I'm going to see a documentary this week about a rock and roll camp for girls 8-18. A quotation from one of the girls: "I've been waiting for so long to admit to myself that I'm amazing. And I really am. Everyone is beautiful in their own way, and they get even better when they decide to be powerful and they decide to rock."
Here's the trailer.
Rock on.
We're having a party tonight so that our friends can meet Audrey. Here's the main dish. Tonight will be my first time cooking it, so hopefully no one will choke on their sauerkraut.
Vegan Reuben Sandwich
One 8 oz. Package Tempeh, sliced into sandwich sized pieces
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup tamari or shoyu
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon caraway
2 teaspoons grainy mustard
1 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 Cup Krrrristkraut Sauerkraut
3 Tablespoons veganaise (vegan mayo)
3 Tablespoons ketchup
3 Tablespoons minced pickles
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice
One tomato, sliced thin
One red onion, sliced thin
Bib Lettuce
Sandwich bread, toasted
As if the naked bike rides weren't enough.
According to a February article in Popular Science, Portland is the most environmentally responsible city in the United States.
America’s top green city has it all: Half its power comes from renewable sources, a quarter of the workforce commutes by bike, carpool or public transportation, and it has 35 buildings certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Griff and I have started to bike everywhere. There are lots of great trails, and, in some cases, biking can actually be faster than driving. The only problem I'm running into is: How can I be environmentally friendly and still wear my high heel shoes?
Here's a pretty cool spoken word video on the environment:
http://www.greenbuild365.org
Where are all of those old plastic bottles for shampoo, water, peanut butter going? According to the Independent, a lot of it is going into the ocean. So much, in fact, that the plastic waste has grown into twice the size of the continental United States. It's estimated that 100 million tons of trash are circulating in this vortex. For the complete article click here.
I've been trying to rethink the way my consumer decisions are affecting the planet, and this article has inspired me work on reducing my plastic consumption. It's not too hard to do in Portland. We keep all of our old jars and the grocery co-op near our house let's you bring in your own containers to buy things in bulk. We also now carry fabric bags with us when we go shopping, which, in addition to saving waste, also means that you don't have to deal with the complicated questions of life--like paper or plastic. I'm actively looking for more solutions, so any suggestions would be welcome.
Basically, I'm trying to reduce my plastic foot print, which is kind of like Big Foot, but a lot scarier.
Starting sometime in March, I will be interning with a group called Write Around Portland. Here's a statement by them:
Write Around Portland runs volunteer-facilitated writing workshops for people affected by HIV/AIDS, survivors of domestic violence, people in recovery from drug/alcohol addiction, people in prison, seniors in foster care, veterans living with PTSD, people with physical or mental disabilities, teen parents, low income adults and people who might not have access to the power of writing and community because of income, isolation or other barriers.
This past weekend in Austin, TX, I had the privilege of watching the performance of Austin Kings N Things with my friend Abe. Who knew halter tops and softies went so well together?
Is Tiggers are wonderful things.
3$ Tigger suit a la Goodwill.
Christmas day. Its snowing/sleeting. A group of crazy people have dressed up like elves and are playing ultimate frisbee with heavy metal music in the background. Rock on Santa Claus!
“Is anyone actually going to help me over here?” A woman asks me, speaking loudly across the candy aisle. “I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes to ask someone questions about treadmills and no one has even talked to me.”
I say that I will page someone and do so immediately. The guy that works that department is the typical no neck macho man. He wrestled in Division I, until he got in a fight with his coach and dropped out of college. As he carries a punching bag to someone’s car I tell him, “There’s woman who’s been waiting to ask some questions. Could you help her when you get back?” He nods and looks over. “Which one?” I point, “The lady with the green shirt on.”
The woman comes back to the cash register ten minutes later, and she’s furious. “I have been waiting a long time and then your associate guy walks right past me and helps a man who just got here.” She moved towards the door, speaking loudly, “I don’t have to take this!”
I wanted to feel compassion for her but all I could think was, At least you don’t have to work here.
Most of the women in the store work as cashiers or in apparel. I find being a cashier a bit demeaning. All that forced perkiness is exhausting. “You want to sound happy and cheerful,” my manager told me. “Make the customers feel special.” To me, if somebody needs the cashier at a sports store to make them feel special, they might also need therapy.
I think being consistently happy has a bad effect on your hairline. My female manager, a woman in her mid thirties, attempts a high pony tail so tight that it appears her hair is receding and her face along with it. Picture an overweight, white Janet Jackson. She trained the cashiers and demonstrated for us how we are to greet people. In a high girly voice she squeaks, “Well how are you today? Welcome. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” I think she scares the customers. Her face has become skull-like, permanently fixed with a smile like one of those scary clowns in horror movies.
I can’t blame her, I disintegrate in the same way. After eight hours of being upbeat, putting sugar and happiness into my voice, I begin to feel that I will soon lapse into a diabetic coma. There is one male cashier. He had to fill in when the head cashier went on maternity leave. “I hate this,” he moans. “I should have kicked her in the stomach before she left so that I wouldn’t have to work up here.” He’s joking, I think.
That’s a rough space to navigate, the “I think” territory. The head cashier had her baby on Black Friday--the biggest shopping day of the year. “That’s so selfish,” the senior manager complained. “Couldn’t she have put it off or something?” He’s kidding, I think.
But I wouldn’t put it pass him to be serious. I don’t think there’s much he wouldn’t do to his employees if it meant a higher profit or made him feel more powerful. I once had to scrape glue off a printer. A printer that no one even looks at. So I began rubbing at it with goo gone and a rag, scratching at it with my fingernails. It took me forty minutes to get the sticky mess off. All the while, he was talking and throwing footballs with my male coworkers.
“I think my dog is afraid of me,” he told me. “Him and everybody else,” I respond. I said that, really. Out loud. I dream up a lot of snippy little comments, but rarely let them leave my brain. He laughed and looked at me with a face that said, She’s kidding, I think.
I wasn’t really kidding, but don’t tell my boss. No one likes him, not even the males who get preferential treatment from him. In my store, every promotion has gone to a male. And the commissioned departments are staffed almost exclusively by males. This means that, despite the fact that I work harder than all of them, the men get payed more than I do.
And the manager has covered his ass well. I’m not promoting men because they are male, he could say. I’m promoting them because they have more expertise in these areas. The thing is, these men didn’t come in with more expertise than the women, they went through courses that taught them this knowledge. I have asked several times over the past three months to be trained, but I’m told that there is no company budget for it.
Being trained is a bit overrated anyways. A woman I work with has been the unofficial apparel and footwear manager for three months. She knows where everything goes, how to arrange displays, and actively communicates with the vendors over stock. So when it came time to promote someone to Soft-lines manager the position went to, you guessed it, a male. A male who knows nothing about these departments. He shadowed me for a couple of days to see what needed to be done. Me, the lowest level of the retail food chain, and I showed him how to do his job. I actually had to teach him how to fold.
In his defense, he does have a penis. I wore a softie to work a couple days to see if it would help. In case you don’t know, a softie is a sock or an actual fake penis that women wear in their pants for a variety of reasons. Some women find it empowering; I found it difficult to cross my legs. It was annoying to wear but when my boss started yelling at me, I did have the pleasure of thinking, At least my penis is bigger than yours.
My softie did not improve my job prospects, and so I abandoned the project. It turns out that other people have to know that you have a penis for it to work to your advantage.
Its not that being male is the only thing you can leverage in our store, being cute helps too. A new girl just got hired on in apparel. Within a week, she was promoted to cash lead. She has worked at the register all of three times. “I think the head manager is attracted to her,” one of the women in lower level management told me. “She was supposed to be hired on just for the holiday season, but he’s going to keep her full time.”
He did hire her full time. I’ve been working at the store for four months, but this girl gets more hours than me. I began thinking: Am I not attractive enough? Should I do my hair differently? Does my butt look big in my uniform? Then I realized that I was worrying about how I look to a man I have no intention of sleeping with.
Let me repeat: I have no intention whatsoever of sleeping with my manager. The way he tromps around the store, I have no doubt that he’s into BDSM. While I don’t judge others for this lifestyle, wearing a leather studded collar gives me a rash.
And for all the coaching we’re given on being friendly, he is actually quite rude to customers.
“We can’t refund you your money,” he snaps. “You have no way of proving that the item was damaged before you bought it.”
The customer is obviously intimidated but she doesn’t leave. “I didn’t do anything with it. It was like that when I opened the box.”
Normally returns of this kind are processed with out a problem, but this customer bought a high dollar item and my boss doesn’t want to lose the money. “I’ll make some calls,” he says and walks off.
After he is out of ear shot, I mouth to the woman, “I’m sorry.” She mouths back, “Thanks.”
I was proud of her for standing her ground. It's a tough thing to do. A friend of mine actually consulted a civil rights lawyer about the store. Then she wrote an anonymous letter to the district manager. She never got a response but the head manager asked one of the women to inform him if anything was “going on that he needed to know about.”
“I’m not going to rat anyone out,” she told him.
“Yeah,” he said, patting her shoulder. “Just tell me if, you know, you hear anything interesting.”
I thought of a few “interesting” words to say myself after I heard this. For a while, a lot of the women in the store were on edge. Who did they think sent the letter? Would we get in trouble? It turns out that there was no need to worry, management had already decided who had sent the letter. She works in footwear, and she’s butch. “We think she would be the most bitter,” a manager told me.
Not that she wouldn't have good reason to feel this way. I had heard statistics of women getting paid less than men on average, but now the point is hammered home. If this happens at my one store, I can't imagine how many times it happens nationwide. I'm beginning to feel a little bitter myself.
I try not to let it get to me too much. At least, if it does get to me, I take it out on the lazy male employees. I'm in apparel now and it requires the most work. So every night I run around like crazy, trying to make sure everything gets done. My male coworkers complain. We’re so bored, they say. There’s nothing to do. I offer them things in my department. "You can zip up coats if you want," I tell them. "Or fold these shirts." They tell me that they’re not quite that bored.
I take down signs. I dress mannequins. I clean up the mess left by customers. I never stop moving. As we’re packing up for the night, one of the boys moans, “The manager says we have to set this ad tomorrow morning. I hate having to do that, it takes like 45 minutes.”
“Oh, come on,” I tell him. “Grow a pair.”
Or at least stuff a sock down your pants.
Than the racial profiling I'm told to do on my job.
I like how the ad implies that Rudy is going to kick the living shit out of those Muslim children.
Also he's going to go back in time and prevent the Bhutto assassination. He's just tough like that.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. Ours was a lovely get together of some of my favorite people. Here are a few pictures from Alisha's camera. The rest are on flkr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10249946@N02/?saved=1
Since Griff and I had our camera stolen (or, as we like to put it, involuntarily donated), most of our pictures of Venezuela were lost. Luckily, our friend Ming has saved the day. Here are the ones she sent us.
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.
Jack Gilbert
*From a lovely book of poetry Abe gave me and Griff.
At a certain unnamed retail store where I work, the employees are now allowed to buy Christmas presents at cost (finally, a perk). Usually this means 50% off or more. This event is for one day only, so if you'd like something, let me know soon.
Love you all,
Adelaide
People are beginning to notice when I walk around town. They stop and whisper. No, its not the ridiculous makeup--its the clothes.
"Who made that beautiful hat for you?" They ask.
I tell them that one of the most exclusive designers in the country tailor made it for me. Not only that, but she includes with every hat a ridiculously cool jacket and two cook books. It all makes me want to say that "There must be more to life than being really, really good looking."
yay! Thanks Kate. You are, by the way, fabulous.
A
Seriously cute and much more fun than Kafka. For more Wynn Brown, visit Julie's lovely site: thewynnbaby.blogspot.com
Abe shared this passage with me today. It is stunningly beautiful.
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,
or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons,
and with the young, and with the mothers or families,
re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
and dismiss whatever insults your own soul;
and your very flesh shall be a great poem....
~ Walt Whitman ~
(from the Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition)
This is a true story about my grandfather as told by a friend of the family:
Dr. Ramsey O'Neal was a leading physician in Hattiesburg for many years. His son Kelly, a local OB/GYN, told me this Halloween story about his dad. Many years ago, when Kelly was a child, Dr. O'Neal was left to hand out Halloween candy while his wife and daughter were at a church function. The O'Neal's lived in a safe neighborhood with sidewalks and on Halloween it was full of children. Never having handed out candy before, Dr. O'Neal did not know the "drill" so when kids would come to the door he would let them put their hands in the bowl and get all the candy they wanted. Not long into the evening he ran out of candy so went to the kitchen to see what else he could give away. In no time he had given away all the fruit, cookies, and graham crackers in the house. Next he went through his pocket change. Kids were still coming and he was out of options. He then remembered the six kittens in a box in the back of the house. Yes, he dropped a kitten in each of the next six bags opened before him! Some were handed back to him, but four managed to make it out of his yard (can you imagine the looks on the parents faces when the child got home with a cat in their trick or treat bag). Kelly said the when Mrs. O'Neal got home she was so angry at her husband (she had already promised the kittens to several friends) that she didn't speak to him for several days! And that, my friends, is a true story!!!! Have a Happy Halloween. Babs
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