Travel notes

Next Tuesday, I'll be flying to New York to visit Nathan until Sunday, so I won't be posting next weekend. This is the first time in a very long time that I will be going on vacation on my own, and I'm excited about it. Iris has had a couple of trips to New York (related to work) since we last saw Nathan together in October, and she has been able to add in some time with him both times. So I've been feeling a mighty pull to see him myself.

He's had his spring break and so is on the downward slope toward end-of-term, meaning he is a busier-than-usual graduate student. Hence, I'm lining up some plans for things I want to see and do on my own. It's not hard in a place like New York.

In a funny kind of way, New York has been brought down to size for me now that it is the city where Nathan lives. This happened to Los Angeles a few years ago. We had previously thought of LA as a vaguely evil, hulking monolith in the Southland. Having Nathan down at UCLA meant that we spent a number of long weekends there, coming to appreciate quite a few aspects of the City of Angels, including learning that its downtown actually has a history!

But, back to my New York plans: on this trip, I am going to indulge my love of history. This is partly because I am meeting up with our dear friend Lisa, who is an historian teaching at UNC-Wilmington. Here are some of the places I hope to see:

• Tammany Hall, on Union Square, the last home of the New York's famed Democratic political machine. It's now the site of the New York Film Academy. The most famous boss was William M. Tweed, seen here in a well-known political cartoon by Thomas Nast from the late 1860's.

• The Asch Building, former site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. On 3/25/1911, a fire claimed the lives of 146 young sweatshop workers, many of whom jumped from the windows of the upper floors where the doors were locked, preventing them from exiting.
  
  In this photo, firemen are searching for bodies of victims on the sidewalk around the building.
  
  
  Following the fire, the outrage and protests were so widespread, long-needed reforms, including new health, safety and sanitation standards, were finally enacted and enforced.
  
  The Asch Building today is known as the Brown Building and is used for classrooms by New York University.

• The Tenement Museum--a Lower East Side apartment building that has been turned into a museum of the daily lives of people living in tenements. Nathan, Lisa and I have tickets for three of the tours: "Getting By," "Piecing It Together" and "The Moores."

• New York University's Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. On Friday next week, I'm going to be having lunch with a colleague who works at NYU, and afterwards, I thought I would take a look at her library's special collections. One of the gems is the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

It ought to be a fascinating backdrop to my conversations with a young man learning the profession of city planning. One other spot I know I will want to see is the park in Brooklyn where Nathan is doing his internship. This is along the waterfront on what is essentially reclaimed land, using recycled materials. He says the views of Manhattan alone are worth the trip over the bridge, but I know I'll want the full tour!

Roominess

Nathan has been home from grad school for spring break this week, and it has reminded me of an offhand comment he made in August after his successful garage sale. I should back up and say that the garage sale was preceded by the most massive room cleaning he had done since (maybe) the 5th grade. Let me describe it this way: the floor in his room became visible!

He got rid of three electronics systems, his Magic the Gathering cards, various speaker systems, a fancy calculator he needed for high school math, stuffed animals, clothing, books... in short: he got rid of substantial parts of his past.

And, at the end, he made this statement: "Every time I come home from now on, I will clean up one more drawer or shelf in my room until it's all clear so you can reuse the room."

We were taken aback, needless to say. Not only by his resolve, but also by his suggestion that we would actually move on, that we would re-use his room. Of course, we had secretly imagined this, but we had never said anything to him!

And now, seven months later, Nathan is on his second visit home since then. And he hasn't done any subsequent cleaning.

This is actually an interesting convention, this "visit home" language. I remember it from when I was his age. I had stopped thinking of my parents' home as my home rather abruptly even before I went off to college, because they had moved away from my childhood home in the middle of my senior year of high school. So, on my trips back to see them during and after college, I was always very clear to make the distinction that I was going to see my parents, and not going home.

Nathan's growing up has been different from mine in any number of ways, as you might imagine. Certainly one of these is that his parents have continued to live in his old house, in his home town, even as he has left to go to college, and now to go on to graduate school. We are his home base.

Nathan still says he is coming "home," and I think he still feels that way. It's also true that he has started onto a road of undetermined length toward creating another home. He is now living, for the first time, with someone he loves, his girlfriend Alisa.

So, one day maybe he'll stop thinking of this as his home. Or maybe he'll be a person who makes room for more than one home in his big heart. I really don't know how it works for someone who gets to take his or her own time with this particular transition. But, somehow, I think it will be relatively easy, because Nathan is so at ease with it all. And he's in the lead.

Back from the firing range

I wanted to jot down a couple of quick observations from my trip to Target Master West in Milpitas where I shot a gun for the first time today.

(If you want to know the background on this, look here.)

First, Target Master West is located in a strip mall, like everything else in Milpitas. Somehow perfectly NRA, and yet so far from the Wild West.

The staff member who helped us was very friendly, explaining our choices and showing me--the total neophyte-- how to load the ammunition and rifle. The guy standing next to me with his rifle showed me how to hold the rifle. When I said it was the first time I had ever held one, he said, "we've all been there."

We chose our targets, simple bull's-eyes,donned our ear and eye protection and then went into the lanes. I had lane 15. Stephanie clipped on my target the first time, and I controlled how far away it went on the wire with a switch. I loaded my gun, shouldered the rifle and started shooting.

What I learned fairly quickly was that I tended to shoot high and to the left. When I remembered to put my cheek to the rifle, like the man in the line told me, I could get a better aim, and hit the bull's eye circle. I liked this challenge quite a bit, and I liked that I could get better at it within the hour we shot.

The rifle I used was a 22. That's the smallest size. It jammed a lot, which people said happens fairly often with 22s, because the bullets are really small. They get turned around inside the chamber. When I do this again, I want to try a rifle that uses larger bullets. I'll need to get used to that, anyway, for boar hunting.

A taxing situation

At last counting (2003), there were 1,138 federal laws that provide benefits, rights and privileges based on marital status. This is from a report by the General Accounting Office, developed at the request of then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. 

Twenty-three of these laws are found in the Internal Revenue Code. I was blissfully unaware of the effect of these particular statutes for the first 16 years of my marriage until 2007 when the Great State of California started requiring Registered Domestic Partners to file a joint state income tax return.

You know the drill: you do your federal taxes first, and then use those numbers to jump-start your state return, right? Well, Iris and I don't file a joint federal return, because the federal government doesn't recognize our marriage. So now, in order to file our state taxes, we have to create a fake joint federal income tax return first.

This is a major pain in the butt--double entry times two. On top of that, when we get done with process, we are faced with concrete evidence of the genuine financial privilege given to heterosexual couples by the federal income tax laws. It makes completing our income taxes an annual walk through Discrimination Park.

Here's what I mean. In 2008, if our marriage were recognized by the federal government, we would have received a refund of $1269. Instead, together we paid in $599 in additional federal taxes. This year, if our marriage were recognized by the federal government, we would be receiving a $1599 refund. Instead, together we will be getting a refund of $1316.

In other words, we pay more taxes than heterosexual married couples. This is not fair, and it's not right. Here's the sad thing: I'm a cornball Midwestern girl who used to feel kind of patriotic about paying taxes. Now, it just makes me cry.

Being a carnivore

Next weekend, I'm taking a first step toward eating more meat. When I first started this blog, I explained why I eat fish and not other animals. I've stuck with that for a while now, something like a year and a half.

However, I have had in the back of my mind the last chapter of Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma in which he makes a meal from food he has hunted or gathered. The meat he serves comes from a wild boar he has hunted in Sonoma County, CA.

It seems that the wild boar is considered an invasive species pretty much everywhere it now lives, including Sonoma County. That gives hunting wild pigs an environmentally righteous tinge. The hunter can feel he or she is part of an environmental solution, a clean-up task, if you will.

The California Department of Fish and Game actually has a Wild Pig Management Program, including special hunts, hunter education, and "pig take reports." From the pig take reports of past years, you can see the "method of take" for every county in the state. By far, the most common method of "taking" a wild pig is with a rifle.

And that leads to my next step: a field trip to Target Master West, a shooting range in Milpitis. I have to find out if I can shoot a rifle! I am going with a few friends from work, who have been to Target Master several times before. This is just the first step, I know, but it definitely feels like a moment.

Target Master's tagline is "Serving the Shooting Community for Over 25 Years." The thought that I might be joining "the shooting community" has given me pause, I  must say. I find myself imagining wearing some kind of sign on my back saying "only hunting for food not sport."

At the bottom of this is a real curiosity on my part as to whether or not I have it in me to be a pig hunter. I'm going to start finding that out.

Do Tell

This week, several pieces of news hit me in succession.

On Monday, the NY Times announced that a study was to come out the next day saying that gay soldiers in foreign militaries do not cause disruptions, so long as the transition to full integration was swift. The study pertained to militaries in Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa and other countries.

I was interested in this, so I followed the link to the think tank that would be issuing this report and signed up to receive notification when it came out.

I got the notice on Tuesday. Here's the report.

The think tank is the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since 1998, the Center has been a leader in commissioning and disseminating research in the areas of gender, sexuality, and the military.

Here are the study's major points:

• 25 nations now allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.
• Although controversy preceded implementation of the policy changes, and polls indicated massive resignations would occur, in Britain and Canada, only 3 people resigned when the policies were implemented.
• "No consulted expert anywhere in the world concluded that lifting the ban on openly gay service caused an overall decline in the military."
• "Evidence suggests that lifting bans on openly gay service contributed to improving the command climate in foreign militaries, including increased focus on behavior and mission rather than identity and difference, greater respect for rules and policies that reflect the modern military, a decrease in harassment,retention of critical personnel, and enhanced respect for privacy."
• These successes persist over time, and no delayed problems emerge.
• "A quick, simple implementation process is instrumental in ensuring success. Swift, decisive implementation signals the support of top leadership and confidence that the process will go smoothly, while a 'phased-in' implementation can create anxiety, confusion, and obstructionism."
• "Two main factors contributed to the success of transitions to openly gay service: clear signals of leadership support and a focus on a uniform code of behavior without regard to sexual orientation. Also key are simple training guidelines that communicate the support of leadership, that explain the uniform standards for conduct, and that avoid 'sensitivity' training, which can backfire by causing resentment in the ranks."
• "None of the countries studied installed separate facilities for gay troops, nor did they retain rules treating gays differently from heterosexuals."
• "Lifting bans on openly gay service in foreign countries did not result in a mass 'coming out.'"
• "There were no instances of increased harassment of or by gay people as a result of lifting bans in any of the countries studied."
• "Informal discrimination in treatment and promotions have not been wiped out, but evidence suggests that formal policies of equal treatment for people equally situated helps reduce discrimination and resentment, and helps keep the focus on behavior necessary to complete the mission rather than on group traits that can distract from the mission."
• "The U.S. military has a long tradition of considering the experiences of other militaries to be relevant to its own lessons learned."

On Wednesday, the NY Times covered the testimony before Congress of two generals who expressed "serious concerns" about repealing the Don't Ask Don't Tell law "on a force that’s fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for eight-and-a-half years," in the words of General George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of Staff. His colleague, General Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff "cautioned that there was little research [my emphasis] on how the policy change might affect Air Force personnel deployed for combat, surveillance and support missions around the world."

The Times then reported, "Both expressed reservations about moving too swiftly to change the policy [my emphasis], and both endorsed the decision by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to deliberately review the issue before acting."

Then, later on Wednesday, I got another notification from the Palm Center, this one a grim reminder of the sad toll these wars are taking. A gay soldier had died in Afghanistan. Tragically, soldiers are dying every day in Afghanistan and Iraq, so why should I call out this soldier's death? Consider this:

Because of Don't Ask Don't Tell, this soldier's partner was not informed of his death (except incidentally). Needless to say, his partner was also not able to make decisions about the disposition of his remains. Because of Don't Ask Don't Tell, an injured soldier's partner would not be able to make emergency decisions on his or her behalf.

And of course, because of a whole host of other discriminatory rules, regulations and laws, the deceased soldier's partner will not be eligible for survivor's benefits, just like the partner had not been eligible for any benefits during the soldier's lifetime.

This situation is appalling beyond words. The idea that these men and women are putting their lives on the line for a country that does not respect them enough to treat them as full citizens with equal rights under the law just makes me sick.

Congress must make a start toward changing this situation by repealing the Don't Ask Don't Tell law and demanding a swift transition, as research in 25 nations shows is the best way. Please follow this link and contact your senators. Demand action now while lives are on the line.

Stirred down

I was making dinner a week or two ago for our friends Jan and Jay, when I reached for a certain spoon in the drawer. I choose this particular spoon whenever I am cooking something special or cooking for people for whom I feel a special love.

This spoon once belonged to my grandmother, who used it so much she wore it down. My mother called it "stirred down." I never knew my grandmother, because she died when my mother was a young girl. When I stir things with this spoon, I think about my mother stirring with this spoon, and I know she was thinking about her mother stirring with this spoon. In this way, I can bring them both to me as I cook.

My mother told me stories about spending time around her mother cooking, including one about her singing (repeatedly) to her mother the 1925 hit  "Tie Me to Your Apron Strings Again." Her mother lost patience, eventually, and if you follow the link you may get some hint as to why that might be. She hugged my mother (a little girl) and proceeded to tie my mother to her with her apron strings.

I have my own memories of watching my mother cook, none as dramatic, nor as musical. However, I can call up how to roll out a pie crust, and beat and stir batters, simply by envisioning my mother's hands going through those motions. When I was a new cook, this was especially helpful.

Now, when I hold this one spoon, which has been in my mother's and grandmother's hands, they are with me, even as I am preparing a meal I will eat with living loved ones tonight. It fills me up, and I fill the food with this feeling. Maybe I should rename this post "Stirred up."