Or does it explode

My facebook feed has been full of two streams: anxious anticipation of the Supreme Court's hearing of a challenge to state bans on gay marriage.  This morning brings two and half hours of oral argument.  The best place to follow the action is always SCOTUS blog, and they have helpfully included some "in plain English" coverage.  Check it out here.http://www.scotusblog.com/

The other stream is the Baltimore protests/riots/uprising/as well as some kids being kids.  While I don't think of the Baltimore Sun as the best newspaper around, their coverage of present events includes important details not covered in national outlets.  The Sun has made all of their coverage freely available and it also includes timelines of the death of Freddie Gray and investigative coverage of the 5.7 million dollars the Baltimore Police Department has quietly paid out since 2011 for beating and otherwise brutalizing the citizenry of Baltimore. And if you want to know what that brutality looks like on the ground, check out Conor Friederdorf's article in the Atlantic, "The Brutality of Police Culture in Baltimore."

If you're looking for some analysis, Ta-Nehisi Coates does it again with his article "Nonviolence as Compliance." If you are watching coverage of the Baltimore protests on CNN and you're horrified and you are telling the tv "you're doing it wrong!" "why are you destroying your own city!" (I'm not even going to touch the "they are all animals!" commentary) then this article is a must read.

If like me, you feel like you're trapped in the way back machine, you can check out the Kerner Report, commissioned by LBJ in 1967 to explore the causes of riots (Watts, Newark, etc.) it was released shortly before the massive nationwide riots after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. The famous quote from the report is "Our Nation is moving toward two societies-one black, one white-seperate and unequal." There is a lot of video of the 1968 riots available online-the most interesting thing about these videos is, once you get past seeing armed troops on the streets of an American city, they are boring.  Most of what happens is people standing in the street.  This video does illustrate the role the 1968 Baltimore riot played in the mass incarceration of black men that now decimates cities like Baltimore.  If you look at arrest rates by race historically, 1968 shows a huge bump that just keeps rising over the following decades.  Here's some NPR coverage from 2008 on the 1968 riots and their aftermath.

Baltimore's the only city where I've felt so freaked out walking that I turned around and went back.  And that was after years spent traversing the South Side of Chicago.  Baltimore just has such a high percentage of busted/broken/non-functional compared to the parts that do work. Despite that I've spent a good amount of time in parts of Baltimore where white ladies don't usually go, and, as is my usual experience, people have always been good to me.  Shortly before I left Baltimore for good, I was walking a group of my students through a historic old black neighborhood in Baltimore, telling the history through the architecture.  Looking at abandoned buildings, an open middle school with its huge windows thrown open and no screens, the few limping businesses.  A neighborhood still filled with apple and cherry blossoms. Wondering what the Dean would say if anything bad happened.  Nothing happened.

My Baltimore was filled with love and threat and suffering.  Filled with the friendly and loving people, who could not fix the crumbling infastructure, the massive disinvestment.  Baltimore is a colonial outpost where the wealthy extract what they can-the University studies the local population, where strong young men go to prison to work for free.  Baltimore is the most civic-minded place I have ever lived, where local people know that if you want something done you have to get your neighbors together and do it, because the city will never show up to help.  My Baltimore was one of compassion fatigue, where every educator, health care worker, law enforcement officer created a hard shell to survive in the face of so much suffering-and so did I.

B and I were once driving through some shitty neighborhood in East Baltimore-not the one that looks like London after the Blitz, a different one, with people.  I was in the passenger seat fiddling with the ipod as B pulled up to a light.  I looked out the car window and a young Black man caught my eye. As he looked a me, he moved toward the car reaching.  I looked at him and my arm moved to hit the lock on the car door.  He drew his hand back and laughed, and I laughed.  We had both played our parts pitch perfect, the way we were born to do.

Violence isn't the answer, but neither is peace.  When I see the young people of Baltimore throwing rocks, I see Palestinian children, I see the children of northern Ireland.  When you've got nothing, when you'll never have anything, when your only recourse is to gather the gleanings of the wealthy and powerful, you pick up a rock.

We are all bound together in this world.  I hope for a Supreme Court ruling that will be LGBTQ people closer to equality-closer to fundamental protections for our families and our bodies.  But even as we get more, we must remember that we are still "the least of these." Our strength as LGBTQ people is that we are a cross section of everyone.  We are rich and poor, people of all races and religions, of all genders, of all political orientations.  Our shared oppression, throughout history and in the present, can have meaning if it makes us more empathetic and compassionate to the suffering of others.  We are all bound together and our victories only have meaning if they make the world more just, more equal for all people.

Risen

https://lbbreadandroses.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/risen/

Choose Happiness

LB and I made a spring tree with eggs and birds, and the apartment is slowly coming together. I am so sick of scrubbing and painting.

And then: https://lbbreadandroses.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/choose-happiness/

Spring

I knew it was spring in New England when I walked by the Dunkin' Donuts closest to my work and they had the front door propped open with a chair.  When we lived in Baltimore I loved the mid-Atlantic spring, so soft and warm.  New England spring is thin and chilly with a stiff breeze to remind me that I've lost my hat.  LB loves to look out the windows of our new apartment and track the slow disappearance of the snow in the park across the street and the slower reappearance of people in the park.  Last night, LB was at her other home, but I listened to some raucous basketball at dusk.

We made this spring tree with dyed eggs and painted paper cranes.  The drugstore didn't have a regular egg kit with the little dye buttons, so I had to get a terrible one with dye pouches, and then mostly used food coloring because the pouches were terrible.  But we got it done, and in the pictures you can't see that the eggs are attached to the strings with scotch tape-that is some kind of metaphor for our lives.

Things are okay here.  We like the new house, and it's slowly coming together although I'm worn out from my first burst of energy.  LB seems to be working through the transition with elaborate pretend games drawn from Frozen.  But I feel sad. Now I have space for all the loss to settle and pool.  And as much as I don't want to feel sad, and sad isn't really my emotion, this seems like where I need to be.

Dawn

We have something resembling a new home. With thanks to family and friends and coworkers and even B. I got a special bloggy surprise in the mail that is going straight on the fridge. My parent stocked my pantry and fridge straight out of 1935. They are almost boomers, born in 1945, and despite their countercultural years, it shows. They will show up for their daughter's divorce with 20lbs of flour, 10lbs of rice, canned corn, and laundry soap. I love it.

Darkest Before the Dawn

As spring creeps in this is the last slog of black ice and dirty snow.  I've been keeping myself too busy, which has had definite highlights, but I found myself at 7:00am the morning after spring forward, inching along an icy sidewalk on the way to a work engagement in Pawtucket and, despite the pink sunrise, it felt very lenten.  I have the keys to a new apartment.  The landlord assures me he has changed the battery in the squeaking fire alarm.  I've done a good amount of cleaning, and need to do even more painting.  And, right now, I'm lying flat on my back, wracked with body aches, chilled and nose running, wondering how it will all get done.  But it must get done, it will get done, and spring will be here again.

Misery and Kindness

Finally, I got a picture of my little girl in the big snow!  Blurry and shadowed, but I just wanted a New England picture for posterity.  But she hates to put her feet on snow.  Today was mild enough that we took the bus home from the Aurora Kiddo Dance Party (you should check it out if you live anywhere near Providence), and LB even walked a bit.

This winter has been a misery of cancelled plans and wet feet, and broken hips, collapsed roofs, and hypothermia.  This story that's been making the rounds on Boston social media is a good example of the everyday suffering of trying to function in the endless cold and snow.

In the piece Barbara Howard discusses stopping in her car to pick up and mom and child waiting late a night at a snowy bus stop.  The other side of our current suffering is our increased kindness.  Each day along my bus route, riders work to get the lady with the walker and the guy with the cane safely on and off the bus.  From the bus, I watched an older man collapse in a slippery crosswalk on a busy street at dusk.  Two drivers immediately used their cars to block him from traffic and then carried him to the sidewalk.  So many "you want to hold my arm?" to unsteady crossers, and a "at least take that guy on crutches!" to the driver of an overfull bus.

It's never easy to get around as a person with mobility issues, or as a parent with a young child and multiple bags.  But those needs are so often invisible.  Barbara Howard must have driven by moms with kids at bus stops on other late nights, but this was the night she stopped.  Because our own suffering has made us more aware of the suffering of others and more sympathetic to them.  It's a beautiful thing in this world.