one_in_progress

I'm back in Montreal, which is great. Staying with S. is great. But I saw Z. today. I was so nervous I wouldn't go to see her at all, but I did.

She is in awful shape.

I can't stand it.

She's only 64. She was so vital, so brilliant, so creative. Now she can't walk, talk, or interact. I barely didn't cry there. I miss her so much. It breaks me to think of how she used to be and how she is now. It seems amazing that she's still a human, still the same human being.

It's not fair, it shouldn't be, that this is what her whole life was leading up to. But it is and I am so sorry.

Maybe eventually I'll get to the point where it's something other than a thousand stabs reminding me that my mother's dead, or that other people's mother's aren't dead.

It's been more intense this year than in past years.

Did you know that when you hate it, Mother's Day actually lasts about two weeks? Starting from when the ads come out.

A friend sent me a link to this article about the epidemic of rape in the Congo. It's nightmarish like awful.

An excerpt:
Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3.

“Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that they don’t understand what happened to them,” Dr. Mukwege said. “They ask me if they will ever be able to have children, and it’s hard to look into their eyes.”

No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can explain exactly why this is happening.

“That is the question,” said André Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo. “Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide.”

Read the whole article but be prepared to feel sick. I did a google search to see what people are doing to help and what I could do to help. This has been covered for years, but the only magazine article that mentioned anything productive was a Ms. Magazine article from 2005. Shouldn't that be part of more journalism? Right this second i certainly think so.

Ms. Magazine recommended letters to the UN secretary general and to the multinational mining corporations operating in the region, as well as donations to The Panzi Hospital, which is mentioned in the NYT article as well, and which struggles to provide services and health care to victims of rape.

Vday.org, an organization to end violence against women, is also organizing a campaign specifically focused on the Congo. You can also donate through their site (I couldn't get it to work directly from the Panzi Hospital site).

"Soft tissue damage" is what the doctors called whatever is in my foot that's been slowing me down for two weeks. TWO WEEKS. Not okay. I limp, it hurts to walk, I take the dog on incredibly puny walks. I thought if I waited two weeks it would either go away or the docs would take it seriously. Because I don't really believe them.

Yeah yeah, probably they're right, but they gave me a prescription for the pain; ibuprofen that, as far as I can tell, is the same strength as over the counter but more expensive. Does not inspire confidence!

And yeah, if it's not better in two MORE weeks of pain and restricted mobility, then I can go back. For what purpose, who the hell knows, since they seem to have completely given up on any actual diagnosis once they saw a lack of fractures in my feet.

DAMN IT!!

That's me...

Last night I dawdled and didn't do the work due tomorrow. I don't even know how mandatory it is. I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I told myself I would just skip it. Skip it and skip school and sleep and do laundry and clean house.

Then at 6am with no alarm I woke up, got up, did the homework I'd been procrastinating for a week in under an hour, and am dressed with the dog walked. I'm glad to see there's at least some of that indomitable last minute spark + academic self-compulsion left in my soul!

I haven't posted in ages, for various reasons, including the somewhat decreased anonymity of my LJ! Well, whatever!

In the mean time, I finished law school!! I'm in bar school now, technically right now, because I'm skipping, because it's business law and I hate business law. And I'm bad at it, so clearly it makes sense to skip! Hmmm.... Oh well, I'll do the work anyhow. Eventually!

I've been fostering dogs. Now I have this awesome great dane called Sam. He's small for a great dane and is probably a bit of a mutt. He's five years old and someone went through time and trouble training him, so it's unbelievable to me that he would end up on 'death row' at the SPCA. Poor thing!

In general, I'm feeling somewhat restless and anchorless. So many of my good friends left Montreal, permanently or temporarily, and my heart is a little sore. Hopefully something good is around the corner though!

Here's a cool link:

Phemisaur - the radical feminist T-Rex, piercing social commentary via your childhood toys, yay!!

Apparently this is what has been making me miserable the last two weeks! If I weren't so sure (based on past experience) that the doctor would make me feel stupid for coming to consult them and send me home to drink fluids and 'come back if you're still feeling bad in a week' I might have been able to start antibiotics *last* week!

Instead, I ended up in the emergency room at 3am this morning because my mouth was so swollen up I could barely open it and it *scared* me. I got my first IV ever, as well... steroids! and then massive doses of antibiotics. I also got a little video camera attached to a tube going up my nose and down my throat (cool! weird!!), yucky tasting numbing spray, and needles in my gums. Yet, it wasn't such a bad experience! I slept, learned a lot of leining, and felt *much* better afterwards. I hope it was due as much to the antibiotics as to the steroids, because I'm getting more of the former but not of the latter.

I made it home around 2:40 this afternoon... pretty wiped. But hopefully I will be in dancing form for the wedding I'm going to on Sunday!

At least it wasn't Mumps...

You might have thought Hasidic fashion was behind the times, clinging to the dress of a antiquated aristocracy Jews were never even part of. Oops! Turns out they were just ahead of the fashion curve for an unusually long time!


(image from the Slate magazine article)

I got to Slate's article on The Rise of Schmatte Chic through the anti-racism site Racialicous, which introduced it with this caption:

Move over, Asians! The next big thing to be culturally appropriated by the fashion industry is Jewish culture. “Nevertheless, designers have stopped short of weaving Jewish references into their designs—until now. The pioneer in this is Herchcovitch…”

I feel kind of weird in not being upset about this the same way I might be about the appropriation of Asian culture for fashion, which they compare it to. Is it because so many of the designers are actually Jewish? Or just weird tribal pride? Anyway, I mostly feel kind of tickled, I wish they had more images!

This cracked me up:
Stop Licking Him -- You Don't Know Where He's Been!

Six-year-old to guy stranger while hiding behind mother on cell: Hi.
20-something guy: Hello...
Six-year-old, grabbing guy's hand: Hi.
20 something guy, confused: Hello...
Six-year-old to mom: I picked one!
Mom: You picked what? No! I told you that you could pick out the stamps, not a person! Put him back!

--Post office

Overheard by: Put back

via Overheard in New York, Mar 10, 2007

Also, I'm randomly completely exhausted. Time change?

My articling interviews went well. Which naturally means there will be no call backs. Because my life is like that. I think I smiled too much. I'm not even happy. It's not fair!

This too is for the best. That is my new mantra.

I know there were reasons we weren't supposed to like Netanyahu, but what were they again?

Anyway, he's very impressive in this interview (youtube link). Straightforward, so straightforward, can that possibly be true?

A favorite quote I recorded from somewhere in the Bible: "giving a straightforward answer is like giving a kiss." I will try to be more straightforward in the future.

How do you manage straightforward-ness without sacrificing tact and kindness?

The first time I encountered Martha Nussbaum was when I borrowed, completely for leisure/fun reading, Women and Human Development: A Capabilities Approach from a friend of mine (those were the days!) That book discusses new ways to examine and evaluate societies in a way that takes account of *everyone's* interests and prosperity by creating categories of capabilities, like capability to learn, to play, to work, etc.

I was super impressed by her ideas and clarity of thought, assumed she was into economics, and was mildly shocked to see her work on law and literature in not one but two of my law school classes. Fine, my teacher mostly used her as a jumping off point for criticism (much of it inaccurate, imo), but I started to wonder what this woman does *not* do. I think she's brilliant.

Then, in my internet ramblings, I somehow came to this interview with her in a European webzine. She covers a couple of different topics, but my favorite part is when the interviewer tries to lead her into distancing herself from and marginalizing MacKinnon and Dworkin, but Nussbaum just won't play!

SV: And one final question about feminism, a more philosophical question. I have always felt that you have a critical attitude towards the more extreme feminist views. I think of people like Andrea Dworkin and to some extent Catharine MacKinnon. To what extent has your intervention influenced this sort of more radical feminist? Have things changed do you think, have things become more balanced today?

MN: My view about MacKinnon and Dworkin is extremely positive, as I've said both in Sex and Social Justice and in Hiding From Humanity. I think that both are great and I have great enthusiasm for their views...

This is a great clip (11 minutes) from "Dildo Diaries", the absurdity is apparent (my favorite part is the giggling of the Texas legislature and one amazing Senator posing the tough questions) and the commentary and presentation are exquisite. Funny, sad, funny, pathetic, funny, disgusting, and funny!

Dildo Diaries excerpt on Youtube

Texas legislature has embarrassed itself with writing laws about sex ever since I can remember... it's just an embarrassment to everybody when they do dipshit stuff like this. -Molly Ivins

Check out the examples of retouching on this commercial site - beauty is in the eye of the retoucher.

Now if we could all just see the beauty in one another...

Here she is speaking about the portrayal of girls and women in media, especially media aimed at young children, and discussing her project: See Jane

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQdPv7BzCDU&eurl=

Men are naturally more romantically aggressive?
Women naturally groom themselves to be more attractive to men?

Right...

Well, not on ORANGO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau, at least, not till recently:

"Now the world is upside down," complained 90-year-old Cesar Okrane, his eyes obscured by a cloud of cataracts. "Men are running after women, instead of waiting for them to come to them."

Standing in the shade of a grass roof, he holds himself upright with the help of a tall spear and explains that when he was young he took extra care to maintain his physique, learned to dance and practiced writing poetry — all ways in which men can try to attract women, without overtly making the first move.


Source: Women, not men, choose spouses on African isle

More things to be happy about in the conservative movement! As a follow up to the Rabbinic Assembly's decision to allow the ordination of gay rabbis, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the RA did a huge survey of members of the conservative movements (especially rabbis/educators/leaders/students). They have now published a summary of the results.

It was good to see the overwhelming support for the change. I am not surprised by the greater support among younger people, or the lower support in Canada and Israel, but I was a bit surprised about the results broken down along sex lines - pleased by the support among women (80%) and disappointed by men's lower rate of support (60%) and dismayed by the disparity.

What are the chances?

I did somewhat worse on my crim law exam than I was expecting and went to discuss it with the prof. He had made up a statute that changed sexual assault from a crime requiring the intent to have sexual contact with someone without their consent, to a crime of negligence the mental element is marked departure from a reasonable standard of care. We were supposed to discuss it.

So I hit all the constitutional considerations, as far as I can tell, the main issue is whether a standard of negligence would be appropriate for the offense of sexual assault, considering issues such as definition, overbreadth, vagueness, stigma, and moral culpability. But I didn't actually use the word "consent" in my essay so I got marked down. Never mind that consent is only a part of the larger issue of the appropriateness of the negligence standard, and not even necessarily a very relevant one (especially considering that it is good law in Canada that consent is irrelevant in certain kinds of assault, eg unregulated fights), the prof wants it to stand on its own.

I feel kind of vindicated because I talked with one of my classmates that I respect the most, who did so much work for the class (tons more than I did), and he feels the same way. He is appealing his grade, and I'm considering it...

Plus this prof is pompous and annoying, nice in the way that people who are sure they're better than you are, and managed to teach criminal law as callously and heartlessly as if we were talking about tax!

Okay, rant over.

In a short discussion after class, one of my francophone profs mentioned that the thought that the sovereignty issue would never go away. Parents pass their identity to the kids and there's not much to be done about it. It's an issue of identity.

I often hear people (anglophones) deride Quebec nationalism for being shortsighted and impractical. It's so clear to them that Quebec would be financially worse off outside of Canada, and they can't understand how that wouldn't matter to sovereigntists.

But when you get down to it, their arguments aren't based on economic issues either. Especially for non-Quebec federalists, if they want Quebec to stay part of Canada, it has pretty much zero to do with the economic impact on Canada of Quebec leaving. They care, and deeply, about their vision of Canada, and it doesn't have much to do with practicalities. As far as Quebec federalists, and especially anglophones, there is anger, fear, and pain associated with Quebec nationalism. They don't remember, especially people my age, but older ones too, the oppression of the francophone majority. They remember watching their careers go downhill, their property values dropping, their communities leaving, and their ambitions becoming pipe dreams because of language laws.

Questions of identity are so fascinating. I was shocked when I heard people shouting, "Quebec, Liban, Palestin - Solidarité" at a Hezbollah-Lebanon rally a couple of months ago. I think that most North Americans would be. My most federalist friend pointed out that French Canadians are the best treated minority in the world. (This was her opinion, but it may well be fact). But it doesn't really matter because it's not about measurable things, it's about identity. If French Canadians identify with Palestinians, pointing out the disparities in their experience is irrelevant.

After the discussion with my prof, my friend Nicholas (also francophone) said that he disagreed - sovereignty will go away (as an issue) because what French Canadians really want is a kind of acknowledgement and recognition. My response was that Canada - specifically Canadian identity - is not capable of giving that recognition because it goes against deeply held (if relatively new) Canadian ideals of multiculturalism and, yes, post-nationalism.

He thought Canadian identity could change and pointed to Michael Ignatieff, anglo academic, who calls for a patchwork Canadian identity and is (more) supportive of Quebec particularism, and who was rejected for Liberal party leader in favor of Stephane Dion, French Canadian career politician who is hated in Quebec for his strong federalist stance. Not particularly supportive of his point, I thought!

And, I had that prof's exam today and it went well! (which means I probably did worse than on the exams that I thought sucked, but by the time I get the grades hopefully I won't care anyway!)