Crunchy the Hamster

4.21.2008

I told Kate that some day I would write a short in honor of her hamster. Here it is. My friend asked me how she should think about this story. I told her this, "I would like for you to think of it as one of the stupidest things you've ever read and also mildly amusing. "

Crunchy had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. His ball sack had been large before, but now it had swollen to the size of a peanut. He groaned and laid on his side to give it room.

“So, we might have to put him down?” I asked. Mom had bought me Crunchy two years earlier, when I was in seventh grade. Now, I was definitely too old for a hamster. The cancer seemed serendipitous.

“Of course not, Sarah Elizabeth” she told me, putting her arm around my shoulders. “We’re going to fix Crunchy right up.”

The vet performed the worlds smallest double orchiectomy on Crunchy, who soon began hormone therapy to compensate for his decreased testosterone levels. Mom fed him little bits of mush and water from a dropper as he recovered from his surgery. She made me wake up every four hours to give him Pedialite.

“I don’t think Crunchy would like for his life to be artificially prolonged like this,” I told her.

“Maybe we should let him rest in peace.”

“Are you kidding?” My Mom said. She reached her hand into his cage and petted Crunchy’s back. “He’s our miracle hamster! Don’t worry, baby, he’ll be just fine.”

The next morning I told my Mom that Crunchy had run away.

“But how?” she asked me. “He could barely move.”

“I guess he got better.”

“Oh, Sarah Elizabeth, you must be devastated.”

I told her I was, but that some ice cream might help. We could celebrate Crunchy’s brave recovery from testicular cancer.

-ade

You Can't Have Everything

4.19.2008

You Can't Have Everything-
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize the foam's twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man's legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can't bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another toward joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd,
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
and you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bannanas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's,
it will always whisper, you can't have it all,
but there is this.

-Barbara Ras

In which my housemates go "ultra" green

4.11.2008

My housemates, Garrett and Dustin Moon, are being featured on the front page of The Oregonian for their green home building initiatives. They have designed a house that lives almost entirely off the grid, while being incredibly functional and flexible. Their plans surpass the efforts of most professional architectural companies. What makes them different is that they are largely self taught and entirely grassroots.

Dustin and Garrett bought a house that they planned to rehab. Unfortunately, the house was poorly situated on the lot and badly constructed. They switched their plans to deconstruct the house and build a new one on the site.

Originally, Griff and I lived alone in our apartment, which is a few blocks from Garrett and Dustin's home. Their house is badly insulated and very cold in the winter, but, hey, so is our apartment. When it was freezing outside, we would huddle around the wood stove in their kitchen, sheets of plastic covering the windows to keep the heat in and heavy blankets to stop drafts. It was a wonderfully cozy nook that we all dreaded leaving. Now that the deconstruction process has begun, the Moon brothers (and Alisha) live with us while they complete their project, which makes Dustin and Garrett the only people to have our apartment be "a step up."

There will be some ongoing coverage of their building process in the Oregonian. I will keep you posted.

Olympic Protestors Fend Off Liberty Hating Athletes

4.07.2008

It looks as though carrying the torch has become a bit dangerous, as evidenced by recent demonstrations in France. Apparently, there have been protests all over the world about the Olympics being held in China.


Here's the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080407/ap_on_re_eu/olympic_torch


I particularly like the part where the protesters threw things at a wheelchair-bound athlete. And only in France is the bread hard enough to be a projectile. Viva la Revolucion!


Actually, I think the protests are great (if a bit sloppy in their execution). I didn't realize that there was so much global sentiment about human rights abuses in China.

The essential questions of life

4.01.2008

On why I'm hoping to become a total bitch

3.28.2008

In a good way.

I recently went to the release party for Bitch Magazine, a publication that seeks to reclaim this controversial word. From their website:

"The writer Rebecca West, back in the day, said, 'People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.' We'd argue that the word "bitch" is usually deployed for the same purpose. When it's being used as an insult, "bitch" is an epithet hurled at women who speak their minds, who have opinions and don't shy away from expressing them, and who don't sit by and smile uncomfortably if they're bothered or offended. If being an outspoken woman means being a bitch, we'll take that as a compliment, thanks."

I've applied to intern with them this Spring. Even if that doesn't work out, I plan on volunteering with them in some form.

Obama and Me

3.23.2008

Drove: 2 hours to Eugene
Stood: 2 1/2 hours in line
Waited: 1 hour inside the building

To hear Obama speak. Totally worth it. There were so many people in the auditorium that it shook when they clapped and cheered. We were some of the last ones to get in and they turned away over a thousand people still in line. I had wanted to go that morning to his speech in Portland, but the 13,000 tickets were taken in 3 hours.

The top two pictures are zoomed in and the bottom one a more accurate representation of where we were sitting. I found the speech a little low on content, but I suppose that's the way these rallies go. Obama is an excellent speaker, and the crowd was crazy about him.

Example-
Obama: And the environment...
Oregonians: Yah!!! Wow!! [standing ovation] He said the word "environment"

It was funny because before Obama couldn't even make a point everyone would start screaming and cheering. He's bigger than the Beatles here. Oregonians are also incredibly jazzed that their primary will matter for the first time in 40 years.

A trip down memory lane

3.18.2008

As Griff and I got into a stick (but now resolved) issue with our landlord yesterday, I though I'd take a trip down memory lane and show us working on the apartment.

Awareness Test

3.13.2008

Follow this link for an awareness test. Griff and I both did it and it blew our minds.

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

TrackersNW

3.10.2008

I'm interviewing this week to enter this program next year.

Entrepreneurial Skills & Agile Project Development

This is the nitty gritty of making a living. Every hunter-gatherer needs to find shelter, water, fire, and food. We want to pull people out of jobs where they work in a hierarchical organization and bring them back to a means of support that feels like a team, or even family.

Consider it a Masters of Business Administration that is actually fun and practical. We aim for ways of making a living that immerse you in energizing creativity and a conversation with what is wild. We recognize our students want to rediscover their connection to the natural world but many of them want may want more than being a wilderness educator (we are wilderness educators, we understand). What they need is a fun, sustainable way of making a living that supports their passion and responsibility. We call it "Tribal Business" from the termed coined by Daniel Quinn, author of Beyond Civilization and Ishmael. In a "Tribal Business" everyone finds themselves in the same boat and they need to make a living together. Whether for money, barter, support or all of the above.

With TrackersTEAMS, students assemble into Natural Agile Teams, and through this, effectively self organize to develop key business projects with the goal of making an immediate living for themselves and their team. The project can be anything rooted in sustainability, from an outdoor education program to a fair trade coffee stand. You also learn efficient ways of tackling the most daunting tasks for a business: accounting, organization, quality control and marketing. We look at new and common sense ethics such as being highly transparent (less sell and more yourself) and how inspiring it is to be part of a collaborative team.

-Tony Deis, Core Instructor

Hunter-Gatherer Skills: Habitat as Home

The urban sphere of Portland is unique. The instructors make their own living gathering with seasonal rhythms and so will you. They specialize in plant propagation, gathering and preserving. The Willamette Valley of Portland, Oregon becomes your larder and home. We work to make over 50% of our diet hunted and gathered. This contributes and enhances the Personal Health and Training thematic.

Hunting is a key rite of passage OPTION for those who choose it. This is one of the few residential programs and definitely the most accessible that provides the foundation for you to experience this profound conversation with the living world. Wild edible plants are the basis for healthy living. As you progress through your year you become sewn into the dance of the seasons. Our bodies become clocks attuned to the cycles of the plants.

-David Jacobson, Core Instructor

The Trackers Eye, Mind & Heart

Some people believe an Animal Tracker only follows footprints on the ground. Tracking can be that, but also much more. Included in its scope is the constant awareness of feedback from the land, such as the ebb and flow of bird sounds and songs. TrackersNW commits our support to the best tracking instructors in the country. Our instructors do not consider themselves your mentor but instead the true tracker considers herself a collaborator. You come into our classes knowing our instructors are there to grow with you, the land and the art of tracking.

Tracking connects you to the Hunter-Gatherer thematic and also takes your hyper-sensory awareness to whole new level. Dancing with the animals, a human being perceives and relates in many spheres of ecology simultaneously. The moving and physical body, the categorizing and dissecting mind, and the empathizing heart. You develop tools of perception that find value both in urban and wild landscape. Your mind starts to create living maps 
and stories telling us about an entirely different world moving on the edge of our awareness. This peels back layers of perception and we really "step through the looking glass." Check out our latest Tracking Series.

-Billy Williams, Core Instructor

Personal Health & Training: Health & Wellness

In this culture we often ascribe an inability to surmount challenges in our lives to a lack of willpower, or skill, or other such abstract factors, yet often we can find their source in our lack of health and wellness. Mental focus, a positive mental attitude, and a joy in your physical body comes to you as you deeply reflect and act on your own unique nutritional needs, and physical expression. Using such resources as the bio regional martial and movement art SHIFT, you learn from world-class instructors on how to let your primal self out and truly express a wild and hyper competent body awareness. You receive ongoing check-ups and medical care from our in-house Naturopath, who is also a master martial artist and instructs many portions of your SHIFT classes. A core focus is practical training for Body Control including muscle attunement, consciously shifting internal temperature and accelerated healing.

-Molly Strand, Core Instructor

Interpersonal Clarity & Peacemaking

Your skills as a tracker in experiencing the needs and emotional dynamics of wild animals will find application on a profound level in your human relationships. By increasing clarity and honesty of your own needs, and raw feelings, your understanding and empathy in your human relationships shoots through the roof. Then relating to family, village, and collaborators, loses its "high-stakes" element, and you regain balance and receive nourishment of what makes you human. In the same ways you respect the animals you track for their hungers, fears, and joys, you start to understand the people you care for and collaborate with, at a deeply rich level.

-Willem, Core Instructor

Natural Building & Permaculture

Receive your certification in Permaculture Design AND Natural Building. You tackle real world projects that feed and shelter you and our community. Projects become celebrations, houses are refitted to greener flows. Engineering and construction is covered on all levels, including traditional skin on frame boat building and design. Permaculture activities are also abundant, we don't stop in zones 1, 2, 3 and 4 but seem to live on the outskirts of zone 5. We become stewards of our land while looking at the entire Willamette Valley as a garden waiting to happen again.

-Tony Deis, Core Instructor

DIY: GREEN Creative Engineering, Auto Mechanics, Welding & Industrial Design (bio fuels truth and industrial recycling) MacGyver STUFF!

Ever since you were a kid you knew the value of it. Making something AWESOME from nothing! How would you really build the post-apocalyptic bus from the Road Warrior, how do you become the jack of all trades that can only see possibilities from JUNK? Students actually go to junkyards, pull parts, take out the welding torch and make hyper functional rolling, catapulting and floating art!

-Thaddeus Koster, Core Instructor

Wilderness Mentor & Guide

Many wilderness residential programs still reinforce old paradigms of teachers, students and charismatic leaders*. They work towards a goal to create environmental educators for communities based in the natural world. At TrackersNWhighly marketable skills with a foundation in business, arts, team collaboration, and communication. Helping to create healthy communities rooted in the land in a way that actually works. we leave "teaching" behind, especially in the guise of mentors, holding the real world values of collaboration, community and family close to our hearts. Plus, our certification and training works with you to develop

You receive your Wilderness First Responder certification, we teach you kayak and water rescue skills, you learn you how to put together a long term backpacking trip, teach snow and desert camping and all the other logistical nuts and bolts of your classic NOLS or Outward Bound type program. All that plus the addition of truly cutting edge social "nature-based" models of learning.

You help us make TrackersTEAMS models the foundation for community learning. Our models never stop growing and reshaping to become even more effective. We value your input. It is here classes stop being classes and we truly create collaborative places to share and learn. If you have heard of models that include white belts, brown belts, Level 1s, 2s and 3s you have heard of a hierarchal model. Our form of Mentoring is a form of collaboration that you need to experience to believe. There is never an aura of mystery with our instructors. Students cry with us, care with us and live adventure with us.

We take care with asking you to be a volunteer, when we feel confident to include a student in an internship or instructor position at one of our youth or adult programs, WE PAY THEM in order to keep relationships healthy and true. We always live by the axiom of give support, get support and we collaborate with students to constantly find ways of expanding the living of the village to meet their personal needs of sustainability.

-Molly Strand, Core Instructor

Art, Theater, Music & Design

We explore functional ways of making music and art that really tell our story. Many of our instructors are well known Portland artists, designers and theater teachers.

In the art of improv and performance we learn how to spontaneously move together. You start to think and act on your feet and actually celebrate being "caught off guard" as opportunity to be creative. You learn to read your "partner" with subtle and silent communication.

In visual, writing, and verbal arts you develop the craft of storytelling. We feature students works in multiple art showings (if they wish) and suggest many creative possibilities for a living as storytellers who foster more life with their eloquence.

-Shaun Deller, Core Instructor

Synthesis

All these skills work together to produce a truly "wild family." They create in us what we call "bad ass" factor but also hyper-competency. The ability to walk through anywhere and hold your own with confidence and care.

We learn these things as collaborators and the axiom is always "less talk and more rock." Everything becomes hands on. Conversations and debriefs do accelerate the learning yet they take on the feeling of collaborative "jam sessions" that spur your creative process.

Girls Rock! The movie

3.09.2008

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.

Wild, Wild West

Obama won the Wyoming democratic caucus this week.

Here he is posing with what is most likely the whitest cowboy in the state.



I'll leave the more meaningful comments to Rich.

Vegan Reuben Sandwhich

3.06.2008

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

Another Reason I'm a Portland Snob

3.03.2008

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?

And as long as we're going green

3.01.2008

Here's a pretty cool spoken word video on the environment:

http://www.greenbuild365.org/videos/video_gb06.html

Plastic Foot Print

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.

Internship

2.20.2008

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.

Our unique model of writing workshops, published anthologies and community readings, helps people transform their lives and our city.

It's business time

2.13.2008

Baby's First Drag Show

2.11.2008

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?

The wonderful thing about Tiggers

2.06.2008

Is Tiggers are wonderful things.




3$ Tigger suit a la Goodwill.

Dinosaurs on Retail

Ultimate Christmas

1.23.2008

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!

Pictures at Powell's

1.16.2008

Alisha and I never manage to look good in the same pictures,
which is probably because the camera could not handle
the combined power of our fabulous attractiveness.
Griff, on the other hand, always looks nice. Bastard.

Grow a Pair

1.14.2008

“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.

This is even more offensive

1.07.2008

Than the racial profiling I'm told to do on my job.

You'll have to forgive me for ripping off Aaron Mesh's comments on Josiah's blog, but it was just too funny.

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.

Posted by: mesh