Texan who was tricked by Used Husband into moving to Milwaukee. Fomenting feminist revolution based on potty parity, pockets, and psleeves. Bad bacon eater. Also, cats. Also, REVOLUTION.
The little grave on the farm where my mom grew up. My great-X grandparents watched all of their (first) seven children die from diphtheria in one week. Those children are buried on the farm.
Someone posted this story on facebook – the TLDR is that cooperation is better than competition if you want to survive in dangerous circumstances.
But of course then the incels had to chime in that no way dude would they ever want or need or ask for help from another person and that it’s so much better just to be on your own, like the cowboys and the ranchers and that the dadgum government had never given them anything and they were and are indeed Rugged Self-Sufficient Individuals.
One commenter – let’s call him Bob – claimed that’s the life many live today in Wyoming. None of those darn government subsidies.
how about you actually go somewhere that was built on ranching and has been part of the culture for generations. If you come to wyoming you will find that not only was the west built by cowboys and frontiersmen, but cowboying is still a way of life today. I’ve known several who make their living without relying on government subsidies and the like. It ain’t easy, but it’s possible.
To which I replied, “How did they get the land, Bob? How did they get the land?”
You all know what I mean. Who did that land belong to before?
Bob, however, did not understand or chose to ignore what I was really asking, and got mad at me.
depends on the ranch. Many ranches started during the farm crisis of the 1980’s, and they simply bought the fucking land. In the late 1800’s they had homesteading laws, so they loaded their shit up in wagons, moved out and homesteaded the land you unfrosted fucking poptart.
How dare I challenge his myth!
(Also is being an unfrosted pop tart bad? I like unfrosted pop tarts so I am very confused.)
We know who the land belonged to before.
It’s not what we were taught in school. We were taught that this land was empty when the Europeans arrived.
But it was not empty.
It was full of people who had been there since before the Common Era, but then the Europeans wiped out, via disease and murder, according to some estimates, more than 90% of the population.
And most of us know that now.
If you don’t know it, well, welcome to the knowledge.
(Also do men use their real names and share their home addresses on dating apps? Because women sure don’t.)
Mr T was agonizing over how to respond to a potential buyer for some car stuff on facebook marketplace. The buyer – let’s call him Big B – had asked Mr T for our address.
We were about to go out of town for ten days and Mr T couldn’t find much information in Big B’s profile. What if Big B was just casing the joint?
(Not that we have anything worth stealing. Yes, we have a big-screen TV, but it’s 16 years old and heavy and I don’t think there’s a big market for old TVs. And we have old computers that Mr T buys refurbished. And I have some pearls and a pair of diamond earrings, but does jewelry even have any street value these days?)
(What if the thief would want our coffee? Coffee prices have gone up with the trump tariffs.)
(Who knows what a thief wants? I have some nice Spanish boots. Maybe those?)
Anyhow.
Mr T had sold some stereo equipment (don’t get excited – he got a bunch of my mom’s old stereo equipment and says he is in the process of consolidating but even with the sale, we still had a net increase of stereo equipment in our house) to a guy on marketplace.
But this guy had a detailed FB profile and it turned out he lives just up the street.
In that case, Mr T was willing to tell the stereo buyer where we live.
But Mr T was concerned about giving our address to Big B and I shared that concern.
What I did not share was Mr T’s approach.
Me: Just tell him you will meet him at the city hall parking lot.
Mr T: But he asked for our address!
I shrugged: You are answering the real question.
Mr T: That sounds like a politician’s approach.
Me: OK whatever.
Mr T: He asked me a direct question!
Me: Just because someone asks you a question, you do not have to answer it.
Mr T: But – but – but – not answering a question when someone asks you a question is RUDE!
Me: No it isn’t.
Mr T: Yes. It is!
Me: I don’t owe answers to anyone. They can ask, but I do not have to answer.
Mr T: If I ask a question, I want to be treated the way I would treat them. I want an answer or an explanation of why I am not getting an answer.
Me: And I don’t care why someone is or is not answering my questions. Just because I ask does not mean anyone ever has to answer me. Nobody owes me answers or explanations. Nobody owes me anything.
Here’s how I remember learning about the Salem witch trials and the executions when I was a kid: They were bad because the women were not actually witches.
My memory might be wrong, but I am pretty sure the moral of the story was “Don’t be a witch” instead of “It’s bad to burn anyone to death and it’s also bad for the legal system to put anyone to death and it’s also bad for the legal system to take accusations without any supporting evidence seriously.”
Like – what if I had been taught at an early age that the death penalty is something horrible and that the state should not have the power of life and death over people?
What if I had been taught that for someone to be convicted of a crime and sentenced even to prison, much less to death, the state should require solid evidence, not just gossip?
What if I had been taught that the main reason so many of these women were accused of witchcraft was because they were independent women who somehow challenged the system at a time when women had few, if any, legal rights?
What if I had been taught that these women should be an inspiration, not a cautionary tale?
What if I had been taught something more about the suffragists than “They protested and then they got the right to vote,” like, “They went on hunger strikes. They set bombs. They marched in the streets?”
What if I had been taught that one of the main reasons women in England wanted the vote in the 19th century was because they wanted laws that made it illegal for men to have sex with children?
What if I had been taught that the Temperance Movement wasn’t about a bunch of cranky women who didn’t want their husbands to enjoy a well-deserved beer after work but about how the taverns had first dibs on employee pay – where if a man wanted his pay, his employer would deduct his bar tab and give that money directly to the tavern? What if I had learned that women wanted their husbands’ checks so they could feed their children and themselves?
What if I had learned where the phrase “Rule of thumb” comes from?
What if I had learned when I was in sixth grade that the law did not require a bank to give my mom a credit card without a male signer?
What if I had learned in fifth grade that my teacher might be fired for being pregnant?
What if I had learned about Marie Curie and Eleanor Roosevelt and Francis Perkins and Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Blackwell and Ada Lovelace and Rosa Parks and Katherine Johnson?
What if my college art history textbook had included one. single. female. artist?
At a talk at the Milwaukee Public Library, Dr Eric Klinenberg (who told us to call him Eric) suggested a thought experiment.
Suppose, he said, you pitched this idea to the governor.
Let’s build palaces in the middle of Milwaukee and Madison. In the adjoining neighborhoods and in every town, we will build ordinary structures.
We will fill those palaces and structures with books, magazines, newspapers, movies, music.
We will offer classes and makerspaces and clubs and talks.
Anyone will be welcome – anyone. It will be free to enter. Anyone can come in and sit and use the bathroom and relax.
And anyone can take anything home, for free, on the honor system.
Do you think such a concept would be funded today?
“Which governor?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Eric said.
I whispered to the woman next to me, “There’s no way Scott Walker would have approved it. Evers would want it but would say we couldn’t afford it.”
Still, a few of us raised our hands halfway.
He laughed. “I was just in Florida and nobody raised their hands. So I guess this is better.”
What happened to the rich people who were scared of the poors and the state of their souls so they tried to rehabilitate their reputations by donating a lot of money to public causes?
That is, what happened to the Carnegies? What happened to the men and yes I mean men who spent most of their lives accumulating wealth by any means possible and then having a degree of shame or at least of eternal damnation that made them give some of that wealth away?
Now the rich just want to get richer and screw everyone else looking at you Jeff Bezos and that guy who started facebook.
Where are the Bezos Cancer Research Centers?
Where are the Zuckerberg playgrounds?
Where are the Thiel scholarships for first-generation college students?
(I do know where the MacKenzie Scott scholarships and endowments are.)
But also, what happened to the public thinking, “You know what would be a good thing for all of us?”
“Fire departments.”
Like – do those anti-tax people think that fires and medical emergencies happen only to other people? It’s not even like there’s a rich-people only fire department. There’s only *a* fire department.
And they don’t want to pay for it.
Wait. It’s not even rich people sometimes. It’s ordinary people who move outside of the town boundaries because they don’t want to pay the property taxes and then they get all pissed off when their house burns down because it was outside of the fire department’s range.
“Couldn’t they just put out the fire and charge the homeowners later?” I have seen people ask.
I do wonder how the people who lost their house because they didn’t want to pay taxes voted.
And no, this isn’t about who you might think it’s about (although that also applies)
It’s not that this little glow in the dark octopus that sat on Sly and Doris’ mantel isn’t cute – it’s that it’s not what I would want in my house but what Mr T and I wanted never entered into Sly and Doris’ calculations.
Seventeen years ago today, I married Mr T.
Our wedding was not fun.
Why?
Because his parents were there.
Heck, because his parents existed.
A month before we got married, Mr T’s parents – let’s call them Sly and Doris – called him and asked him if he was alone.
He was not. We were in the car together.
They insisted that they speak to him when I was not there.
I thought, “Perhaps they want to give me a present? Perhaps this is a discussion of a nice wedding present?”
Reader, it was not. Indeed, there was never to be anything anyone could describe as a “nice present” ever. Their gifts to us – gifts we did not want and tried to get them to stop by asking for a present detente where no presents were exchanged because we neither needed nor wanted stuff – included gems like the cheap Chinese pressed-board nesting tables painted with hummingbirds and hibiscus, about which, when Mr T asked how we could return them, Doris sniffed and claimed that my sisters-in-law loved. (They did not. I asked.)
Nope, the conversation was about how Mr T should not marry me and how I was marrying him only for his money and how his parents intended to boycott our wedding, to which I said, “GOOD I DIDN’T WANT THEM THERE ANYHOW.”
Mr T did not have any money.
I mean, he had a normal amount of money that a man who has put two people through college and supported a family with two children over the years would have.
I had more assets than he did, as I had only to put one person – myself – through college.
And Mr T was not set up to inherit great riches from his parents. Even if they had been really rich, he was not included in their will. All the money went to their grandkids.
Not to mention women who marry for money earn that money.
Anyhow they came to the wedding after all because it turns out I was, much to our surprise, pregnant and Mr T told them that if they wanted to see their grandchild ever, they would come to the wedding, even though I had no intention of honoring Mr T’s deal with his parents because I would not have let my child be around such mean, bitter people.
And then I had a miscarriage the week Sly and Doris were at our house.
But I didn’t tell them because I did not want them in my business.
And I had to have a D&C which who knows if I would be able to get that today, given all the shit that the regime is trying.
And I floated through the week on vicodin and anger, watching Sly and Doris, who stayed in our house, get drunk every night on our (expensive that we keep for guests but guests we like who don’t drink it by the tumbler) booze and eat all of our Good Cheese (Carr Valley, which can cost $24 a pound), and complain I wasn’t doing laundry right, that I didn’t make apple pie right, and that there was nothing to do because we don’t have a TV upstairs and don’t have cable.
Years later, I found out that one of the many reasons Sly and Doris did not like me was because of the way I eat bacon and nope, I am not making this up. On one of my first visits to their house, I peeled the loose, flabby, undercooked fat off my bacon and didn’t eat it.
Sly thought that was an insult to the chef (him) and had been stewing about it for years. He finally revealed this to Mr T in one of their regular weekly drunken (Sly and Doris drunk, not Mr T) mandatory phone calls.
Anyhow, that’s when I decided to stop caring about their opinion of me and live my life, but poor Mr T cared because people almost always care about what their parents think about them and his parents were mean to him and said horrible things like Doris was thinking about suicide because Mr T and I were not visiting them for Christmas (we had just gone there for Thanksgiving and damn isn’t that enough?).
For years, they were mean to him. And then Sly needed surgery and insisted that Mr T go to Florida to take care of him post-surgery.
FRIENDS WE DID NOT KNOW ABOUT REHAB CENTERS AT THE TIME.
But Sly apparently had refused to go to a rehab center and we didn’t know enough to say, NOPE. Instead, we just wondered what happened to people who didn’t have kids who would help them.
Mr T went to Florida to take care of his dad and worked late into the night on his job and got almost no sleep because Sly was immobile and wouldn’t do his PT and Doris was weak and both of them got drunk every day at 4:00 p.m.
And two months later, Sly fell on Doris and broke her knee. She went into the hospital and Sly had to go in for surgery and neither of them ever came out again. Doris died after six weeks in the hospital and Sly died six weeks after she did and Mr T was there almost the entire time, dealing with Doris’ begging him to bring her booze in the hospital and Sly demanding demanding demanding and Mr T calling me in exhaustion at night.
They both died.
They left a mess for Mr T to clean up – not including him in the will, which is their right, but then making him executor and trustee for the grandkids.
That was ten years ago.
And not once have I missed them.
Not once has Mr T missed them.
Indeed, as time has gone on, Mr T has gotten angrier and angrier at them as he realizes how dysfunctional his home was and how poorly he was treated.
And here I am, a decade later, still writing about how awful they were.
Because that is the legacy they created for themselves.
They did this.
I am so glad they are not here to be mean to Mr T anymore.
Almost every night, I call all the Wisconsin Republican delegation in Washington DC. I tell them to release the Epstein files, to fund the VA, to stop the tariffs – basically, to do their jobs and to honor their oath to the Constitution.
And every day, they disappoint me.
They don’t surprise me because I don’t expect them to have any balls, but they disappoint me.
Last night, ABC capitulated to threats and cancelled Jimmy Kimmel’s show because the regime didn’t like what Kimmel said.
I have not heard any of my legislators speak out against this horrible violation of the First Amendment.
Not one.
Indeed, one of the Wisconsin Republicans, Derrick Van Orden, an apparently ignorant, kind of dumb, pugnacious drunk who posts horrible things on social media, threatened to withhold funding from his own constituents because he got his poor feelings hurt when someone in the district pointed out that Charlie Kirk said some very hateful things.
Yes, you read that correctly. He wants to withhold funding *from his own constituents.*
He has company.
This is what the president of the United States just said:
“When you have a network, and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do—if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something.… When you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that,” Trump said Thursday aboard Air Force One.
Is it just me or should we not expect the president of the United States and our elected representatives to understand the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
If the current Republicans in Congress had been around during the American Revolution, that revolution would never have happened.
It wouldn’t.
Those men risked their lives for our independence.
The current Republicans won’t even risk hurt feelings. They don’t want the president to tweet something about them.
Dissidents in the Soviet Union went to the gulag.
Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for years.
Nelson Mandela was in prison for decades.
The men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew they were risking their lives.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
You would think a sign summarizing the Fifth Amendment would be relatively uncontroversial but you would be wrong.
A white woman sat at the stoplight, not making eye contact with me but making a thumbs-down into her lap.
I called out to her, “It’s in the Constitution! You can read it for yourself!”
She shook her head.
What. Ever.
A 30-ish white man turning left came to the far lane just so he could yell, “Fuck Joe Biden!”
My dude.
Joe Biden is no longer president I am not sure why you are saying this.
And then another 30-ish white man – this one on a bicycle – shouted, “For CITIZENS!”
Oh my dear friend.
No.
For all.
For everyone.
NO PERSON SHALL be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor BE DEPRIVED OF LIFE, LIBERTY, OR PROPERTY WITHOUT DUE PROCESS OF LAW; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
I wrote about the counter-protesters on a social account and a friend replied, “The Republican Party no longer exists. There are no longer reasonable negotiating folks across the aisle. They are white supremacists, kooks, liars, and child molesters.”
Every word my friend wrote is true.
Which must be why another person – I hesitate to call him friend, but he is a cultist who lives in a bubble and my posts might be the only information he ever sees that’s not maga, replied with, “Wow, you speak as if you’re superior to everyone else.”
I cannot explain the cultist’s response – the defensiveness that *not* being a white supremacist, kook, liar, or child molester is somehow bad.
Isn’t *not* being any of those things the desired state of being?
I can’t explain it.
But I can explain the “superior to everyone else” part.
Yes.
Yes, I *am* superior for thinking that being a white supremacist, kook, liar, or child molester is bad.
I *am* superior for taking action to get rid of such people from public life.
I *am* superior for not wanting our government to consist of white supremacists, kooks, liars, or child molesters.
In 1994, my friend Claudia and I took the 12-hour bus from northern Chile to Santiago. She had a Walkman and a cassette from a new band – The Indigo Girls. I had finished my book, so Claudia shared her music with me with me by letting me use one of the earbuds while she used the other.
We sat in the back seat of that long-distance bus listening to that album and watching the big Chilean desert sky go from a piercing clean blue to black and and it was sublime.
If you want to be with like-minded women, if you want an enchanting experience, go to an Alanis Morrisette or Cyndi Lauper or Melissa Etheridge or Indigo Girls concert.
That is, if you want to feel the beautiful hypnosis of being outdoors on a gorgeous summer evening while an amazing artist sings the songs of your youth and you all sing with her and you all feel this connection – that you are united in these emotions of now and of then and that you are not alone and that you are not wrong to get angry, then see these women.
When “You Oughta Know” came out, a guy I was casually dating couldn’t understand why it was so popular.
He couldn’t understand why I liked it so much.
I tried to articulate that this was the first song I had ever heard where a woman was expressing rage. That I hadn’t even realized until I heard the song that I had not been hearing women communicate the full range of human emotion. That I didn’t know how angry I was until I heard the song.
He didn’t get it.
(We did not date much longer.)
At each of these shows, it’s been almost all women in the audience (which actually kind of pisses me off – that women are fans of male musicians but men are not fans of female musicians, but at the same time, it’s so, so nice to have a space that’s OURS) and it’s women who like the message in the music and we all sing and get mad at jerk men (and women) together.
“This is the song that got me through my divorce,” my friend Dierdre whispered to me last night at the Melissa Etheridge show. “I spent hours driving around with the windows down and the music cranked up.”
Some of the women in the audience are straight and some women are gay and some women are dressed up and some are not and it doesn’t matter if you are dressed up or not because we are not there for the Male Gaze – we are there for ourselves.
We are there for ourselves.
And we are there for the young women.
At the Cyndi Lauper concert, the League of Women Voters and Planned Parenthood both had tents at the show. Cyndi promoted her fund, Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights. Alanis highlighted information about rape and domestic violence at her show.
At the Melissa Etheridge show, when a teenage girl questioned the “Don’t tread on me” t-shirt, the woman wearing the shirt and I explained to her that politicians were trying to take away our rights.
That they are trying to make abortion illegal again.
“They’re trying to take abortion away?” she gasped.
I nodded.
“But – but what if someone is raped?”
“They don’t care,” I told her. “Abortion is legal in Wisconsin right now, but there are people who want to revert to an anti-abortion law from 1849. That law was made before women had the right to vote. Before Black people could vote. Before Native Americans could vote. This was a bunch of white men making laws about our bodies.”
I continued. “And now they are trying to take away our right to vote.”
She gasped again.
“Are you registered to vote?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t turn 18 until November.”
I handed her a League of Women Voters voter registration information card – I always carry them with me.
“Make sure you register and then vote in the spring in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election,” I told her. “We have the chance to get another liberal seat on the court. The conservatives are going to try to make abortion illegal here and the court is where we have to stop it.”
She nodded.
“Make sure all your friends register and vote, too. We don’t want your generation to have fewer rights than we did – we want you to have more.”
She threw her arms around me and hugged me. “I will,” she said. “I will.”
When I was canvassing for Kamala and then for Susan Crawford (for Wisconsin Supreme Court), I would talk to the people on my MiniVAN list (this is a list the campaign manager gives you — it’s based on various publicly-available criteria, such as whether someone is registered to vote, has donated to a campaign or group, leans left or right, and/or voted in the past election), but I would also talk to almost anyone I saw sitting on a porch or working in the yard.
Of those porch/yard people, I encountered several folks who told me they were not registered to vote.
When I tried to tell them how to register, they told me they didn’t want to vote. That they never had voted.
They just – didn’t vote.
I couldn’t understand it. How could anyone be so disengaged from the political process? One of these people is 76 years old – old enough to have seen things and to know what’s going on. Also, incidentally, someone who had polio as a child and whose left arm has been crippled since then. And who is not rich at all – who lives on Social Security. This is someone who is deeply affected by what happens in DC.
These people live in different neighborhoods. Range in age from late 20s to mid 70s. All middle or working class – nobody rich.
The one thing they have in common?
They are all white men.
Why on earth would these men not vote? Why would they not care about voting?
It took me months to figure it out.
It’s because they don’t need to.
They don’t need to vote.
No matter who’s in office, the system works for them.
They don’t care about abortion.
They don’t care that the police are twice as likely to shoot a Black person than a white one.
They don’t care that maternal mortality for Black women is three to four times higher than it is for white women.
They don’t care that in the richest country in the world, children are losing their Medicaid and food stamps.
They don’t care that undocumented people are being put into concentration camps.
They don’t care about any of these because none of it affects them personally.
No matter what, their lives go on. They still have perceived authority because of the color of their skin and what’s in their pants. They still get Viagra and they still get research to make Viagra even better. They’re not questioned. The police don’t follow them. Their lives are fine.
So why on earth should they care about anyone else?
When I lived in Chile and my roommate and I had parties, we would just tell guests we were going to bed and to lock the door behind them when they left, but that practice does not seem to transfer to the US.
What do you do when you invite someone to supper – someone you have not seen in a long time and is only a casual friend (but is nonetheless, a kind, warm person) – and it’s 10 p.m. and he still won’t go home?
Mr T and I had a houseguest, HG. HG and Mr T have a mutual friend from their old job who lives near here. They asked Mutual Friend (MF) to dinner.
A couple of years before covid, MF moved back to town to care for his aging parents. We would see him about once a year or so. He always showed up with nice cheese and a bottle of wine. He was pleasant company.
(MF also, it turns out, despite being a well-educated, intelligent person, has turned into an anti-vaxxer trumper end times conspiracy theorist. But I didn’t learn that until after this most recent visit.)
(We will not be inviting him back.)
We ate and then I announced I was going into the bedroom to read and the three of them could carry on.
Three hours later, HG announced that he was going upstairs to call his wife. He said goodbye to MF.
Twenty minutes later, HG came back downstairs.
MF was still there.
“How long are you guys staying up?” he asked.
Mr T came into the bedroom, closed the door, and whispered to me, “He won’t go home! How do we make him go home?”
I said, “Just tell him you have an early morning and it’s been nice to see him.”
Mr T answered, “I can’t do that! He knows both HG and I never get up early!”
Do I have to do everything myself?
(At least I knew I could get MF out of the house. When Mr T’s parents stayed at our house for nine days nine whole days nine miserable days for our wedding, Mr T’s mom fell down the stairs and I thought HOLY SHIT SHE’S BROKEN SOMETHING THEY WILL NEVER LEAVE.)
I sighed.
Put my book down on the bed.
Got up.
Put on my slippers.
Walked out to the dining room where HG stood helplessly.
Walked up to MF, smiled, put my arm around his waist, started walking him to the door, and said, “MF it’s been so good to see you again! I’m afraid I have to kick you out, though. I need to get to sleep and y’all are too noisy for me. Thank you so much for coming!”
Texan in Exile 