I grew up in countries run by dictators. I thought we were special. We’re not.

Is it too soon to say, “I told you so” to all the Trump supporters?

Was a year ago, when he told his buddies about covid so they could buy stock in companies that make body bags but didn’t tell the American public so we could protect ourselves, too soon?

Was five years ago, when he bragged about grabbing them by the pussy, too soon?

Are you cultists who have supported him ready to admit that maybe – maybe you were wrong?

That “Orange Man Bad” is actually – bad?

---

I TOLD YOU MONTHS AGO THAT TRUMP FELT LIKE A DICTATOR.

I told you this felt like Spain under Franco. That this felt like Panama under Torrijos. That this felt like Chile after Pinochet.

---

At least when Pinochet was in power, we didn’t have any rapes.

Wistful and completely deluded Chilean woman, missing the Pinochet dictatorship

---

Newsflash: Protesting to stop police brutality – to stop the police from killing Black people for the crimes of

• selling loose cigarettes on the street
• sleeping on a park bench in the middle of the day
• sleeping in a car at a city park at 3 a.m.
• being in the wrong house when a warrant is executed
• having a broken tailight
• passing a counterfeit $20 bill
• etc
• etc
• etc

is not the same as attempting to overthrow a legitimately-elected government. So stop with the “but both sides” shit right now.

Oh. And also?

BLM protestors did not erect a gallows so they could hang the vice president of the United States.

They did not murder a policeman by bashing his head in with a fire extinguisher.

They did not smear their feces on the floors and walls of the US Capitol building.

---

Number of persons arrested out of a group of 50 for violating curfew in one night in my neighborhood during a BLM protest: 8

Arrest rate: 16%

Number of persons arrested while they were storming the Capitol, breaking windows, and stealing government property: 0

Number of persons arrested since: 40ish?

Arrest rate: 40/thousands = a lot less than 16%

---

Mr T and I just started watching, The Dictator’s Playbook.

The only thing that saved us this time (and I don’t think we are out of the woods yet) is that one of the essential factors for a dictatorship to succeed is that the elites have to support the dictator.

Trump is a vile, vulgar idiot whom the educated elite do not want at their parties.

But the pretenders to the throne who follow him? They have legitimate degrees from prestigious universities. They are educated. They have the proper pedigrees.

We have to stop them before they get to the White House.

---

One of my college professors would have us cast Shakespeare’s plays for a movie.

When we read Othello, he asked whom we would cast as Iago.

We wanted an actor who wasn’t conventionally physically attractive – we suggested Danny DeVito.

Our professor laughed.

“No,” he said. “That’s lazy. It’s lazy to cast someone unattractive as the evil character. Evil is not ugly. Evil is not unattractive. Evil does not announce itself. If it did, it couldn’t seduce anyone. Evil is beautiful and seductive. I would cast Robert Redford as Iago.”

Whoever made this movie about the attempted overthrow of American democracy was lazy. She cast Trump in the role of villain. She cast evil that announced itself.

Next time, this movie will be made by someone smarter.

---

After Cambodia, Spain has the most bodies buried in mass graves in the world.

Mr T and I did not know that until we watched the Franco episode of The Dictator’s Playbook.

Think about that.

You knew about Cambodia. You knew about the Killing Fields.

But did you know about the wholesale slaughter – including the slaughter of civilians – in Spain during the Spanish Civil War?

I did not.

Did you know that Spain had a gulag?

I did not.

Did you know that Spain had concentration camps?

I did not.

And it didn’t occur to me because – look at Spain! It’s a democracy! It’s a developed western country!

It can happen anywhere.

It could happen here.

---

Chilean friend: My dad died of a heart attack. We couldn’t take him to the hospital or call an ambulance.

Me: Why couldn’t you take him to the hospital?

Friend, giving me a look of “duh”: Because it was after curfew!

---

Trump was banned from twitter.

This is not censorship. This is not a violation of his free-speech rights.

This is the market, responding to a market problem.

---

This is not 1984.

These criminals who stormed the Capitol building are not George Orwell.

If they would read anything other than parler, they might know that George Orwell actually went to Spain to fight against Franco, who was attempting to overthrow a –

What do we call it?

A LEGITIMATELY-ELECTED GOVERNMENT.

---

And for those who need to hear it – Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not going to turn this country into a communist dictatorship. FFS, people. Read a F*ing book and learn some history.

---

We are not special.

When was the last time you heard a woman say those words?

I have been thinking about this post and what to write for a few weeks, ever since I read the first essay in Laura Lippman’s new book, My Life As A Villainess.

In that essay, she talks about being told she had a potbelly when she was a little girl. She talks about trying to lose the potbelly.

She says,

Every girl remembers her first diet. Usually, it’s her mother’s.

My Life As A Villainess, Laura Lippman

I remember my first diet.

I remember my mother’s diets.

I feel like I have been dieting almost since I was born. I feel like my entire life has been about depriving myself of what I enjoy so that my body somehow does not bother other people or bother me.

She remembers the time a man told her,

If you lost twenty pounds, you would be a knockout.

My Life As A Villainess, Laura Lippman

In college, a guy who saw me in my underwear while we were making out – I kind of liked him and he was in love with my roommate, Anita, and I guess I was the next best thing because she had a boyfriend and even if she hadn’t had a boyfriend, wouldn’t have gone out with him, told me,

You’d be really cute if you lost some weight.

She talks about the diets that so many of us have followed.

She talks about men who disagree with her telling her they don’t want to have sex with her.

Because of course that is the ultimate insult. Isn’t that all we women want? For all men to want us?

She decides no, screw them.

She decides not to diet.

She decides not to criticize her body. How she looks.

No.

Better.

She decides to like how she looks.

Stop waiting. Stop entrusting praise to others, especially to sad deluded men who think our bodies are theirs to judge. It is not the trolls or the blunt dance teachers or even our partners who get to tell us we are beautiful. No one can lift us up until we choose to leap.

….Consider…saying those dangerous, forbidden words out loud. Pick any of the sentences I have peppered throughout this piece, knowing how subversive they are for someone who is sixty: I am a knockout. They totally want to have sex with me. I’m gorgeous. I look great.

Do you know how hard those words were to type, how often I flinched? But I wrote them, I say them without a flicker of irony, and go figure, I’m finally beginning to believe them.

My Life As A Villainess, Laura Lippman

And that’s the part that makes me gasp.

Because even though I think I am good at not talking about dieting and weight and trying to steer conversations away from that, I do not like how I look.

(And even though I don’t talk about dieting or weight, I still think about it. All. The. Time.)

I do not like how I look.

And I talk about it.

I talk about my teeth and my eyes – how I like wearing a mask because it covers my teeth and how my eyes are puffy.

My eyes are puffy because I eat really good food that I have cooked. I am a really really good cook yet I am concerned about what I eat because of how it makes me look.

I hate how I look. I hate more than my teeth and my eyes. I hate it all.

Maybe it doesn’t have to be this way.

Caitlin Moran likes how she looks, too.

I stand in front of the mirror and look at myself in it, naked. Through some mad quirk of fate, I am a middle-aged woman with a nonperfect body who still, nonetheless, likes her own body.

More Than A Woman, Caitlin Moran

The idea that it’s OK for a woman to say she likes her looks –

Wait.

That it’s OK for a woman not just to say she likes her looks but to actually like her looks?

Doesn’t that mean she is conceited?

Are we even allowed? This is not our culture. This is not how we are supposed to be. This is not what our culture of ads for plastic surgery and makeup and photoshopped women tells us.

We are not supposed to accept ourselves as we are.

And yet. Laura Lippman flips off the patriarchy.

I thump the culture on the chest, push back, and say one of the most infuriating things a woman can ever say: Actually, I like the way I look.

My Life As A Villainess, Laura Lippman

Whoa. How dare she! How dare she?

How dare we women take the power away from men to define whether we are attractive or not?

How dare we take the power away from other women?

And I am including myself in that statement – I used to think about how the Miss Americas came from the south and my conclusion was that the women in the Northeast just weren’t that pretty.

It took me a while to realize that nope, women in the Northeast are more concerned with more important things than how they look.

I was wrong, Northeastern Women, and I apologize.

And – if women stopped thinking about our weight and our looks, what would we do with all that time?

What if we used that energy to fight injustice?

What if we used that energy to seize political power?

What if we used that energy to change the world?

Or even, you know – just to be happy?

When I asked her how she was going to celebrate her fifth birthday , my beautiful smart confident granddaughter (Mr T brought his two stepdaughters with him when I married him and they are lovely and smart and beautiful and I am so lucky), told me, “I am going to be happy.”

Maybe her generation will get it right?

I want that for them. I want that for us.

Isn’t this the theme of 2020?

Last night, Mr T and I watched The Vote, about women’s suffrage.

All I knew before we started was that 100 years ago, women in the US won the right to vote and blah blah blah.

I did not know women had been arrested.

I did not know that women had been beaten.

I did not know that women had been force fed in jail, tubes shoved down their throats against their will.

I did not know about the sabatoge.

I did not know about the bombs.

I did not know about the hunger strikes.

I did not know about the awful racism in the suffrage movement – that many white women did not want to ally with Black women.

---

I didn’t know so many things.

---

I did not know until I was out of college that the US had put US citizens of Japanese ancestry in prison camps during WWII. Had stolen their property. Had treated them horribly.

I did not know how brutally and unfairly Native Americans were treated. And are still treated.

And of course I did not know about all the systemic racism, past and present. I have talked about that before, but I have not talked about how angry I am that I learned none of this in school.

Why wasn’t this part of the history curriculum when I was in school?

Why were we not taught about any of this – racism, lynching, internment camps, sexism, genocide – in school?

Yeah I know that’s a stupid question.

It’s for the same reason that in 7th grade Texas history, we were taught that the Mexicans were bad and the Texans were noble at the Alamo.

We were not taught the part that one of the reasons the Texans were fighting for independence was because Mexico had abolished slavery and the Texans wanted to keep slavery.

Fighting for independence from oppression is one thing.

Fighting to oppress is another.

---

It would be kind of like if the Confederacy had won the war and students were taught that Robert E Lee was noble and there were high schools named after him and there were statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and military bases were named after Confederate generals and ordinary people named their little boys “Jefferson Dav—

Wait.

The Confederacy lost the war but those things still happened.

WTF?

How did we ever get to the point where we glorify the losers from a war they fought to maintain slavery?

How did we get to the point where there are people in the US who think it’s OK to fly the flag of the Confederacy, a nation that the US defeated in war, a group of traitors who tried to secede from the US to start their own country for the sole purpose of maintaining the morally indefensible practice of enslaving other human beings?

At least they get it right in the Civil War burying grounds.

Wait.

At least they get it right at Shiloh. I just googled and discovered that there are Confederate dead buried at Arlington? And apparently recognized?

At Shiloh, the Confederate dead are in their own section that the US Parks Service does not maintain.

I asked a ranger about it and he answered that yeah, they were enemy soldiers and I realized OF COURSE.

Why should the US pay to maintain the graves of traitors?

How are we ever supposed to understand our history if we are lied to?

---

Let me get to my point, which is,

We have to stop teaching the myths and teach the truth.

If we don’t know our true history, how are we ever supposed to reach the ideals on which this country was founded?

We need to know that the founders’ intentions really weren’t for everyone.

(That doesn’t mean we are going to stick with their intentions – this is not the place for originalism.)

We need to know that when they said “all men are created equal,” they really meant all white men, not all human beings of every color.

We need to know how people who were not white men of property were treated.

We need to know that we, as a country, have done horrible things.

We need to figure out how to apologize for these things and make it right with the people who have suffered.

We need to figure out how to make it better in the future.

---

I am angry that I was not taught these things in school, but I am also angry at myself for not learning on my own.

So that’s what I’m doing now. I am reading and watching and trying to understand.

These are the books and DVDs on my shelf now.

• The Vote
• Ain’t I a woman : Black women and feminism, bell hooks
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
• Assata: A Biography, Assata Shakur
• Caste, Isabel Wilkerson
• They were her property : white women as slave owners in the American South, Stephanie Jones-Rogers
• Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde
• John Lewis: Get In The Way
• Mama Flora’s Famiy, Alex Haley
• Dying of whiteness : how the politics of racial resentment is killing America’s heartland, Jonathan Metzl

What should I add to this list? What else should I do?

I apologize to all the white men I know and love, but – sorry, your professional life does not suck just because companies are now trying to hire people who do not look like you

A former co-worker, Max, called. He’s starting a new job – the old job at our mutual former employer – Acme – had become unbearable.

Acme was acquired by a German company about three years ago. The Germans put in a new CEO, who came from GE.

This is important – if you know anything about GE, you know it’s a nightmare employer.

New CEO brought in his people from GE and things got worse and worse.

Anyhow. Max’s new VP wanted Max to get rid of at least two of Max’s female direct reports.

Max: He wanted me to fire Maggie.

Me: Why? I’ve worked with her. She’s great!

Max: He says she’s not technical enough.

Me: Doesn’t she have a PhD in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech?

Max: Yes.

Me: And – she’s not a software developer. She’s the product manager.

Max: Yes.

Me: So. He’s just threatened by her?

Max: Yes.

Max found Maggie a new position with a promotion and a raise, but after his VP told him he couldn’t give a good performance evaluation to Olivia – who is also excellent – because VP wanted to get rid of her because she wasn’t a “good fit” for the team, Max started looking for a new job.

Only to discover – through friends who already worked at the places he was applying – that these companies are not hiring white men. They are trying to hire women and people of color.

---

Mr T has a friend – a white man – who is running for school board.

A Black woman has entered the race.

Mr T: My friend has experience. He’s served in other elected positions. He knows the policy. The woman has never run for office before. He says he’s qualified and she’s not.

Me: Maybe we need to change the definition of what makes someone qualified?

---

A former co-worker, who is now a VP: Yeah, when I graduated from college, it was tough to find a job. I’m a white man, so…..

Me:

Me:

Me: [Yeah, being a woman has so worked for me professionally.]

---

What makes someone “qualified” for a job?

I can tell you what I think makes a woman not qualified. This is anecdata, theory only.

Out of a team of ten, with only two women, when my boss was ordered to cut 10% from his budget, I was the one he cut.

My performance evaluation had gone like this:

Boss: You need to quit using big words that make people feel stupid.

Me: What? Can you give me an example? I mean, I use the word I need to express the idea. Who feels stupid when I talk to them?

Boss: I don’t have any examples. But you need to stop.

Later.

Co-worker Bruce: He meant he feels stupid. You make him feel stupid.

---

Years later, at Acme, an engineering company, before the GE takeover. I was the marketing person for the R&D group.

R&D engineer: You’ve been here three months. What do you think?

Me: I love it! I’m the stupidest person in the group!

Engineer:

Engineer:

Engineer: You – seem bright enough.

A day later, after I have told the story to Bruce.

Bruce: Yeah, he doesn’t know you at all. He thinks you have a self esteem problem. He doesn’t get that you were really saying that at your old job, you worked with really stupid people.

Narrator: She had indeed worked with really stupid people.

---

You are not intimidating.

They are intimidated.

---

What makes a person “qualified?”

What makes a white man who has held public office before more qualified than a Black woman to be elected to the school board of a school that has a majority of Black students?

Who makes the rules?

Narrator: That was a joke. Everyone knows who makes the rules.

---

I was going to do all kinds of research about how even though women and people of color are running for office and winning, they are still the minority.

I was going to give you percents and data and detail.

But then I realized I don’t need to.

Because we all know that despite the AOCs and the Kamalas and the Cory Bookers and the Ilhan Omars, most of the people elected to office are white men.

In some places, it’s even the law. In England, the House of Lords has 92 seats. You get that seat by inheriting a title and property and all kinds of weird primogeniture stuff.

Narrator: Yes she knows this is not about elected officials. It’s about a higher principle.

How many women hold a seat in the House of Lords?

If you said “zero,” you would be correct.

But WHY?

Because a woman cannot inherit all that – stuff. It’s the law.

But I don’t want to be too harsh on my English cousins. Our situation in the US is not much better and we don’t even have laws against women holding the seats.

Narrator: Not to mention the UK has had a female prime minister and currently has a queen.

As in, what percent of the seats in Congress are held by someone who is not a white man?

As in, what percent of CEOs in the US are held by someone who is not a white man? What percent of executive offices in the US are held by someone who is not a white man?

---

Max found a new job. He’s fine.

---

I had an phone interview last week for a marketing position in a technical company.

I talked to the hiring manager, who is a man.

I am hoping he thinks I’m qualified. Even though I don’t look like him.

When a person wonders if pants are really necessary for a job interview

So you know I have been looking for a job.

I spent August and September volunteering on election stuff. I helped some local candidates in October and Mr T and I did our regular shifts at the food bank, which I love love love because for three hours, I don’t think about anything else but sorting produce or finding some kind of protein – canned beans, tuna, peanut butter – to pack in the boxes of shelf-stable foods to be sent to the food pantries.

Grocery stores? I want to thank you for donating food to the food bank, but I gotta say that chips, candy, and salad dressing are not really what hungry people need. I am not going to waste box space on a bag of potato chips. I want to fill that space with oatmeal or rice or pasta sauce or of course any kind of protein.

What was I talking about?

OK. So Mr T and I both worked the polls on election day and then we were going to quarantine and then we thought we might as well put the quarantine to good use and drive to visit my mom, but ten days after the election, the covid numbers got really bad because of all the stupid people who refuse to believe it’s real and who are ruining it for the rest of us.

So that’s when I started applying for jobs again.

And – this is bizarre – I started getting interviews right away.

This is not how my life has been I assure you. It took me 18 months to find a job again after I returned from the Peace Corps, even though I KILLED IT when I was in Chile. We developed new products, increased sales, increased margins, reduced costs, streamlined operations. I was very happy with my work there.

So I have been getting interviews and I have discovered there is this new evil in interviewing also known as the video interview.

What fresh hell is this?

Can’t we just talk on the phone like normal people?

I do not have to see someone to have a conversation. Lord have mercy.

But I am not in a position to tell people no, so I grit my teeth and agree to the video interview.

One company sent me tips for video interviewing. Including the instruction to dress professionally on the bottom as well as on the top because I might have to stand up.

Which – my plan had been to wear my running tights on the bottom and not move once my butt was in the seat.

But then I worried that they might trick me into standing up.

So now I have to wear actual pants.

Which I have not done in – how long has it been?

I have been living an Elastic Life AND I LIKE IT.

Also – nobody outside of Mr T has seen my lower face in months and months.

But I suppose I need to remove the mask for the call.

Which means I need to make sure that my teeth – which I hate, by the way – don’t have anything stuck in them.

I have not had to worry about stuff being stuck in my teeth for months AND I LIKE IT.

Another thing I had to think about was how puffy my eyes were. I had made a big batch of stuffed cabbage with sauerkraut the day I got two of the interviews. I woke up the next morning with a puffy face and puffy eyes and I thought, I cannot interview like this I look old and old is not good.

So I have not eaten any more of that delicious stuffed cabbage and I have not eaten anything else with extra salt like chicharrones even though I want to stress eat.

I had to make sure I was bathed with decent hair.

But it was going to work out. One interview was Monday afternoon and the next was Tuesday morning. Yes, that would mean showering two days in a row (oh don’t judge me like you’re showering and doing your hair every day? NO YOU ARE NOT YOU LIAR), but it would reduce the salt-free diet time.

Only – yesterday after Interview 1, I checked the email about Interview 2 again and discovered that I had misread Thursday for Tuesday.

So now the shower schedule is better but I have to wait a few more days before I can eat what I want!

I had to find makeup – just some mascara and some light eye shadow – otherwise, my eyes just disappear.

My hair?

Hahahahahaha.

I have not been to a salon since January, which means I have not had my highlights done since January and which also means I have been cutting my own hair because I don’t like it long.

I look a mess. I don’t want to wear clothes that hurt. My teeth. Ick. My teeth.

Working stinks.

There are plenty of men who think they are Good Men and who think this word does not apply to them.

They are wrong.

I love love love Jane Casey‘s writing. She incorporates feminist themes into her books so well.

(And it goes without saying that her plots and character development are excellent.)

In The Last Girl, she writes about rape – or how rape is defined and viewed. Kit is a man telling the story to Maeve. Kenneford is a senior lawyer. Jodie was a young lawyer at the time, I think. (I am not clear on how the English legal education system works.)

“Kenneford slept with [Jodie] when she was a pupil at Three Unicorn, about fifteen years ago. She was young, straight out of college, and no money whatsoever- she’s from the arse end of Cornwall and got where she is on scholarships. Kenneford wanted her as soon as he saw her and spent a fortune on persuading her to sleep with him. He bombarded her with presents and kept taking her out to dinner until she felt obliged to give something back. That was how he described it to me, by the way- he wasn’t under any illusions about how she felt about him. It gave him a thrill to coax her into bed when she had turned him down so many times. He’s that sort of person- can’t resist a challenge. And Jodie was a challenge, because even though she was young and impoverished, she was still a feisty one. If you ask me, the whole thing was a power struggle and Kenneford declared himself the winner once he’d slept with her, more or less against her will.”

….

“Hold on, he didn’t rape her, did he?”

“Good Lord, no. Nothing like that.” Kit looked shocked at the very idea. “He put her under so much pressure she didn’t feel she could say no, but he didn’t force her. It was still her choice to do it, but she made it clear it was a one-off.”

The Last Girl, Jane Casey

Let’s examine this, shall we?

First, Kenneford was in a position of power over Jodie. That by itself is enough to call her consent into question.

Second, she “felt obliged to give something back.” Thanks, society, for teaching women that men are owed something if they spend enough money on us.

Third, Kit thinks there is a clear distinction between rape and putting a woman under “so much pressure she didn’t feel she could say no.” I would argue that there is not.

Fourth, of course she felt like she chose it. Because we don’t want to admit the truth, even to ourselves. We want autonomy and control.

But if a man pushes and pushes and pushes despite the “no,” then I tell you without a shadow of a doubt, that is rape.

When you push to bend someone to your will, someone who has said “no” even once, then you are a rapist.

---

When I was in my 20s, there was this guy. Let’s call him Bob, as Bob is an inoffensive, common name that should lull you into a sense of safety.

Bob was the boss of two of my college friends. He was (is) seven years older than me, I think. Which – when you are 25, a man who is 32 seems Old and Distinguished and Mature.

I met Bob at a few happy hours with my friends. Then he quit his job and moved out of town to attend grad school. That spring, he returned to Austin for spring break and I saw him again at an event with my friends.

He flirted with me, which was heady and exciting because he was Old and Distinguished and Mature and, I remember, very sexy. He was very very smart and he was good looking and he was interesting and he was interested in me.

He walked with me to my car and we kissed for a little while and it was very nice.

He was leaving that night to drive to Houston to see his sister and I thought that was the end of it.

The next day, he called me from his sister’s house and asked if he could take me out if he returned to Austin.

Sure, I said.

This was flattering! A man who wanted to drive four hours just to see me?

He picked me up and we went out to eat and then he took me back to my place and we kissed for a while and then I was ready for him to leave and I asked him where he was staying and he said he thought he was staying with me and I wondered where he had ever gotten that idea because I had never offered housing. I had agreed to dinner, not to an overnight. I had agreed to a date, not to hotel service and/or sex.

I should have shrugged and told him, Sorry dude this is not my problem we never discussed your staying with me in my dwelling. I should have said, Surely after attending college here and living here for years, you have plenty of friends who would let you sleep on the sofa.

I should have.

And if it were to happen today, I would.

I was 25.

I was an idiot.

I finally said he could sleep on the sofa.

And then he started advocating for moving to the bed.

I WAS SUCH AN IDIOT.

He. Would. Not. Shut. Up.

His words were not mean. His words were not threatening. His words were not scary.

His words were seductive, even.

But he would not take “no” for an answer.

And I finally gave in, just to get him to shut up. Just because I didn’t want to argue anymore.

---

After he left the next day, of course I did the rational thing and never let him in my apartment again.

Hahahahahahaha no!!

No, I let him visit me AGAIN!

Because – well, because I WAS CHOOSING THIS. I had chosen it.

I had not been forced into sex against my will.

I mean, how could it be involuntary sex aka rape if I was seeing him again?

Oh BlessMyHeart.

---

Today, Bob is very influential in Good Causes in Austin. He is seen, I am sure, as A Very Good Liberal Person Who Cares.

---

I did not want. I did not want to sleep with him.

I am still angry.

When all you really want is someone to Fix It

When Mr T and I first met, he tried to lavish me with gifts.

He got me flowers. He got me jewelry. He got me perfume. He tried to buy me a fabulous painting from a Memphis artist, NJ Woods, but I wouldn’t let him because it was too expensive.

It was $400. For a really big painting.

(Not that size=value in art, but it was the perfect size for over our bed, a space that remains blank and lonely to this day.)

It showed little girls holding umbrellas and swinging in the sky. It was enchanting and beautiful and Mr T could have afforded (that was back in the Working Days), but I thought it was too much money for him to spend on me.

A few years ago, when we finally did buy an NJ Woods painting, it was after she had become very popular. We have a tiny painting (it’s beautiful) that cost $200.

(The lesson here is if you see art that you love and you can afford it, buy it. Otherwise, 15 years later, you will still be regretting not buying it. Fifteen years later.)

---

Mr T thought that Things were what women wanted.

He thought Things were what people wanted.

For the record, I do not want things.

(Except that NJ Woods painting.)

(But it’s too late.)

I already have things. I have enough things. I don’t want more things.

Things tie you down. Things take up space. Things take up money that could be used for other stuff, like travel.

For the record, I cannot remember the last time I wore the jewelry Mr T gave me.

Of course, I cannot remember the last time I wore jewelry, period, but you know.

---

Mr T comes by this impression honestly – this impression that people want Things.

His mom and dad bought things and kept them and had them on every surface (except the ceiling) of their house.

His mom gave Things for birthdays, Christmas, and anniversaries.

BlessHerHeart, his mom had horrible taste.

So we would get Things and not just Things but Ugly, Useless Things The Can Be Returned Only For Store Credit To The Store Of Ugly, Useless Things.

---

Oh. You want proof of Ugly, Useless Things?

The cheap Chinese pressed-board nesting tables painted with hibiscus and hummingbirds.

QED.

---

But when Mr T and I got together, I convinced him that we needed to get rid of Things, not accumulate them.

It’s been a slow sludge, but we are getting there.

We have not exchanged traditional gifts for years. (Except for the wooden toilet seat, which he got after my first winter in Wisconsin. For the ignorant, 90 year old house with poor heat retention + porcelain toilet seat = OMG That’s So Cold.)

(And except for the Engagement Trash Can he got me – I do not like rings. I do not wear rings. I did not want an engagement ring. I wanted a decent trash can and a trip to Paris.)

(I got both.)

(I am happy.)

And in the meantime, Mr T has become quite adept in my Love Language, which is “Paint the Bathroom So It Looks Nice” or “Give Away Ten Years’ Worth of Airliner Magazines” or “Repair this Thing So I Don’t Have to Buy a New One.”

---

He learned, I think, because of his Knight in Shining Armor moment.

Five months after we started dating, I broke up with him. He wanted to get married and I didn’t think I should make that kind of decision unemployed. I told him not to call me or email me – that I needed time to think.

My washer and dryer broke in the same week.

I blogged about it.

He read my blog.

He flew to Memphis, rented a car, showed up at my door, and fixed them for me!

Is that not the most romantic thing you have ever heard?

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I always took for granted that Husbands Fixed Things.

After all, my dad, aka My Mom’s Husband, Fixed Things. He had a shop in the garage or basement, depending. He built stuff and he repaired stuff. I didn’t even know people took their car to a repair place when I was a kid because my dad did all that. I don’t think we ever had a plumber or an electrician or whatever to our house.

The time my parents wanted a patio in our back yard, my grandfather and two of my uncles visited and helped my dad plan and execute the project, including mixing and pouring the cement.

My grandfather was a farmer and part of the farm was the workshop on the west end of the barn.

My other grandfather – my dad’s dad – was an auto mechanic who owned and ran a garage that turned into an auto dealership.

My dad learned how to fix cars when he was a kid and then was an aircraft mechanic.

I didn’t realize some people had to pay other people to get stuff fixed. I thought they had dads. Or husbands. Or both.

Even when my dad visited me once in Austin and I took him to my friends’ place at the lake, he spent the entire afternoon helping Lou repair the boat lift.

---

So when Mr T started to give me Things, I pushed back.

It wasn’t easy for him at first. He had been taught differently.

But now – now he gets it. Now he knows. And it’s great.

Here is what he has done in the past few years:

• Replaced the stove and microwave (OK, those are things, but he did all the work. He did have to include me for part of it and I did not enjoy that but now we have a gas stove and a microwave that actually waves.)
• Replaced the kitchen faucet. Again, it’s a thing, but it’s an upgraded experience, really. So it’s about more than just the Thing.
• Painted the house and the garage, which saved us at least $5,000, which is coming in handy now that we are both unemployed.
• Almost repaired the broken furnace. He was so close. But we ended up having to buy a new one – the old one, it turns out, was not repairable.
• Repaired the car many times.
• Painted the bathroom.
• Repaired the lawnmower.
• Repaired the neighbor’s lawnmower.
• Replaced the neighbor’s kitchen faucet.

And last night, just four days after I asked him to do so, he repaired the food processor, a quest I truly thought would be in vain, as it is not so easy, I don’t think, to repair small appliances. I was resigned to the idea of having to buy a new one and throw this one away, an idea that made me sick, but – turns out I married Superman.

And reader, he fixed it.

Amen.

Time to start Marie Kondo’ing your house. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it so your children aren’t stuck with it

Now that we can exhale, let’s talk about another very important topic: the naked pictures you have of yourself that you don’t want your kids to see.

Or, even if you’re OK with your kids seeing them, let me assure you, your children do not want to see them. NOBODY WANTS TO SEE NAKED PHOTOS OF THEIR PARENTS.

Now, advice about naked photos may be becoming less and less relevant as this sort of thing becomes digital, but there are other categories of Things Your Kids Do Not Want To See that cannot be digitized, like your – um – equipment.

Don’t tell me what you have. I don’t want to know.

But you need to have a plan.

What am I even talking about? you ask.

Mr T and I attended a brunch for our college class reunion last Saturday.

Yeah, it was on zoom.

Because covid has been horribly mishandled in this country because of that man but he’s almost GONE so maybe next year, we’ll actually be able to go to Houston and see our friends in person. Inshallah.

Anyhow, one of our friends joked that she was going to let her kids clean out her house when she died.

She had a good point – she said, “I want to enjoy all my possessions until my last day on earth.”

That’s fair.

She also said, “Plus this is what they can do to earn their inheritance.”

Also fair. Ish.

I am a bit – what’s the proper word? – bitter? jaded? still furious with the heat of a thousand white suns? so angry I would dig up their bodies just to spit on them? – about how Mr T’s parents left things.

They died within two months of each other.

For the many years preceding their deaths, Mr T asked them to clean out their house.

Our class reunion friend has a lot of stuff in her house, but she’s not a hoarder: she’s a baker.

Mr T’s parents were one step under hoarders.

That is, when they moved from Pittsburgh to Florida, they took their winter clothes with them.

Narrator: You don’t need winter clothes in Florida.

And a bag full of newspapers. A brown paper bag, full of just regular old recycling. I know, because that bag sat on the floor of the guest room closet, under a bunch of the winter clothes that went unworn because you don’t need upper Midwest winter clothes in Florida.

And a whole lot of other stuff. Their house was full. I wasn’t even allowed in the other bedroom. Mr T said his mom was ashamed of it. When I saw it after they died, I understood her shame. I, too, would have been mortified to have a room like that, but I also would have been ashamed of the rest of the house.

(I blame Mr T’s dad for everything, though. He was not a kind person.)

Anyhow, Mr T tried to convince his parents to get rid of stuff, not for his sake but for theirs. It’s not pleasant to live in a crowded, messy house.

They told him that they had had to clean out their parents’ houses and he would have to do it for them.

Narrator: Parents often wish to keep their children from suffering the way they had to suffer. People who grew up hungry usually don’t intentionally starve their own children. This is how healthy parents react – they want their children to have a better life than they did.

So. They died. And, as I had noted in 2005 when I read their will, Mr T was the executor.

And he was disinherited.

Yes.

That is correct.

They made him the executor and they disinherited him.

They gave all the money to the grandkids, putting it in a trust and making Mr T the trustee.

So.

Disinherited.

Executor.

Trustee.

And they specified that he could not be paid for being trustee. (Which, I can tell you, is a thankless pain in the neck job that requires weird tax filings and a ton of work.)

Let me be clear: I don’t care that Mr T was disinherited. People get to do what they want with their money. It’s theirs. Expecting to inherit from your parents is kind of dumb, I think. I want my mom to spend every penny she has, dying with exactly one cent to her name. I don’t want her to scrimp and worry about leaving an inheritance for my siblings and me. I want her to enjoy her money.

And my nieces and nephews are lovely and I am glad they have this inheritance to help them as they get started with their adult lives. I would have loved to be able to pay my student loans with something other than my meager income ($20K salary, $13K in student loans).

What I care about is they disinherited him and still stuck him with all the work.

He had to clean out all the crap in the house. He couldn’t just throw old papers away because current financial information was mixed in with eight years’ worth of EOBs from Medicare. He couldn’t find the title for the car. (Finally found it in a manila envelope on the top shelf of the closet in the office.) He didn’t know if they had a safe deposit box or not – he found a list called “Demise Prep” that included “safe deposit box” on it, but no further information.

It was a mess.

And that wasn’t even the worst part.

The TL;DR: He found their sex toys and their naked photos of themselves with those toys and his dad’s sex diary and all their porn

I don’t care what you do in your bedroom. Or kitchen. Or garage. Or wherever.

I don’t care what consenting grown folks do.

That’s their business.

But nobody nobody nobody

Narrator: NOBODY

Nobody wants to see photos of their parents naked with – well, equipment.

Narrator: NOBODY AT ALL

And yet that’s what Mr T found.

He had to touch – the equipment.

He had to shred the sex diary, page by page.

He had to shred the photos.

At least with the sex diary, he didn’t have to read what was on the pages.

Narrator: He accidentally read one page where his father wrote about having sex on his sister’s waterbed. It’s difficult to shred stuff with your eyes closed.

He had to drive around town looking for a dumpster for the porn.

(We later learned there is a market for vintage porn, so perhaps he should have tried to sell it – but – ick.)

He did not enjoy any of this.

THE ACTION PLAN

Do not let this happen to your children. Even if you leave all the winter clothes and the old newspapers and the rusted tools and the rinsed takeout coffee cups and 12 years’ worth of magazines and the junk mail for your kids to clean, don’t leave them your naked photos.

You need to designate a trusted friend to be the porn sweeper for you after your death. Put all this stuff in a box somewhere – it can be easy for you to get when you want it – and tell your friend where it is.

The second you are dead, your friend can go to your house (yes, you have to give her a key so go to the hardware store today to have copies made) and grab the box and take it to the dumpster behind Home Depot and toss it in without opening it.

Narrator: A good friend will help you move. A great friend will help you move the body. And an incredible friend will toss your porn when you die.

Do it today. Make your porn plan today. Or else your children might never forgive you.

You say, “entertainment.”

I say, “Why can’t we just have silence?”

I have been cleaning out old stuff – you know – covid cleaning – and found a bunch of old Christmas letters. This is from my 2003 Christmas letter, before I met Mr T.

BTW, I have changed my opinion on KC and the Sunshine Band. People can grow.

Trouble in Paradise

“I still can’t talk about it without shaking,” says Texan as she sits in the swing on her front porch, overlooking a calm summer morning scene of butterflies and hummingbirds flitting through her award-winning garden. By now, the whole world knows how she and her boyfriend, Harpo, were tortured during their vacation to Cancún. Wrapped in a thick terrycloth robe, with her damp hair combed back and no makeup, she looks dewy and fresh, despite the trauma.

“The abuse was all psychological,” she explains. “The scars are here” –  and she points to her heart and to her head.

 During their bus ride from Cancún to Tulúm, she and Harpo were subject to the most excruciating torture: they were forced to watch three Adam Sandler movies.

“We still don’t know why they did it,” she says. “We don’t know what they wanted or why they chose us. All we wanted was a relaxing vacation. Cancún seemed like a good idea. Harpo was able to get us a great deal with a charter company he works with. We even got to stay in one of those swanky hotels right on the beach with our own bathroom and everything. We were having fun sitting on the beach, eating migas and batidos de guayaba, and exploring the Cancún Wal*Mart. Then we decided to take the bus to Tulúm.”

The Torture Starts

She pauses and takes a deep breath.

“And that’s when things started to go bad.”

Texan and Harpo got on the bus, thinking they would watch the scenery or nap on the three-hour ride to Tulúm. But as soon as the bus pulled out of the station, the bus driver started a video.

“It was ‘Mr. Deeds,’” she says flatly, clearly struggling to control her emotions. “Neither of us had ever seen an Adam Sandler movie, so at first, we didn’t know what was happening. But by the middle of the movie, we realized we were being tortured. We thought we could endure it, but as soon as ‘Mr. Deeds’ was over, the driver started ‘Little Nicky.’ Harpo kept telling me to be strong, to hang on, but it was horrible, just horrible. All we wanted to do was to escape, but there was nowhere to go.”

Temporary Relief

They finally arrived in Tulúm and were able to get off the bus. For the return trip, Texan tried to bribe the driver.

“I thought that if I bought him some ice cream, he might spare us on the return trip. I’ve done a lot of research on torture survivors and have learned that that sort of bargaining is a very common occurrence in these situations. I believe they call it the ‘Stockholm Syndrome.’”

She takes a sip of diet Coke to calm herself, then continues.

“But it didn’t work. As soon as we were underway, he started ‘Punch Drunk Love.’ That was the worst one. My friend Leigh actually liked that movie, but I have come to realize that she and I have – how do I say this? – different tastes. I mean, I love her and all, but if she recommends a movie to me now, I don’t go.”

Finally Safe

“We finally got back to Cancún. We were both exhausted and frightened when the bus pulled into the station. But we mustered our strength and ran off the bus as soon as it stopped. We were afraid they would try to keep us there and do even worse things to us, like make us watch Demi Moore movies.”

“I have since learned that Mexico is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, which prohibits forcing people to watch anything with Demi Moore in it. I guess the Mexicans didn’t want to be tried for war crimes.”

Investigation Continues

Authorities are still investigating what the US Embassy calls the “heinous” treatment of Texan and Harpo. The Mexican government has apologized for the incident, but notes that the movies were made in the US.

Such treatment of tourists is not unusual in Latin America. In Chile, KC and the Sunshine Band is on the heavy rotation list of every radio station. In Argentina, they show Steven Segal movies on the inter-city buses. Investigators are not sure of the extent of the problem because it so often goes unreported because of shame and horror on the part of the victims.

“I’m just glad to be home, where I can walk out of a movie theater any time I want,” Texan says. “I’m never leaving this country again.”

“Welcome to the knowledge,” said my friend John, after I learned that the man who endowed my university was a slaver – that is, when I learned that I personally and directly benefitted from slavery

What I used to think

• My family is from northern Wisconsin, where they didn’t have slaves, so I had not benefitted from slavery so therefore it had nothing to do with me. (I was wrong.)
• White privilege didn’t apply to me because I have never gotten a job or gotten into a school because of connections. (I was wrong.)
• Our country is a country of opportunity for everyone. All you have to do is study and work hard. (I was wrong.)
• Just don’t sass the police and you’ll be fine. (I was wrong.)
• There is no such thing as systemic racism. Our country is just. (I was wrong.)

A Little League baseball team in Youngstown, Ohio, won the city championship. The coaches, unthinkingly, decided to celebrate with a team picnic at a municipal pool. When the team arrived at the gate, a lifeguard stopped one of the Little League players from entering. It was Al Bright, the only black player on the team. His parents had not been able to attend the picnic, and the coaches and some of the other parents tried to persuade the pool officials to let the little boy in, to no avail. The only thing the lifeguards were willing to do was to let them set a blanket for him outside the fence and let people bring him food. He was given little choice and had to watch his teammates splash in the water and chase each other on the pool deck while he sat alone on the outside.

“From time to time, one or another of the players or adults came out and sat with him….”

It took an hour or so for a team official to finally convince the lifeguards “that they should at least allow the child into the pool for a few minutes.” The supervisor agreed to let the Little Leaguer in, but only if everyone else got out of the water, and only if Al followed the rules they set for him.

First, everyone–meaning his teammates, the parents, all the white people–had to get out of the water. Once everyone cleared out, “Al was led to the pool and placed in a small rubber raft,” Watkins wrote. A lifeguard got into the water and pushed the raft with Al in it for a single turn around the pool, as a hundred or so teammates, coaches, parents and onlookers watched from the sidelines.

After the “agonizing few minutes” that it took to complete the circle, Al was then “escorted to his assigned spot” on the other side of the fence. During his short time in the raft, as it glided on the surface, the lifeguard warned him over and over again of one important thing. “Just don’t touch the water,” the lifeguard said as he pushed the rubber float. “Whatever you do, don’t touch the water.”

Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson

What I have learned

• George Floyd. Jay Anderson. Elijah McClain. Alvin Cole. Philando Castile. Ahmaud Arbery. Dontre Hamilton. Tamir Rice. Rayshard Brooks. Sandra Bland. Freddie Gray. Eric Garner. And the list goes on and on and on.
• Redlining
• Sundown towns
• Black vets couldn’t get the GI Bill
• Unions would not admit Black people
• My own city – my own house – had restrictive covenants. That is, it used to be illegal for me to sell my house to a Black person. (Or a Jewish one.)
• The FHA would not lend to Black people: “He notes that the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods — a policy known as “redlining.” At the same time, the FHA was subsidizing builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions for whites — with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to African-Americans.”
• Black women have a higher rate of maternal mortality than white women, even when you hold all other factors, like education, income, and general health, constant.
• “Black suspects are more than twice as likely to be killed by police than are persons of other racial or ethnic groups; even when there are no other obvious circumstances during the encounter that would make the use of deadly force reasonable.” (Columbia Law School)
• “Police in the United States kill far more people than do police in other advanced industrial democracies….Black women and men and American Indian and Alaska Native women and men are significantly more likely than white women and men to be killed by police. Latino men are also more likely to be killed by police than are white men.” (National Academy of Science)
• Mass murder and destruction of Black properties and neighborhoods.
• Lynching was not just an isolated event in our history that happened to handful of people. (Even that would be bad.) Thousands – THOUSANDS – of Black people were tortured and murdered by crowds of people who took picnics to watch.

My great-great grandfather Anthony P. Crawford was born in January, 1865 and owned by Ben and Rebecca Crawford in Abbeville, South Carolina.

My great-great grandfather Anthony P. Crawford was born in January, 1865 and owned by Ben and Rebecca Crawford in Abbeville, South Carolina.

He walked 14 miles roundtrip to and from school each day and proved to be quite a scholar. When Anthony finished school he was a laborer for Ben Crawford until Thomas Crawford, Anthony’s father, died in 1893 and deeded some land to Anthony, who was the only one of nine siblings able to sign his own name.

Anthony Crawford was lynched in 1916 in Abbeville, SC by a crowd estimated to be between 200 and 400 blood-thirsty white people. His crime you might ask? Cursing a white man for offering him a low price for the cotton seed he was trying to sell and being too rich for a Negro.

His ordeal lasted all day. His body was beaten and dragged through town to show other Negroes what would happen to them if they got “insolent.” Finally, he was taken to the county fair grounds and strung up to a tree and riddled with bullets. Although we have heard his body was thrown on someone’s lawn, we have yet to locate his grave.

The family was ordered to vacate their land, wind up business and get out of town. They did just that.

My great-great grandfather stated early in life, “The day a white man hits me is the day I die.” And he did. But he left an example of hard work and determination.

He still lives in all of us. Many of us still attend AME Churches and we have been told that we have “that arrogant Crawford way.” But we know that those murderers were NOT successful in breaking up the Crawfords. We still stand today proud and close and live our lives as he would’ve wanted us to. We will not stop looking for each other until the last Crawford is accounted for, and we can stand on his land and look toward heaven and pray that he knows we are together again.

American Black Holocaust Museum

What I want

I want our country to live up to its promise.

I want justice and fairness for everyone.

What I will do

Even though it scares me, I will march in protests.

It scares me because WE BLOCK TRAFFIC.

AND WE SHOUT.

But – what do I, a middle-class white woman, really have to fear? That the police tell me to get out of the street? That I might be tear gassed? That I might be arrested?

I’m white.

They’re not going to kill me.

I need to use my power to help others.

Even though it scares me, I will speak up when I see injustice.

What’s the worst that can happen to me? That a white guy I don’t even know gets mad at me? What’s he going to do? Hit me?

Not going to happen.

And this doesn’t scare me at all – I will vote vote vote for candidates who support racial justice and equity and are against the death penalty and want to end police brutality and who want to invest in schools and who believe in voting rights.

What will you do?