Hot times, murder in the city

Hi all - hope you had a good Hanukkah/Christmas/Solstice/Kwanzaa (still having), etc. Thanks again for sticking with me through the slow blogging time - I should be back to full speed next week!

Meanwhile, I ran across this article on Salon about murder rates going up. Though most law enforcement spokespeople are blaming the rise on easy access to guns, turning what would likely have been fist fights into shooting matches, the whole thing sent my mind down a funky little path.

A while back, a bunch of psychologists decided to measure how long it took people to honk their horns when the driver in front of them didn't go when the light turned green. Psychologists, being the creative folks they are, tried variations of people standing on the corner, including clowns and hot chicks, as well as varied weather conditions and temperatures. The relevant part to this ramble is that people were much quicker to honk, therefore presumably more agitated, when it was hot out.

Additionally, though I'm too short on time to look it up now, I'm pretty sure I've read that murder rates increase in the summer for the very same reason - people are hot and agitated and take everything way too personally.

And then there's global warming - again, no time to look it up, but in the past week the News & Record printed a map showing the shift in temperate zones (or whatever growing areas are called) showing that Greensboro now has the climate that once only existed in North Carolina at the beach.

Just a little food for thought...

Winter Solstice

P.S. (which I guess here would be pre-script) Happy Winter Solstice to all you Wiccans and generally earthy folks!

Flashing mailbox

From my office window, I can see my neighbor's mailbox which is currently draped in flashing red and green lights. It's got a variable flash interval which is just good entertainment. I know, it's War on Christmas time and I shouldn't be calling Christmas lights entertaining - I should be mad, or out smashing them with a baseball bat, what being Jewish and all.

I had a breakthrough this year, though - not one of appreciating Christmas suddenly - I've always been down with Christmas. As a kid, I helped our neighbors decorate their tree every year and as a quasi-adult, I had Christmas trees in my home when the person I was dating or my roomie (depending on the year) wanted one. My last Christmas tree with my final roommate was so tiny that we decorated it with hanging earrings.

Anyway, my breakthrough was that I'm not the one starting or perpetuating the War on Christmas - nor are people like the Seattle rabbi who wanted a menorah displayed with the Christmas trees at the airport or the ACLU or whoever it was that decided to list school holidays as "winter break" rather than "Christmas break". It's people like this, this and this who are waging war.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are celebrating or preparing to celebrate whatever holiday it is we celebrate and having a grand old time at it. What the Christmas warriors don't seem to understand is that this is not an issue of exclusiveness - I'd like to think that schools and malls have switched to generic holiday greetings not because of some imaginary lawsuit over political correctness but because they hope to include all members of the melting pot that is America in their seasonal joy.

Just thinking that people are trying to exclude Christians from their own holiday gives me a little chuckle - can a generic holiday greeting change or in any way impact the fact that the Christian Savior was born over two thousand years ago? Can my holiday greeting keep you from decorating your tree or attending midnight mass or spending Christmas morning watching your kids tear through presents? I'm crazy powerful if it can.

On the flip side, can placing luminaries in front of my house while I'm away at my family's Hannukah celebration impact my holiday? Whereas a holiday greeting is inclusive of all, luminaries are specifically related to Christmas... Of course the luminaries didn't change our lighting the menorah or opening presents or eating latkes but it did piss me off. I have no problem with luminaries - they're very pretty all lined up along the street, but Christmas is not my holiday and it is a slight to mine and my husband's actual spiritual practices to place a Christmas symbol in front of our house without our consent.

But I'm over it because Hannukah was fun and my in-law's Christmas celebration, for which my Jewish mother is joining us, is right around the corner. Then it's a long, 11 month wait for the next War on Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

More consciencious marketing

Bristol-Myers Squibb, as part of their ad campaign for their HIV drug Reyataz, is donating a dollar to the National AIDS Fund for every virtual candle lit on their site. That's right - you just click. According to the Web site, they have had over a million clicks so far.

Cool and mesmerizing

I wrote about it when it first came out, but I think the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is rad, even if it is for selling product. This video goes through the whole process of a photo shoot from the beauty team to the computer modifications. Mesmerizing!

At my door: armed police officer and hungry pit bull

This piece was originally published in the News & Record on December 13, 2006.

The morning before Thanksgiving - very, very early the morning before - our younger dog, Cosmo, woke us with increasingly insistent barking. We hushed him and continued to snooze... until, that is, the door bell rang, alerting Cosmo and his sister, Emmie, that it was time for full-blown, outdoor, cat's-in-the-driveway barking.

From our upstairs window, we saw a police car parked in front of our house with the spotlight trained on our door. Ringing the bell was an officer clutching his 12-gauge. The officer apologized for the early wake-up call and explained that a neighbor thought a pit bull terrorizing the neighborhood might be ours. The still-unceasing yapping of our mixed-breeds proved otherwise.

Just then, the aforementioned pit bull came tearing around the corner; the officer asked, then quickly entered our house. The dog's ribs were showing clearly through its skin as it jumped up, pawing at the storm door. And that's how we found ourselves, three grown adults, trapped inside a house by a hungry pit bull.

Eventually, my husband distracted the dog by pounding on a window just long enough for the officer to stick a huge bowl of kibble on the door stoop. We hoped the food would keep the dog occupied until animal control could save the day, but no such luck; the kibble was gone and the dog was back to barking in record time.

After 20 or so minutes and a dozen apologies, the officer snuck out of our house through the backyard, climbed on top of his cruiser and lured the dog into his backseat. I hate to think of the state of his upholstery between the oversized bowl of kibble on an empty stomach and the dog's sharp teeth.

Mission accomplished, right? The dog was apprehended and no one got hurt.

The problem remains that not only was their a lose, emaciated dog in our neighborhood but that the dogs was wearing a collar and therefore had an owner. (Of course, getting close enough to the dog to determine who that owner might be was its own problem).

My anecdotal dog expertise comes from my own dogs and those of my friends and family. Except for a cocker spaniel with a mid-life crisis, these are all dogs which would sooner lick a person to death than bare their teeth. Maybe that's because they happen to have the genetics of kinder, gentler breeds. Or maybe, as I tend to believe, it's because they've been well fed and cared for.

It seems to me that the bad rap given to dogs like pit bulls, Doberman pinschers and German shepherds is a self-fulfilling prophecy: they have a reputation for being aggressive, so people who want aggressive dogs buy them and raise them to be as such, thus adding to the reputation. Starve and mistreat a notoriously sweet dog like a labrador and you're likely to see the same behavior.

Conversely, buy a pit bull and treat it with loving kindness and you might just find yourself with a hulking lap dog.

In a city where we have little need for herding sheep, dogs serve solely to enhance the lives of their owners. But whose lives are they enhancing when they're angry from abuse or hunger, or when their lives are spent in the six foot circle allowed by a lead in the yard?

Neglected, malnourished dogs add undue danger to neighborhoods, divert our police force from crime and fill our animal shelters with animals that will most likely be euthanized.

This is not a complex problem to solve, however. All it takes is a little food and a lot of loving attention for our four-legged family members

The education hoax

I've thought for a while now that though college is fun and can lead to well-rounded human beings, mass education probably isn't the solution to global outsourcing. But I couldn't have explained why with nearly as much insight as Jonathan Tasini. Don't miss the last paragraph.

Beck's new website

I might be slow, but I just noticed that Beck redesigned his website and it might just be the coolest website I've ever seen. Be sure to check out the videos and the store.

Winter Walk follow-up

With money still coming in, Triad Health Project has already tallied $109,000 raised from Winter Walk! Thanks to all of you who walked and donated!

Winter Walk 06

The N&R estimates that between 2500 and 3000 people participated in yesterday's Winter Walk for AIDS. As always, it was a bittersweet event. After all, you can't raise money for a disease without admitting that the disease is impactful, and painful. But the streets of Greensboro were filled with hope as these thousands of people walked together to raise money for prevention, services for those living with HIV/AIDS and research towards a cure.


A&T made a strong showing, with a kick-off performance by their amazing marching band. We wondered why the anarchist drum circle wasn't at their annual spot in front of War Memorial Stadium only to find them cheering us on at the midpoint, circled up on the corner of Market and Elm.

Every year, there's that glimmer of hope that there won't be a walk next year because AIDS will have gone the way of polio. In the meantime, it's nice to gather in hope.

Our team:

Thanksgiving response

Generally, even when I don't get around to reading the whole paper, I check out the letters to the editor - they strike me as an inside peek at what people around Guilford County are thinking and often there's at least one that's comedy gold, whether the author intended it as such or not... But somehow I missed the counterpoint piece in the News & Record on November 25th entitled 'America is bad' routine grows boring, a response to my piece Thanksgiving comes with two sides.

I finally tracked it down in the archives, along with all the blogged chatter. I thought it was interesting that the author, Steve Gordon, chose to focus on my negative comments rather than the ultimate catharsis of enjoying Thanksgiving as a time to share with some of my favorite people. On the comment board, Hayes summed up my point succinctly by writing, "I don't understand why it so hard to see what a great nation we are and at the same time admit we are not perfect saints and that we have made mistakes and not be called left elitist for it."

What Gordon and the rest of the folks who have logged negative responses don't realize is that I enjoy those as much, if not more, than the supportive responses. Gordon doesn't get it and he won't because he's locked into a different view of patriotism than I am - I believe I can love America despite it's faults and he thinks loving America means ignoring its faults. But I got under his skin a little - I made him think about it at least long enough to write the piece and send it in. He probably even talked to a few people about it and felt really mighty and strong when he saw it in print.

I don't begrudge Gordon any of that - he can call me all the names he wants to but ultimately he's furthering my goal of creating dialogue. My thanks to Gordon, to the posters on the N&R blog and to you, for reading this now!

The N word

I've long been an advocate to using words in order to rob them of their power - though, admittedly, as a white woman, I stuck to words that could be used in reference to me, like the dreaded c-word (which, as you can read in this long-ago post, shocked and cracked my sister up) but never the n-word - not my word, therefore not in my power to soften its ugliness. Still, I believed that even the n-word could eventually lose its power, over lots of time.

But poet Etan Thomas makes the argument that we shouldn't try to take its power - we should remember why that word originated and seal it in the ugly annals of history, along with swastikas and Confederate flags. Read his blog post here.

p.s. I'm still going to use the c-word.

Oh how the cogs turn

So, let me get this straight: Bush uses illegal wiretapping and Gingrich is suggesting rethinking the whole freedom of speech thing, all to keep us safe from terrorists, and they aren't even using the processes already in place?

Checking in

I'm going to have to go ahead and apologize for what is bound to be an extended slow-down of my blog. I've taken a temp job through the end of the year (which makes 3 or 5 jobs, depending on how you count) in my search to figure out which way my path is heading. While multiple jobs have their own built-in problems, it is pretty sweet to be in a place in my life where I can fish around as I pursue my idea life.

I'll keep posting but it might not be as frequently as before, at least until January when I expect the load to lighten a little. Thank you for continuing to check in and for your patience during this jaunt of mine.

Oh, and FYI: my column, which would usually run tomorrow, has been rescheduled this week only for Sunday, to coincide with the Winter Walk for AIDS. If you've never participated, I can't urge you strongly enough - it is a beacon of hope in a bleak fight. I'll be back to Wednesdays on December 13.

Thanksgiving, the review

Thanksgiving has passed; turkey and sides are wrapped in the fridge for several more meals, the dishes are (mostly) clean, cars no longer line every spare inch of curb. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving - our mothers came as did several friends and one new face. A friend I haven't seen in a year or more even came by for a while after dropping me a surprise email earlier in the week. We drank wine at noon, spoiled each other with the food we made to share and laughed alot, in conversation and while playing Apples to Apples (seriously - this is a great party game - anyone can play and it's almost always funny).

Today, my mother and I indulged in our yearly Carolina Craftsman tradition. Though the crowd always annoys us, we can't resist checking out the latest craft fad. This year is was dichromatic glass, mostly jewelry, and wildlife photography. Among the most pleasant surprises were a photographer who shot the most amazing still lifes and a folk artist with one large piece that was Carmen Miranda meets Chicken of the Sea.

I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving as well.

Greensboro's finest at 5:30 am

I make it a policy to spend the time between 6:30 and 6:45 am spooning with my husband during the snooze, pre-waking phase. So why, you ask, am I instead dressed and blogging? It's simple, really:

About an hour ago, our younger dog, Cosmo, began returning the barks of dogs across the neighborhood - we could hear them like a muffled dog choir. Cosmo, being the polite dog he is, was giving his little bark but it's still a lot more than I like to hear during what I consider to be the middle of the night. Still, we were mostly asleep... until the doorbell rang. I'm pretty sure Rob yelled; I'm positive both dogs started barking in their outdoor voices.

A peak out of the window showed a cop car parked outside of our house. In retrospect, I wish we had the presence of mind to answer the door yelling something random and confusing like, "There ain't nothin' unholy about our love!"

As it was, we just answered the door to find a young, round cop clutching his 12-gauge. Seems that an emaciated pit bull was on the loose and our neighbor suggested it might be ours. For the record, we have two well-fed mixed-breeds, both of whom are indoor dogs and neither of whom look remotely like a pit bull. We suspect the neighbor who fingered us is the very one who keeps two dogs in a small-ish outdoor pen 24/7 (we've hatched a half dozen plans to spring them) and who, a year ago or so, asked us if we could keep our dogs inside so his outdoor dogs wouldn't bark at them. Sure thing, buddy - we'll potty train them.

Just then, the pit bull charged the cop who quickly asked, then immediately entered our house. Can't blame him or the dog - if my ribs were sticking out, I'd be thinking about biting a cop too. The cop kept apologizing; apparently he'd had a couple of bad experiences with pit bulls and has even had to shoot a couple to get out of it - he was pretty well determined to not have to hurt this dog. We stuck an enormous bowl of food out of the door which the dog ate in a matter of moments... probably too much for one sitting on a shrunken stomach but we were hoping to distract it until animal control could arrive.

Eventually the cop snuck out the back door and through our gate. From our window, we saw him lure the pit bull into the backseat of his cruiser. It was a pretty slick move, actually, though I wonder if the cop will regret it when the dog either pukes up all the food he ate and/or eats the upholstery.

To me, the really sad part is that people buy pit bulls because they want a mean dog and they train them to be that way; the fact that the dog was starved just made it all the worse. Maybe pit bulls do have a greater inherent tendency toward meanness, but any dog would turn mean under some circumstances, and pit bulls can be sweethearts if raised with love.

On the upside, the early wake-up call gave us ample time to get the turkey out of the brine, rinse it off and reconfigure the fridge to give the bird room to dry until it goes into the oven tomorrow morning.

Over and out.

Kramer, Thanksgiving and more

When several days have gone without a post to my blog, I usually can't remember what it is I've been doing... not reading the news, that's for sure.

I did manage to sit down with the Sunday N&R and meant to comment on a couple of things but right now I can only remember one: a hearty congratulations to Mary Watson Ray whose wedding announcement ran Sunday. She and I went to high school together and were very friendly across clique lines (she was on the preppy/popular side, I was on the Sarah side, whatever that was - I really should post a high school picture or two - what fashion sense! What innovation! Whatever...) Mary Watson used to call me Sugar Bugger which still ranks as my all-time favorite nickname. She's a wonderful person and I wish her a lifetime of happiness with her groom!

I'm also tickled, though not surprised, that her wedding portrait in the paper was absolutely beautiful... I've become a bit of a newspaper wedding portrait connoisseur lately, since I realized the comedy gold to be found there. Some of these wedding photographers should be lashed with a wet noodle (my old piano teacher's favorite threat) for the bizarre poses they put some of these unsuspecting brides in - leaning over railings, twisted around as though trying to look at their own asses... for that matter, lashes to the brides who opt to put those awful pictures in the paper... I take that back: you look great, ladies. Keep 'em coming and thanks for the laughs!

All of which is a perfect though unintentional segue into Michael Richards's recent foray into racism. There's really nothing to say about that but, "C'mon, Michael - what the hell?" The power of the n-word continues to loom large because racism still does - of course black people can say it, just as my sister and I feel free to joke about Jewish people but would quickly chew a non-Jew out for doing the same - we can treat ourselves however we want to. Surely, this was not the kind of celeb comeback Richards has been hoping for since Seinfeld ended.

Maybe Richards will spend this Thanksgiving being thankful for the 15 minutes he had... My Thanksgiving ritual begins tonight when I submerge my 23 lb bird (I hope my 4 guests are really hungry) into a brown sugar and salt brine where it will sit overnight. Tomorrow I rinse and let it dry uncovered in the fridge which leads to the awkward salmonella dance - trying to keep a decent radius of space between the raw turkey and unsuspecting milk jugs.

I'll post more about this later, but just a quick reminder that Winter Walk for AIDS is coming up - December 3. Come walk - you'll love the side of Greensboro you see there! Or you can donate to our team here. Jones Computer and Networking, the company I co-own with my husband, will be matching donations dollar for dollar up to $1,000 - your donation will go a long way in the fight against AIDS!

Thanksgiving comes with two sides.

This column was originally printed in the News & Record on November 15, 2006 - and yes, I suck for taking so long to post it...

I hardly recognize my street these days. Multicolored leaves cling to the trees; kids at the bus stop wear jackets and sometimes gloves. A few Halloween decorations remain on lawns; a few Christmas decorations have appeared. Sitting here in my tee-shirt, it hardly seems possible that Thanksgiving could be a week away. But there it is, taunting me with its mixed meaning.

Each year around this time, flyers start popping up around Greensboro, particularly at the cusp between the campuses of UNC-G and Greensboro College. They are artfully done posters condemning the holiday that bolsters the myth that the pilgrims were swell folk who served roasted turkey to the natives.

Maybe they did; maybe some small band of good Europeans befriended the indigenous people, trading skills and tools and cooking up some mythical pot luck. Rumor has it, the natives agreed to bring their special cranberry sauce but it turned out it was canned.

Sadly, no amount of elementary school pageantry, no number of Timmys dressed as turkeys, no amount of headdresses or faux-deer smocks can turn America’s bloody past into a picnic. We all know about the pox-laced blankets, the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of native children so that they could be educated in European-oriented schools. A look at the continued poverty of reservations around the country are enough to know that this greatly diminished population has yet to recover though it has been over five hundred years since Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Each year, I wrestle with Thanksgiving’s dirty secret, even as it is buried beneath neighborhood games of touch football and cartoon character parade balloons. I think about it even as I embark on the multi-day ritual of brining, drying and roasting the turkey; even as I coordinate pot-luck side-dishes; even as I eagerly tally the RSVPs from the mish-mash of family, friends and friends of friends who spend the day at my home.

This year, like the years before, I will eventually console myself by agreeing to be saddened by our past while appreciating a tradition that gives me an excuse to spend time with many of the people I enjoy. I will treat Thanksgiving like the sappy version of any other dinner party, replacing Mediterranean finger foods with sweet potato casserole and cornbread stuffing.

Thanksgiving is also an opportunity to truly consider the meaning of the word, and in so doing spend real time considering our fortunes. In that way, Thanksgiving sometimes reminds me of the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In order to truly observe either, we must not only consider the events of the previous year – what went right, what went wrong – but consider how to turn those into a better year to come.

While on Yom Kippur, we beat our chests and beg forgiveness, on Thanksgiving we can take a less intense approach. I’m thankful for a supportive, smart, fun husband, so next year I’ll work even harder to not take my bad moods out on him. I’m thankful to have a thriving career doing work I love, so next year I will be vigilant to seize every opportunity.

I’m thankful to be American. Despite our ugly history that extends well beyond the settlers, through the slave trade and into today’s political and global scandals, this is an amazing country with unlimited potential. Next year, I will do my part to move our country even closer to what it should be: the global role-model for freedom and democracy.

Alita's Southern Cakes

If you're a Saturday morning Curb Market shopper, you may have seen Alita with her mini pound cakes and big squares of carrot cake with the nice, thick layer of cream cheese icing. I'm lucky enough to count Alita as a friend - we met several years ago when we were both beginning our culinary educations at GTCC. I dropped out during the first semester; Alita graduated with flying colors and converted the garage of her newly built home into a really nice commercial bakery.

As a friend, I've had the opportunity to taste many of Alita's cakes so I can say definitively that everything she makes is amazing, though Rob and I have a serious soft-spot for her carrot cake which is unbelievably moist with icing that's fluffy and not too rich.

Yes! Weekly did justice to Alita's cakes in their article this week but they left out one essential detail: if you want to order Alita's carrot (mmmm.... carrot cake....), red velvet or chocolate cakes, or any of her gourmet, all butter pound cakes, email her at ASC@triad.rr.com or call her at 336.510.0313. Your co-workers/friends/family/special someone will love you for it!

Doogie v Haggard

I may be telling on myself a little to admit this, but I thought Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was hilarious, in a really stupid, mindless-laugh kind of way. Not least of the attraction was Neal Patrick Harris supposedly playing himself, stealing cars in order to run off and party with hot chicks...

As it turns out, Harold and Kumar may be more to the real Harris's taste, as evidenced by Harris's ultra-smooth admission to being gay last week. It was everything a coming-out should be: low-key, totally lacking in sensation, honest and straight forward.

I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest.

Amen!

Leonard Pitts, Jr. did an admirable job in his column yesterday, comparing this kind of honest, healthy admission with the recent outing of gay-basher Ted Haggard. One one hand, we have Harris, who presumably has taken his acceptance of himself into healthy relationships - or, at the very least, honest relationships. On the other hand, we have Haggard who has lied to himself, lied to his wife of 28 years, and had children in this dishonest, self-hating atmosphere. As Pitts so succinctly says,

I bet [Haggard's wife] wishes he had 'flaunted' his homosexuality a long time ago.

Would Haggard have felt the compulsion to hide his true sexuality, and carried on this kind of massive, pervasive lie, if we as a country admitted that homosexuality is an inborn trait, and accepted gays and lesbians accordingly? I doubt it.