Yes I Did

I did manage to take the Christmas tree out of the box this year and display it. (I have two of them, actually, but that seemed to be overkill.) You probably can't see the details here, but the ornaments are all characters from Gone with the Wind. No, I didn't buy them for myself. My mother buys me at least one new Gone with the Wind ornament (sometimes more) and at least two Peanuts ornaments from Hallmark each year. I don't really know why she thinks I am so enamored of Gone with the Wind, but they are well-made ornaments and it's Christmas so why not? Perhaps next year it will be a Peanuts-themed tree. (Yes, I know why she buys the Peanuts ornaments. When I was younger, I loved Peanuts, particularly Linus. I always felt a certain affinity with him.) My ex used to get Marilyn Monroe ornaments each year because he or I once mentioned in the vicinity of my mother that one of his favorite movies was How to Marry a Millionaire. She does sometimes latch on to the oddest comments to remember. By the way, she asked this morning if I had put up the tree and then she wanted to know if I used the Gone with the Wind ornaments. The tree itself is only about four feet tall. It's one of those with the lights already on it. (The other tree-in-a-box has multicolored lights, for the record.) I know an artificial tree isn't "green," but I figure if I do keep using it, that is better than tossing a living tree each year. I can't really plant one, living on the fifth floor of an apartment tower as I do. I may keep this one up for a couple of days more. Then it's back to the box for another year. However, I did want everyone to know that despite my usual Scrooge tendencies, I was somewhat in a holiday mood this week.

Nutty Neighbors: Just a Thought

On Monday night, while trying to watch The Big Bang Theory during a particularly noisy discussion by Mr. Echo and the Woo Girls, it occurred to me that perhaps one of the women in that apartment is Logan's girlfriend/lover/whatever. It struck me that, post-coital, she might say to him, "Oh My God, Logan, that was SO awesome," and I started to giggle.

Overheard

While I was in the Los Angeles airport on Thanksgiving Day, waiting to start my long journey to Alabama, I happened to sit next to an older couple with their grandchildren. The grandmother was busy keeping track of the kids while the grandfather was on the phone. Normally, I try not to overhear phone conversations involving strangers, but some people just talk so loudly that you can't avoid it. And, somewhat surprisingly, there weren't a lot of open seats in the airport that day.

I don't know to whom he was talking, but the grandfather was asking about the recent elections. He was trying to discern the other person's voting pattern, I guess. So he finally just asked, "Well, who did you wind up voting for?" The other person was apparently an Obama supporter. Hearing this, the grandfather replied, "Well, I could never vote for a Democrat. Not with me being Christian and all."

Is this where our country is today? There are people who really believe that Christianity and the Democratic Party are in conflict? Is it any wonder that I'm still worried about the future of the United States?

Am I Missing Something?

I've not shared a lot with you about my classes this semester, but I'm still puzzling over the rough draft submitted by one of my students in the American literature course. It's the second half of American literature, from 1865 to the present, and I tend to divide the course into three historical periods. The second part of the semester covers Modernism in American literature, the period including World Wars I and II, roughly 1914-1945.

I ask students to write one essay and take one exam on each of the three periods that we cover. So the second essay assignment asks them to choose a literary work written in America between 1914 and 1945 to analyze. Sounds like a simple enough assignment, doesn't it? They get to choose the work and determine the critical approach that they want to take toward it. That's really all I ask of them.

When I received the rough drafts for this second set of papers--yes, I still read rough drafts even in my literature courses--I received one or two that were not on American literature from this period. Now, some were just mistakes that could be easily explained. The students had accidently chosen works from earlier or later than the period, but the works were written close to the Modernist era. Once I pointed this out to them, they quickly chose a different subject and were happy with the final results.

One, however, completely puzzled me. I wrote down the thesis statement because I knew I would probably want to talk about it here. This is what it said: "This essay will analyze whether or not the Bible is meant to be read as fully divine, fully human, or a mixture of both elements."

Did I fail to mention that this was a paper written for an American literature class? Did I also note that the period covered was to be 1914-1945? How could anyone so badly misinterpret an assignment to think that the Bible would be a good choice? When I asked the student why he had picked this topic, he said it was because it interested him. When I reminded him that he was supposed to be writing about some work of American literature produced during the era of Modernism, he said he had found a source from the 1930s that talked about the issue of the Bible's divinity. I gave him additional time to write another draft but told him that it had to follow the assignment guidelines more closely.

So, I ask you, am I missing something? Have I gone crazy? Am I the one who just doesn't get it?

He has since submitted an essay on a more appropriate topic for the class. I did not, however, give him credit for the rough draft since it didn't even begin to fit what I had asked the class to do. Now he's requested that I reconsider that decision. He says he did, after all, submit a rough draft even if it happened to be on the Bible. I will probably give him some points just to keep the peace, but I frankly don't feel too inclined to be generous at this point. Should I really be kind to someone who thinks that the Bible is a work of American literature written between 1914 and 1945? Or is it me who's losing touch with reality?

Nutty Neighbors: Mr. Echo and the Woo Girls

I know I haven't blogged in a while. I've had too many papers and rough drafts to grade, and frankly, I've just been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately. I managed to squeeze in a quick trip to Alabama to visit the family for Thanksgiving, but otherwise, it's been work, work, work.

So I haven't even shared with you that I have new neighbors. I can't go into all of the details because I don't even know all of them. They moved in about six weeks ago, but they remain a mystery to me. I don't, for instance, even know how many people live next door. It could be as many as five or as few as two. There's sort of a revolving door on that apartment. I do know that they're all young, early 20s, I'd guess. And they're very restless, it seems. They can't seem to stay put for long stretches of time. Some people in our building come home at the end of the day and just want to relax. Once they're inside the apartment, that's pretty much it for the rest of the night. Not these kids. They go in and out almost all day and all night, never staying in the apartment for more than a couple of hours at a time. I guess I should be grateful that, unlike the previous tenants, these kids don't slam the door each time they walk in or out.

I'm beginning to wonder if any of them have a job. None of them seems to have a regular schedule. If they are students, I don't know when any of them goes to class because they always seem to be here except when they go out at night. If they leave during the day, it's usually only for a couple of hours, and that's not long enough to be work-related (unless, of course, you know...). How could anyone afford an apartment in this building without a job? Mommy and Daddy must be very generous to fund such an extravagance. I'm still living here thanks to rent stabilization, but the going rate for the two-bedroom apartments here must be more than $2000 a month nowadays. (I just checked: the range is from a little more than $2000 to more than $2900 for a two-bedroom. Yikes.)

I've dubbed them "Mr. Echo and the Woo Girls" because they do tend to talk very loudly. (I briefly toyed with calling them Mr. Echo and the OMGs as an homage to a very frequently stated phrase.) Mr. Echo's real name is Logan, apparently. I know this because they talk very loudly, but I think I mentioned that already. He, in particular, has a very deep, resonant voice that seems to echo throughout the apartment and into the hallway. The Woo Girls--number still to be determined--are the kind of girls who like to yell "Woo" whenever someone makes a statement or suggestion. You know the kind or you've seen the recent episode of How I Met Your Mother that addresses this in more depth. These are the girls who, when you say, "Who's ready to party?!" yell back, "Woo!" (Although it's more like "Wooooooooooooo!") Thankfully, so far, this has not been incredibly frequent.

Twice, though, I've had to knock on the door to ask them to turn down the music. Yeah, I know. I'm an old fuddy-duddy. But they do love their bass when they play hip-hop music (yeah, typical suburban white kids), and it's a bit tough to concentrate with the thumping going on next door. What I noticed when they opened the door was a bit surprising. They have no furniture. The living room, which is a very big space in these apartments, is empty. That's why there's such an echo. There's nothing to block the sound. I wonder if they even have beds or if it's just a series of mattresses on the floor. For me, it would be pathetic to have to live that way. I'd find a smaller place and spend less on rent so that I could afford some furniture.

I was duly punished for asking them to turn the music down, just so you know. When Logan showed up yesterday--his arrival announced much like Norm's used to be on the TV show Cheers--they started playing music again. It wasn't quite as loud as in the afternoon, but it was certainly turned up enough to make me aware of it. Sadly for them, I slept through most of it because I was so tired from the work week. The music was either turned off or down by the time the rest of the crowd showed up, and they all talked loudly until late into the night. I went to bed at 11 p.m., so I don't know how long the party went on. The noise level didn't keep me from sleeping yesterday. I guess that will show me, huh?

I'd should add that they're also very fond of the balcony on this end of the hallway. There's a sort of V-shape to the ends of the buildings here, and the balconies are in the middle of those Vs. Sometimes, the kids like to take a drink out to the balcony and have a smoke and talk loudly a lot. There's only a couple of problems with this. Given how loudly they talk, they've disturbed the neighbors a couple of times. I've heard them grumbling as they walk back into the apartment about having the security patrol tell them to be quiet. The other problem is with the cigarettes themselves. Apparently, they've been leaving the butts and ashes out on the balcony, prompting a rather sternly worded memo sent to the residents of our floor about the proper disposal of said waste products. I'm sure that also went over well next door, especially since everyone on our floor now knows about it.

Look, I'm sure on some level they are nice kids. They don't seem to be running a meth lab (although I could be wrong about that). They're just noisy and boisterous, the way kids that age tend to be. Unfortunately, I am getting to an age where I really don't like noisy, boisterous people. I find them annoying. I may start looking for another place to live if this keeps up since the folks who run this apartment complex seem to want to saddle me with the kinds of neighbors who just don't seem to recall that they're living in an apartment, not a dorm room.

On the Other Hand

I went to bed last night very happy knowing that this country had elected Barack Obama as its president. I got the news at about 8:20 p.m. while still at a poetry reading the department had sponsored on campus. It had been a hectic day, but it ended on a very high note with the reading of some beautiful poetry and with the news that we have a president who promises to change the current state of our country. I slept very well last night.

I will freely admit that this election was important to me. I've not blogged about it much, perhaps, but I needed--and I think our country needed--someone in whom we could trust again, someone intelligent enough to work on problems and think them through and get good advice before making a decision rather than someone who will have some sort of knee-jerk reaction to them and then never change his mind. I wanted Obama to win. I really needed him to win in order for me to have some faith that we can still get things right.

My participation this time was greater than ever before. For the first time in my life, I contributed to a presidential candidate's campaign. Somewhere there's a list of Obama donors with my name on it at least once. (I'm assuming you don't get your name listed for each individual donation you make, right?) Even voting took greater effort than before. I had been on an accreditation visit and missed the deadline for applying to vote by absentee ballot. I saw the lines in Norwalk this past weekend that lasted for up to five hours in the rain and decided against early voting. I had to vote on Election Day. So I got up early and went to work at 5:30 a.m., administered two exams, then drove back from Orange County to Los Angeles (eating lunch in the car on the way), stood in line for the first time ever in my life to vote, and then drove back to Orange County to attend a dinner with our guest poet. I think I must have added about 150 miles to my car yesterday, but it was worth it. I was a part of history.

When we left the home where the dinner was held, Obama was in the lead already, something like 174-76 or so. When the poetry reading finished about 90 minutes later, we had a new president. An amazing night in so many ways. I was listening to Obama's acceptance speech on the drive back to Los Angeles, and I had to pull the car over so that I could finish crying before continuing on home.

And yet...

I'm sad today as well. Proposition 8 has apparently passed with 53 percent of the vote. Enough people with bigotry and prejudice in their hearts decided to negate the rights of thousands of gays and lesbians in this state that has been known for so long as a place of tolerance and freedom. Now the constitution of this state specifically limits one of the rights of its people to only certain individuals. All do not share in liberty any longer.

I won't apologize for calling those who voted for Prop. 8 bigots and prejudiced. No one's right to marry should be infringed simply because of your religious beliefs. When it comes to freedom and equality, I'm an absolutist. I had hoped more of my fellow Californians were too.

When I moved here in 1990, California was still very much like a dream to me. It was here that I became the person I'd always felt inside that I could be. I was able to study the literature that I wanted to study. I was able to be friends with a wide range of people, folks of different backgrounds and ideologies and interests. I was able to obtain a full-time job that I loved while being out. I was able to meet and date other men without the sense of tremendous fear that I had felt while growing up in small-town Mississippi. Marriage, of course, wasn't on the horizon for me at the time. Even when I was in a long-term relationship that lasted almost ten years, we talked of marriage as if it were only a fantasy, something to imagine but never attain.

This summer that fantasy came true, though. I've written before about the joy that I felt in watching the weddings of gay and lesbian couples on TV. It was as if the state had finally realized its promise, a true sense of equality and freedom at last. Now it's all been taken away again, and I'm feeling rather crushed.

I'm hurt because more people in California want to protect the rights of chickens and cows than want to bestow equality on me and other gays and lesbians.

I'm hurt because the people who supported Prop. 8 keep saying that it wasn't/isn't about discrimination when there is no other word to describe the exclusion of a group of people from the rights and rites of marriage.

I'm hurt because I live in a country that cannot truly and fully separate what the government owes to its citizens and what religion offers to its believers.

I'm hurt because the people who claimed that they were undecided were apparently just too spineless or gutless (take your pick) to admit to pollsters that they just didn't want gay people to feel equal.

I'm hurt because I fear this will give supporters of Prop. 8 license to continue on this path and that we will see them attempt to erode other rights that gays and lesbians have.

I'm hurt because being told that "domestic partnership" gives you the same rights as marriage is tantamount in my mind to being told that the water in the "colored" drinking fountain is just as good as the water in the "whites only" fountain.

I don't know where to put my rage today. I've tried to keep my anger inside me as I taught three classes, but it's been difficult. I keep thinking about the past few months and the emotional toll that they have taken on me and others. I did what I could to get the word out. I donated money for the first time ever to a campaign involving a ballot proposition. I worked the tables on our campus with the student club to let people know about the dangers of Prop. 8 (sometimes sitting on the other side of the sidewalk from students of mine manning a Yes on 8 table). I asked all of my friends to vote against the measure. I voted against it myself. In short, I did what most of us did, and it just wasn't enough.

I do take a tiny bit of comfort in the fact that the margin this time is 53-47, compared to the 61-39 for Prop. 22 eight years ago. We managed to change the minds of about 8 percent of the electorate, and that's good. I even tried to comfort some of my students who were feeling very crushed by the outcome as well. But it's just not enough.

Stopping a voter-approved amendment to the constitution (even with such a small margin of victory) seems unlikely. Court cases involving the 18,000 gay and lesbian couples and whether or not their marriages will be recognized seem very likely. More campaigning and more money for more advertising seem likely as well. And, still, perhaps it's just not enough.

I'm feeling disillusioned, as you can tell. I still love my adopted state. I won't be moving away; I only have two other options at this point anyway (Massachusetts and Connecticut). Everywhere else, it seems, has followed the same path as California. I don't have anyone to marry, but it now seems as if it isn't even worth looking for someone to marry. Our relationship would never be recognized as equal in the eyes of my fellow citizens, and that is what truly hurts.

I have all of the absurd possible reactions in my mind at this point. I'm thinking of boycotting weddings for straight couples from now on. I may not attend any more weddings until gays and lesbians have the right to marry. I'm thinking of starting my own petition to have all marriages approved by the voters. Perhaps we could have a booklet with all of the couples, and the people of California can decided if they're deemed "fit" to marry on a couple-by-couple basis. Maybe we should have a petition to eliminate marriage altogether, no rights for anyone any longer.

Yes, I know that's silly. I will probably even chicken out of the boycott eventually when a dear friend gets married. However, it wouldn't be a good idea to send me an invitation to a wedding any time soon.

You Should Do This Now

Find and download Keith Urban's version of "Romeo's Tune." It's on his Greatest Hits CD.

Then find Steve Forbert's original version of "Romeo's Tune." It's from the Jackrabbit Slim CD, but you can also find it on several compilations.

Listen to both. Enjoy. Compare and contrast if you must. You might note how the song sounds when presented from a distinctly country perspective (Urban's version) or you might decide you prefer a more classic pop-country blend (Forbert's version).

Repeat until a smile comes over your face. Keep the smile there with further listenings of one of the greatest songs of the late 1970s.