang in the dressing room:

Above, Tenessa’s moon, with a pin shaped like a hat, because I frequently made hats for her, and a turtle, because we both like turtles.

A close up of one of Tami’s flowers, with a Winnie the Pooh pendant that says “We’ll be friends until forever, just you wait and see.” We used to write letters and send postcards to each other all the time, and tended toward these sweet Pooh themes, often.

We rented black table cloths and set them with space-themed fabrics, and I made this big moon for the Bride and Groom’s table. The space itself was so lovely, we really didn’t require much in terms of decorations. Tenessa and I made vellum votive holders with moon stickers, and you can see one above and a close up below. Simple and pretty.

 

Since the Best Women were taken care of, we turned our thoughts to the men. Rich had a lovely idea of each groomsman having a representation of something Rich loved. I had my sister crochet stars in place of boutonnieres, and we found pins for all of Rich’s major interests (besides me, of course..). Above is a pin with Simon and Garfunkel, to represent his love of Paul Simon music. We also had a tardis, a Star Trek badge, a Return of the Jedi pin, the Vikings, Superman, a pin from the Big Lebowski with a rug on it that said “it really tied the room together,” Brown Coats shield from Firefly, the Flash, and what I think is called the Black Lotus, from the game Magic the Gathering, below:

Whew, that’s a lot of pop culture! For my bouquet, I decided at the near last-minute that I really wanted handmade flowers, so I pulled out silks and satins from my fabric stash and got to work. Mostly I cut circles and melted the edges over a candle flame, then sewed them together. After I made the flowers, I pinned them to a styrofoam ball I’d covered in satin. The craft store wanted something crazy like $6 for a bouquet handle, so instead I bought a pack of those glow bracelets for a dollar, emptied it out, and used the tube they came in. I wrapped it in satin, too, and for my something old hid my mother’s wedding garter inside.

Here’s a side photo of the bouquet on a gorgeous table from the dressing barn.

I attached sparkly beads and pendants to the center of many flowers, and strung some teal ribbon with other bits. Here’s a close up of the bouquet with a beaded angel I found in a jewelry grab bag from a local thrift store. I had stars and planets, butterflies and anchors. Each addition had special meaning to me, and I was really happy with how this turned out.

The programs! Oh, the programs. About a week beforehand, I realized I needed to figure out something for programs. I wanted to make fans, since we were an outdoor wedding in July. But then I thought it might be fun to make a new issue of my zine, Languishing from whence this blog is named. I think the last one came out in 2008 or so, but zine making is like riding a bicycle. But with less need for a helmet. With Rich’s help, I put this together in a few days, reprinting articles that our dear Dan and Tenessa had written 20 years earlier, after their wedding, which appeared in a previous issue of Languishing. We also wrote brief notes about our bridal party, and included a memorial to my parents and Rich’s mom, all of whom would’ve adored the heck out of this wedding and our love for each other.

Copies are pictured below. If you couldn’t make it to the wedding but wold like one, I’m pretty sure we’ve got a few leftover. Let me know.For a cake topper, we had a little trouble agreeing. I wanted “Live Long and Prosper,” but that’s a little non-romantic, in a way. He wanted Han Solo and Leia Organa, but in the end we decided a fair representation of us would do just fine. I painted these wooden peg dolls two days before the wedding: his bow tie is my favorite.

A close up so you can see my amateur level brushstrokes, above, and on our little cake, below.

So there you have it: all the things handmade that helped make our wedding special. There’s not much I would change if I had it to do over, except start earlier, of course.

All photos here from Bee and Bee Photography, our wonderful photo team. Tune in for the final wedding post, which will detail our ceremony and reception shenanigans!

Gettin’ Hitched!

On 20 July 2019, Rich and I got married! I’m sorry I haven’t shared these sooner, but life and my inherent laziness got in the way. Right now, it looks like you’ll get about three posts about the Big Day: before the ceremony, the wedding & reception, and craftiness that made things shiny. Really, though, I could write 200 posts about it: it was magical and stressful and perfect and ridiculous and ours.

My dress, shoes, and bouquet

I bought my shoes on a trip to North Carolina in February: they seemed to fit with our galactic theme. And I made the bouquet, but I can’t talk about that until the Crafty Wedding post.

The dress…well, that’ s a long story, but it’s the ninth one I bought. Nine’s my lucky number. So there you go.

Groomsman Brad K. helps Rich with his bowtie

Rich got a new suit for the occasion, and knew he wanted to wear a bowtie. We found one with planets and stuff. Nerd level 10.

My dear Emily fills my hair with stars while Diana checks her phone in the background

Emily is my usual hairstylist, from Madame Butterfly in Fargo, and she is the best, next to Tami, who was a Best Woman and had enough other hair to do this day. I’m so thankful Emily could be with us! She did Jess and Emmy’s hair, too.

Wiping my lipstick off Rich’s adorable face

This was the first time Rich saw me all day. And I’d kept the dress hidden from him, so he had no idea what to expect.

 Emmy loved the pond and the koi

When I asked Emmy to be a best woman, she said “Sure, but do you have a flower girl?” I told her we did not plan to have a flower girl, so she helpfully offered to cover flower girl duty, too. The girl knows what she wants.

Rich was surprised I was wearing an actual wedding dress, I think.

My handsome groom and his youngest groomsman.

Once Emmy was on Team Best Women, we couldn’t leave Will off the Best Men. Since the first time Rich met Will, they have shared a love of Marvel nerdiness. I love what a good uncle he is to my niece and nephew.

Our venue was gorgeous. Rich and I standing on the bridge.

We looked at several places for our wedding venue, and even talked seriously about having it at the Hendrum Park. In the end, we opted for closer to Moorhead (about ten minutes from our house). We wanted something outdoors, though, with a back-up-in-case-of-rain option. Romantic Moon fit the bill: not only did it share in our galaxy theme, but the site was beautiful, and the owners were some of the kindest, most helpful people.

Rich, me, and the groomsmen played a little f ootball.

When Rich and I first started dating, we posted silly selfies on Facebook: some of our friends thought we shared too much too soon, but we were giddy and newly in love and liked getting those Facebook likes with our cute faces. On our second date, March 16, 2017, we posted  a blurry photo, and some guy named Doug, a friend of Rich’s, posted “Dibs on wedding photography!”

Now, I was totally smitten with Rich, but even I thought Doug was jumping the gun a little bit. In the end, though, he was right. We hired Karissa and her dad Doug, and Bee & Bee Photography made the process of wedding pictures a hilarious part of the day.

And then they saved the ‘verse

Each of my Best Women deserves her own post.

I wanted my bridesmaids to 1. be comfortable and 2. not spend a fortune. I chose these dresses from e Shakti, because e Shakti has dresses in pretty much all the sizes in the world, except Emmy.  Plus the dresses have pockets! Then they got to buy whatever silver shoes they wanted. I think they all look so damn pretty.

Rich only has two cousins! Here they are with their families and their parents.

This photo has Colorado, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska residents. Whoo!

We are a handsome group.

I’m so glad this family has welcomed me. Rich’s dad, John, Rich’s stepmother, Liz, and Rich’s brothers Nick and Alex all helped make our day seem extra magical. (I’m sorry I said “Rich” so many times in that sentence, but otherwise it looked like Liz was John’s stepmother, and that’s not right).

Amphibians were not harmed in the photographing of this wedding.

Rich and me and my sister and her family. We clean up real nice.

These four yahoos have loved Rich since the day they met him, and vice versa. I think it was around date #6 that my sister told me that if Rich and I broke up, they were going with him.

I need to photoshop Sara in here: she was nursing baby Grace

I always thought these ring photos were sort of cheesy, until they were our rings.

Some of the Johnson side (my mom’s Johnson side, that is)

My cousin Char, my cousin-in-law Don, my Auntie Barb, cousin Patrick, Auntie Linda, Uncle Rick, and Aunt Marcia. Linda and Barbie are the only two of my mom’s six siblings still standing, and I’m so, so glad they could come. And I adore the look on Linda’s face here.

Below, my bracelet says “Be brave or go away,” a nod to Karen Kilgariff’s song “AOk,” about how she approaches dating. It became my motto just before I met Rich.

You guys! We totally love each other! And now we’re married! Stay tuned for more details, hilarity, and lovely photos of what, near as I can reckon, was a perfect damn day.

Back to school, Joan of Arc style

Autumn really is my favorite season. The cooling temps mean I can wear my favorite sweatshirts, and boots are a reasonable footwear again. We don’t even need to bury ourselves in four or more layers yet. For fashion options alone, autumn is the obvious choice for best season.

Plus I get to go back to work. Even when I teach summer school, I have most of the month of August off before easing back into the school year schedule. This year, I’m returning from a year-long sabbatical, so I haven’t been in a classroom since May of 2018.

Re-entry is always a little rocky, but 15 months out of the classroom means my vocal chords themselves were out of teaching shape. The first week, when I’m introducing myself and my course, setting parameters and trying to get all of my 125 students excited about learning, I spoke steadily (and hilariously, I might add) for three to five hours a day. Teaching, at least at the beginning of the semester, is a performance art, and it plum wore me out this year.

Now we’re finishing up week three, though, and things are falling into place. The first papers in English 1101 have just come in, which means the omnipresent grading times are upon me. From now until December, I will never not have grading I should be doing. Instead of panic and suffocation, though, I feel content. Today, at least, there is so much hope in me.

This work allows me to stand in front of (and eventually beside) a wide variety of people. Many of them are “true” freshmen, that is, right out of high school, looking to find their way. Many are first generation college students: their families (and often their friends) have no concept of what a college class entails, and these students need different supports than students whose parents and grandparents have experienced higher education. Many of my students did not speak English as their first language, and a few of them only speak English here at school. Most of my students have at least a part time job, and many work full time and go to school full time, and still manage to bathe fairly regularly, somehow.

I know all of these things are true before every semester starts, but I’m always surprised by my group of students. Every year I’m moved by their variety of experiences, expectations, and excitement. Sometimes I write student fiction in my head: “oh, Olivia and Abdul have been sitting closer together this week. How cute. They should totally date, and Abdul can help Olivia with sentence fragments, and Olivia could tell him his haircut is kinda sad…”

In Global Perspectives of Women, the most difficult class I teach in terms of subject matter, we spend the first two weeks learning about domestic violence and murder of women around the world, all sorts of brutal practices women might experience. We’ve only met five times, but already two students have disclosed to me that they’ve been raped, one has hinted at it, two have spoken of sexual harassment, and one asked for reassurance that our local Rape and Abuse Crisis Center was confidential. Another asked me twice if I was sure RACC was free, and if it could help children who had witnessed “some serious shit.”

All of the last paragraph is clear reason for panic, but I know that if I shut down,  that won’t help the 7 students who’ve already come forward, and it won’t help the other 23 in class, many of whom are still holding their own secrets. It won’t help the 75 students in my writing course or the 20 in my film class. I direct students to resources, and listen to their stories, and hold them in my heart. I keep showing up and working with Olivia on sentence fragments, sharing what I know and thinking of ways to help.

Besides, my sweatshirts are adorable, and my boots (my first new Dr. Martens in 22 years) are keeping me grounded.  I am not afraid. I was born to do this.

Mawwige

We got married! Remember when we got engaged? Well, we planned and planned and finally got hitched. I’m gonna write a big old post about it when we get our pictures back, and you can all see the shiny, magic, happy time we had. In the meantime, a couple of things:

First, you gotta buy a marriage license! So we did.

Actually, that wasn’t first at all. First we had to find each other, find a location, find a caterer, find me a dress and him a suit, choose our wedding team/attendants, find an officiant, choose music, choose musicians, choose wedding cakes…THEN get the license. There was a lot of finding and choosing. Oh, and I made my bouquet and painted our wedding topper. And we made a new paper issue of Languishing for the programs. And chose readings and wrote our own vows. Whew. No wonder I haven’t blogged in awhile!

Anyway, consider this a little appetizer of a tediously long blog post about one day in our lives. It was full of good people, laughter, music, and love, and was the perfect way to officially kick off our life together.

The hardest part of being married, so far, is before the wedding, whenever one of us did something the other liked, we’d say “Aw, we should totally get married.” But now that we did that, we tend to be at a loss. Mostly we say “Well, I guess we better stay married.” It’s a pretty great place to be, we think.

For Mrs. Huseby, on the day of her funeral.

Jill Huseby moved to Hendrum before I was born, and was a friend of my mom’s. She was the first person to tell me I was a poet (when I was in second grade) for which I thanked her repeatedly these last twenty years or so. Her English accent marked her as exotic in our little town, and she was a good woman. She died last week.

I wrote this poem at the behest of my sister for Memorial Day several years ago. You’ve probably heard it or read it before. I may never be able to explain what it was like growing up in a town of just over 300 people, but I’m gonna keep trying, partially because Jill Huseby told me I was a poet in 1981.

Memorial Day Poem for Hendrum, Minnesota

 

We, or our parents or our grandparents, came here

from Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Germany, England...
We learned to speak each other’s language.

 

We broke sod.

We broke our backs.

We ate lefse.

We drank coffee. 

 

We built the roads to Hendrum.

We built the city park east of town.

We built the churches, our homes.

We built our lives. 

 

We planted crops.

We planted gardens.

We prayed for rain.

 

We welcomed the railroad.

We swam in the Red River, and the Wild Rice.

We hunted deer.

 

We fell in love, got lost, found Jesus, found each other.

We moved away; we came home.

 

We volunteered, or we were drafted.
We defended our country.
We served with honor.

We were afraid.
We were joyful.

 

We got married.

We shared meals.

We waited for spring.

 

We buried our mothers and fathers beside your mothers and fathers.

 

We fought floods.

We fought fires.

 

We built one room school houses.

We were Huskies. We were Panthers.

 

We ate at the Hendrum cafe, and Quincey’s, and Nepstad’s.

We drank 3:2 beer at Bennie’s or Chet’s.

We shopped at Johnson’s Fairway, or Hanson’s Grocery.

We played bingo at the Legion Hall.

We bellied up to the Last Chance Saloon.

 

We patched the sidewalks.

We painted curbs.

 

We built a ramp.

We planted trees. 

We cut down trees.
We held raffles and bake sales.

We weeded our gardens.

We had babies.  We lost babies.

 

We smelled the spring lilacs.

We watched the Northern Lights.

We planned the Fall Festival.

We sang hymns by candlelight on Christmas Eve.

 

We sinned.

We repented.

We forgave.

 

We poured ourselves into this landscape.

We will continue what’s been started here.

We will not forget.

 

 

Dr. What, now?

(I should note that this is NOT a paid post. Neither Doctor Who nor Paradox Comics-n-Cards are compensating me in any way, and if you click on any links here I don’t get any money for anything. I just want to share cool things that aren’t sad or political right now.)

I’ve long fancied myself a nerd, but meeting Richard illuminated some areas where I could use some further education. Nerducation, if you will. Comic books, in particular, are a less-traveled medium for me. I’ve read a handful of comics since the mid-90s, and even taught Persepolis and Maus in some of my writing classes, but aside from a deep dive into R. Crumb after undergraduate school and my childhood love of Garfield, I really don’t have a wide base of knowledge on the subject.

And I’ve loved Star Wars and Star Trek forever, but never really got into much other sci-fi stuff. In the last year and a half, I’ve learned the joys of Lost in Space and Firefly, among others. The last major franchise for me to explore, by my reckoning, is Doctor Who.

Here was my understanding of Doctor Who until about two months ago: he was a doctor of some sort, from the UK, who was played by a handful of skinny actors who sometimes wore bow ties. He traveled in a blue vintage phone booth that for some reason everyone said was “larger on the inside,” and…and that’s it. I felt like I understood the basics and had no real need to learn more.

But then, as you do in a new relationship, we started talking about things we wanted to do together before we got married. For example, I needed Rich to see Harold and Maude, and he wanted me to see Doctor Who. Which sounds like a pretty fair trade and all until you realize there have been 37 seasons of Doctor Who. Thirty Seven. 843 episodes so far. Plus at least four made for tv specials…this was turning in to a very long engagement.

BUT! There was a re-boot of the series, which is sort of what they seem to call it when they get a new actor to play the doctor. And this time, for the first time, the doctor would be a woman. This caused quite a stir in Nerdom, as you might imagine, and there was much consternation and excitement. A new form for the doctor is often a good time to step into the series, too, it turns out, so we started watching Jodi Whittaker as the doctor this fall. Rich has 37 seasons of reference to this character, and I have none, but I love this show already. It’s clever and righteous and the history behind the character (which I’m just barely cognizant of) enhances everything, as far as I can tell. I know there are nods to previous iterations of the doctor that I don’t get yet, but I’m really enjoying a show with so much history that still allows new fans to jump in and be entertained and moved by new storylines. It makes those 37 seasons seem a lot less daunting and a lot more like a treasure trove of stories I get to enjoy.

I know we are literally drowning in choices when it comes to entertainment, but I want to recommend you watch the new season of Doctor Who. And like all good nerdy things, there is a comic book to go along with it. Want to get a glimpse of past doctors? Check out Doctor Who: the many lives of Doctor Who, a 64-page comic that is gorgeously drawn by several different artists and highlights important events in the canon of Doctor Whodom.Doesn’t it look magical? I knew almost nothing of the franchise, but this book gave me all kinds of feelings about time travel and balance in the universe and general goodness.

Technically this is issue 0 of a new comic series, Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor. Now, as I mentioned, I am by no means a comic book expert, but often tv shows that crossover into comics tend to be mediocre, at best. I generally feel like they are just trying to get more money from me as a fan, rather than provide me with genuinely interesting stories and/or good artwork. But based on issue 1 of this series, I’m pretty excited. The first issue has thirteen variant covers (you don’t have to buy them all! But you can pick one or three you most like!), and I love that kind of thing. And it tells a new story about the characters from this season, with solid, interesting writing that somehow maintains the characters’ voices really effectively. I didn’t feel strung along or taken advantage of by this book, as I have in some other crossover comics, and genuinely enjoyed a new story in a new format about tv characters I’m coming to care about very much.

All in all, my continuing Nerducation is going well, and I’m so excited to see where else we go. Check out the tv show, if you please (we watch it on Hulu, I think), and go to Paradox Comics-n-Cards to pick up a copy of issue 0 or one (or all!) of the thirteen variants of issue 1. I really think you won’t be disappointed.

Me too.

Soon, I hope, I will go back to posting photos of sunflowers and update y’all on the process of homeschooling. This blog will return to lighter topics, because I can’t bear it to be otherwise, most days. But today is not that day.

Many years ago, I was sexually assaulted. Some of you know this. Most of you don’t. In fact, I think a few of my bridesmaids-to-be will first learn of it through this blog post. I’m not going to share details, or name names. It is my story, and I don’t want to reveal any more than what I said in this paragraph’s first sentence. But it happened, and it changed my life in profound and lasting ways.

I did not report it to the police. I never told my parents. I moved around and through the trauma in ways both typical (drinking, inappropriate life choices) and unexciting (therapy. Oh so much therapy). It is with me still, now, at 45, where I have nightmares every few years. It made me distrust myself and my body and my entire world, and altered my relationships with many men. It is one of the reasons I struggle with chronic, life-long depression.

It also made me a trusted confidant to many dozens of women (and a few men) who have shared with me, in or beyond the classroom, stories of their own sexual assaults and sexual harassments.  I fight for survivors in as many ways as I can think of, on as many fronts as I encounter.  But I don’t often mention my own assault.

I am not ashamed: I did not one thing to bring this on myself. I am not to blame, and though I will carry the emotional scars all my life, I am a survivor.  I don’t think of this pivotal life experience every day, anymore, or even every week. I teach the concepts of consent and autonomy in all my classes, directly and indirectly. I hold space for other survivors. I try to bring as much love to the world as I can.

I know statistics, too. I teach them in my classes. Rape and sexual assault is falsely reported at about the same rate of other crimes–robbery, for example–around 5%. Too high, indeed, but rare.

So I do not understand when people, on social media or in person, feel compelled to defend someone accused of sexual assault. I do not understand how hard it is to believe a woman who remembers very clearly when, and where, and what happened when a man she recognized tried to sexually assault her. I do not understand why we can’t, as humans, agree that AT LEAST THIS is unacceptable. Because when you tell me, in your own words or in sharing someone else’s words, that you don’t believe her, my heart hears that you don’t believe me. I have no evidence to prove this crime. I know it happened. I was there, and I’ve talked about in therapy for years, and it has caused fundamental changes in my whole life, but I can’t prove it.  It doesn’t make it any less true.

I’m trying very hard to bridge gaps, because I know our country is profoundly divided, and people who chose to support a man accused of attempted sexual assault must have their reasons. But none of them matter to me.  I’m done discussing this, now. I have carried this scar tissue over half my life, and will carry it on to the end. If you don’t want to help me, that’s fine, but get out of my way while I help the others.

 

Tears for my Country

Ach, readers. What a lousy week we’ve had. The news is cranked up to 11, with people screeching at each other from all sides. Even if you want to listen, to understand what’s going on, it’s nearly unbearable. Add in the fact that at least one in five American women have experienced sexual assault, and there are so many hurting people right now. At stake is the sanctity of the highest court in our land. At stake is 51% of our population, who are much more likely to be victims of sexual violence than perpetrators, who live with this truth every single day in ways that most of the other 49% can’t even begin to fathom.

“Innocent until proven guilty!” my Facebook acquaintances scream. “Why is she doing this to such a good man?” incredulous commenters ask. I don’t have answers to anything, but I wanted to share some of my discussions from social media this last week. Not to rehash painful arguments (and Facebook arguments seldom get more painful than they have this week), or to shame anyone, but because I want to put my perspective here, on the blog, where you can read it in peace, if you want. Feel free to comment and rage in my direction: I can take it. But do read what I write here, first. Because if you don’t, you’re very clearly still part of the problem.

A week ago, on Facebook, I re-posted a tweet from a girl named Emma Thatcher. It said “Hello, female high school student here. I would just like to say the whole ‘teenage boys should get a pass because they’re not mature enough to understand consent’ narrative is probably one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever witnessed.”

I was going to give you a sort of play-by-play of what happened next, but those of you who are my friends on Facebook can go look it up for yourself, if you like. And those of you who aren’t, well, I bet you can imagine, for the most part. I tried very hard to be measured in my responses, avoid sarcasm and name-calling. Boy, that’s hard to do. In the end, one of the commenters presented a hypothetical situation in which I was up for a big promotion but a student from 30 years ago had come forward to accuse me of inappropriate behavior. I assume his point was to make me feel sympathy for Judge Kavanaugh. What it did instead, though, was make me think about how the analogy is ineffective at its heart, but also what I would do if I found myself in this situation. I responded first with a good deal of (well-deserved and well-controlled, I believe) vitriol, but as I wrote through that I came to the end, which is what I wanted to share with you. Again, it’s a bit confusing, because we were comparing a teaching promotion to a seat on the Supreme Court, which is a bit apples to oranges, but I think you’ll get the point here. I’ve edited a couple of things for clarity or grammatical reasons. And I added the final line, because it’s my damn blog and I can do what I want.

 

Your analogy falls apart because it presumes innocence on Kavanaugh’s part, and evil intent on the part of his accuser, as society almost always does when it’s men accused by women. If I was innocent in your scenario, I’d want a full investigation. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be shoved through into a job because my boss and cronies thought they could just do that. I would have a shadow over my integrity forever. No, if I were innocent, I would welcome a full investigation. I would apologize if I had ever done anything to hurt any student. I would wrack my brain to try to remember what on earth he could be talking about, because as an educator with integrity, the last thing I want to do is hurt a student, scar another human for life. To be accused and innocent would be devastating, but to shove my way into the position anyway, as though I somehow don’t have to answer to those accusations, is insulting to the school I work for, all my colleagues, every past and future student who will ever grace my classroom.

The truth is, rape accusations are false at roughly the same rate as robbery accusations are: about 5%. It’s too high, indeed. But just because he’s a lawyer up for a huge promotion doesn’t give him a pass. It doesn’t guarantee his guilt, either, but to not investigate is to say to 51% of our country’s population: you do not matter. I’m not willing to do that. If I were the accused, I would recognize that it’s not just about me, my promotion, and my student but about all educators, all students.

It’s about justice, if you will.