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  • Monday’s not the day

    But in my head it feels like the day.

    There’s no particular reason that I shouldn’t get a visa for the US. I’m not a terribly naughty person, beyond my ownership of a rather high number of MZs and my two soviet era watches, I don’t think I harbour enormous communist sympathies, and I’ve (so far) not been kicked out of the US on my trips there.

    I’m a reasonably well educated person with a fair potential for being a productive member of US society.

    And my health is pretty good. Yes, I’ve got a bit of a crap liver, but apparently something like 20% of people have a fatty liver – probably more – because most people never find out. Just that routine blood tests before an operation in my past picked it up. I now eat more healthily, exercise more, and that seems to have at least fixed my blood results… So I don’t really think that there’s a good reason to deny me entry on health grounds.

    But Monday is the medical.

    Which means that I get to trek to London, have the deep joy of going through my medical history, then hopefully at any point in the 6 weeks after that I might have a visa in my grubby little hands.

    Obviously, we still need to sell the house, two cars, a bunch of non-usefully-exportable tools (like, say, my drill-press, which I used once, or the shredder, which I did use, but got fed up with it being so noisy), clear a million books, make a container to transport my vinyl and gramophones in… pack everything, organise the shipping of the piano and some of our nicer bits of art…

    …Rebecca needs to go to JLH for the expensive repairs and modifications to get her back roadworthy.

    …it’s not like our move will be superquick once that visa’s here.

    But it’s making it very real and quite scaryexciting.

    And yes, yes, I know people do far more scaryexciting things. They go and live on deserted islands, or near volcanoes, or they move to some place where they don’t speak the language. But this is big for me. I, like most people, have never lived outside the island (country) I was born in. So it’s big.

    On the plus side, my friends Nikki and Kate will already be in the country, in their nice new house. Hopefully just a month and a half ahead of us.

  • Shame

    When I was at school I had a somewhat interesting history teacher. Most people I’ve met through my life seem to look at Britain’s entry into the Second World War as something almost altruistic. ‘Oh, we did it to protect all those other countries’ they proclaim. That’s not the way I was taught. I was taught that Britain basically looked at the evidence and decided that we were just as screwed as those other countries were, despite Hitler’s alleged fondness for us. That we would likely end up subservient to a new German empire, if they were allowed to continue to build it.

    Yes, we weren’t, as a nation, exactly happy with the mass genocide being inflicted. Indeed, the public would probably have been very unhappy if they’d’ve known exactly what was going on. Yes we had a bunch of treaties with other places. But as a government, it was more a survivalist trait, combined with a marked dislike of the idea of Germany having an empire. If anyone was having an empire, it was us.

    I was taught to criticise and compare historical sources. I was taught to try and consider why, in historical narrative, a particular perspective was being put forward. I was reminded that history is written by the winners. Kind of weird, now I look back, for a GCSE course. At GCSE you usually just regurgitate facts, but our history teacher wasn’t fond of that concept.

    And perhaps because my mother is from a country that the British empire pillaged, where they were forced to import a workforce because the people of that island refused to be servants. And perhaps because my grandfather on my mother’s side hated the English but made an exception for my father (who, incidentally, was Welsh ;) ) because he seemed like a good – and peace loving man.

    Perhaps in part because of all of that, and perhaps in part because of my education, I’ve always had a wary attitude towards unfettered love of my country.

    I love England, or at least, think that it’s a pretty nifty place to have grown up. It’s beautiful. It’s had some really great concepts over the years and has been responsible for some pretty stunning technological leaps for such a small island. It has an odd affection for the underdog and for the quirky. It had the NHS and a social system that for its many sins had a good heart*. There is/was much to love.

    But until I got past my 20s, I believed that everyone had the same education I’d had and had a good understanding of the good – and the bad – that the English (and the UK) had done. I had both pride and some shame with the UK’s behaviour and history. I could look at things like the Bristol suspension bridge and be proud, and know that it couldn’t have had that bridge without slavery, without exploitation.

    I was also aware that the UK had undoubtedly done other things wrong, just like every other country on the planet. Things that we didn’t know about yet. Things where there was no documentary evidence, where the people involved had just died… But so has every country. Let that country without sin cast the first stone and all that.

    But recently I heard something incredibly affecting. And since then I’ve been unable to shake this feeling that I am truly ashamed of my country’s behaviour around one thing. I listened to a Radiolab podcast about the Mau-Mau. I really recommend you listen to it (TW: torture)*. I knew we’d done some spectacularly awful things. Hell, slavery’s a pretty f’kin low point. I remember in teenhood listening to a radio discussion about Britain-as-empire having discussed building gas chambers and concluding that it was far cheaper just to shoot the natives.

    Financial imperatives keeping you from being the originator of something so horrific? Well done us.

    *sigh*.

    But it’s not so much the fact that we tortured and imprisoned so many, many people in our colonies. That is horrendous to listen to and just unutterably awful. It’s not that that really makes me feel ashamed. It’s that even now we can’t own up to it. That the documents exist and rather than critically look at our history, go back and apologise to those that we have harmed, learn from our mistakes, we have put in place barriers to stop anyone else proving that they were harmed by the age of empire. So we can keep wandering around preening and telling everyone else how to behave like we’re some f’kin prize.

    That is deeply shaming.

    * Tangential side point – talked to my mum about this and she was completely unsurprised. She was just ‘Well, yes, I know. That was all in the newspapers in Sri-Lanka when I was growing up. Britain tortured loads of people’. Very matter-of-fact.

    * Past tense, because all of the recent ‘reforms’ have been intended to destroy and undo those things.

  • songscloset:

    Using mathematical crochet to make kitchen scrubbies. I love the intersection of pure math and everyday life.

  • Norway!

    We no longer pack light, Kathryn and I. I’d like to pretend we do. We used to, back when we’d squeeze our belongings into the back of one of our aged fleet of classics. Even the 340 was somewhat restrictive, although it had a cavernous boot, the number of places you could sneak stuff in was far fewer than the older cars had. Of course, that meant that the Prius with its cavernous boot and its many many little places to hold, squeeze and stuff things, the poor car would be stuffed like a christmas turkey by the time we left.
    (more…)

  • Planned Parenthood Replaces Obamacare As The GOP’s Bogeyman

    Planned Parenthood Replaces Obamacare As The GOP’s Bogeyman

    justinspoliticalcorner:

    As the 2010 midterm elections approached, it initially looked organic: Dozens, sometimes even hundreds of people were attending congressional town halls across the country, turning every event into a referendum over the recently passed Affordable Care Act. At that point, “Obamacare” was still considered a slur rather than the now-popular health care reform act that has helps millions of people, and Democrats were scrambling to defend their support of a program that at that time had no lived experience to offer to critics.

    Every public event they attended pivoted into a demand from an angry mob of constituents to defend their votes, and every policy take derailed into a debate over the threat of government healthcare. Soon it became apparent that this alleged grassroots groundswell of opposition was actually being manufactured by right-wing think tanks who were offering strategy memos and talking points, and then being promoted by conservative talking heads who recruited their audiences to attend.

    The town halls, which dominated both mainstream and conservative media, combined with a low voter turnout election, are considered by many to be major factors in the 2010 Tea Party election wave. Unsurprisingly, the right wing is anxious to be able to replicate that effort, and now, with their focused battle against Planned Parenthood, they may be preparing to try again.

    The GOP has focused like a laser on Planned Parenthood this cycle, eager to pick as big of a fight as possible with the nation’s largest reproductive health care entity. Politicians are playing just as big of a role in the escalating vendetta as the anti-abortion activists who concocted fake identities in order to record the secret interviews with staff members. Nationally, Republican members of Congress admitted to early access to the videos that are now being released weekly, and in Texas, last week’s legislative investigation led to the discovery that Texas lawmakers had also seen videos that had yet to be released to the public.

    Much of the protests, media releases, and calls for investigations appeared to be a ramp-up in preparation for this week’s senate vote in favor of pulling all federal funds from Planned Parenthood, allegedly with the intention of giving them to community health centers as an alternative. The bill received majority backing, but not enough votes to overcome a filibuster.

    Some may be tempted to think that the failed vote—as well as new polling showing how popular the organization is, despite the smears in the media—would mean an end to the attacks on Planned Parenthood. Instead, they may just be beginning. And they may be becoming far more localized, as well.

    Students for Life of America has been one of the key players in the aftermath of the first few anti-Planned Parenthood videos released by the anti-abortion group calling itself Center for Medical Progress. For SFLA, the controversy presents a perfect opportunity to promote their own organizational goals. SFLA itself has “The Planned Parenthood Project,” an endeavor “to expose the nation’s abortion Goliath, Planned Parenthood, with whom they target the most—young people,” allegedly educating students on college campuses about Planned Parenthood’s “plan” to sell them faulty birth control, fill them with hormones, then counsel them into aborting when their hormonal birth control fails.

    SFLA took the lead on arranging nationwide, public protests after the first videos were released, arranging the “Women Betrayed” rallies that popped up in more than 60 cities across the country. While other groups have taken over the organization for the next national protest, SFLA has a new target in mind.

    Yes, they want to hit the town halls, 2009-style.

    “August is a time when Members of Congress are usually in their home districts as Congress is out of session,” writes SFLA President Kristan Hawkins in an email to supporters. “During this time, Congressmen and Senators will often hold Townhall meetings to listen to their constituents concerns and get a pulse on what’s happening at home, as they well should. These Townhall meetings are perfect opportunities to question your Congressman or Senator about his or her votes and ask them to defend why they voted a certain way or how they think they may vote on a similar issue in the future.”

    Just like the Great Town Hall Invasion of 2009, a list of potential events to attend is provided, and sample questions are offered as well, such as:

    Why did you vote to give my money as a taxpayer to Planned Parenthood?

    Why did you vote to fund an organization that has been caught aiding and abetting sex traffickers, taking money to abortion black children, covering up sexual abuse, and selling the body parts of aborted babies?

    Do you think that dissecting the body parts of aborted babies to see which organs are good enough to sell is okay?

    Do you think that Planned Parenthood affords any human dignity to the children they rip up and sell piece by piece?

    It’s almost, “We all understand that National Health Care means rationing health care. What aspects of health care would you propose rationing? And to whom, or to what groups of people would you ration care?” all over again.

    Will Students for Life of America have the same success with the town hall gambit that the early Tea Party organizers managed to create leading up to the midterms? If so, that could mean a summer season of unprepared sitting members of Congress seeing their constituent outreach events hijacked into an all-abortion-all-the-time political brawl. And of course the more the right can force politicians to focus on abortion, the less they have to worry about the fact that their stances on marriage equality, climate change, wages, education, immigration and health care are out of step with a majority of Americans.

    If 2016 conservatives can manage to grassroots-organize with the same effectiveness as 2010 conservatives did, another GOP wave could be on the way. And we are seeing signs now that they are ready to try. The question is, can they really manage to make Planned Parenthood into the bogeyman that they turned Obamacare into six years ago? If they can’t, then this is one strategy may just end up blowing up in their faces.

    Robin Marty is a freelance writer, speaker and activist. Her current project, Clinic Stories, focuses on telling the history of legal abortion one clinic at a time. Robin’s articles have appeared at Cosmopolitan.com, Rolling Stone, Politico, Ms. Magazine and other publications.

    h/t: Robin Marty at TPM

  • Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name

    Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name

    The plan made me feel dishonest and creepy, so it took me a long time to send my novel out under a man’s name. But each time I read a study about unconscious bias, I got a little closer to trying it.

    I set up a
    new e-mail address under a name—let’s say it was George Leyer, though it
    wasn’t—and left it empty. Weeks went by without word from the agents
    who had my work. I read another study about how people rate job applicants they believe are female and how much better they like those they believe are male.

    The thing I
    was thinking of doing was absolutely against the rules, the opposite of
    all the advice writers get, but I wasn’t feeling like a writer, and I hadn’t written in weeks. Until last winter,
    I had never faced a serious bout of writer’s block or any meaningful
    unwillingness to work. A blank page had always felt to me like the
    moment the lights go down in a theater—until the day it didn’t. I was
    spending more time crying on the phone than writing and I had no idea
    how to get back to work. Every paragraph was a negotiation—my instinct
    leading one way, and then a blast against it—don’t do that, you’ll
    confuse people. No one wants to read that kind of thing.

    So, on a
    dim Saturday morning, I copy-pasted my cover letter and the opening
    pages of my novel from my regular e-mail into George’s account. I put in
    the address of one of the agents I’d intended to query under my own
    name. I didn’t expect to hear back for a few weeks, if at all. It would
    only be a few queries and then I’d close out my experiment. I began
    preparing another query, checking the submission requirements on the
    agency web site. When I clicked back, there was already a new message,
    the first one in the empty inbox. Mr. Leyer. Delighted. Excited. Please send the manuscript.

    READ MORE

  • I have done stuff

    So we’ve been away. I’ll tell you about that later (summary: Norway is awesomepretty).

    Next week is my USA medical.
    6 Weeks after that I might have my visa.
    Which is terrifying and exciting and scary.
    Work know, now. Because they asked me to apply for a more senior position, and I had to explain that I can’t because…I’m planning to leave.

    Which means that the house needs to be ready like yesterday to go on the market. Which it’s not. It’s nearly, but it’s not. Today I ran around and touched up the paint in the kitchen using paint which, thankfully, has not merely survived in the garage but actually it’s pretty much invisible when used as touch-up paint. Some of it needs a second coat because I managed to yank it back to bare plaster with the masking tape, but it’s looking pretty much okay. The bit around the where the worksurfaces were installed that I filled…when they were installed… that’s looking much better now it’s been sanded and painted. It’s kind of odd to have put up with this stuff being not quite right for so long, and then to fix it in minutes. (I’ve updated The List, incidentally).

    Next up is the mortar under the sink and the render at the back of the house. Which means going and getting some ready mix mortar (for speed, I think that’s wise). Which I’m trying to coax myself into doing now – but having just come back from Norway I’m feeling that things are financially a little tight.

    A feeling compounded by talking to Jonathon at JLH who advised me to get the gearbox I’ve got rebuilt (or buy a rebuilt one – and then suggested getting a much higher spec one given the torque available from the electric motor…) and get the axle similarly treated – which did painful things to the price of the work on my minor. I fluctuate between option A of getting all the bits for the EV conversion installed now, so all we need to do is, essentially, battery pack and motor when we get there, or option B of putting in a recon minor gearbox – but the cost of a really good gearbox that’ll tolerate the fast-road cam’d engine is pretty close to the cost of a type 9 ford box, and then…well, it just seems foolish to not do the rest. Feh.

  • hckleinman:

    staff You are recommending that I follow a nazi blog I blocked last night. Your site promotes anti-semitism to Jews. Your site shoves Nazi Swastikas in the faces of Jews. It’s bad enough that the Nazi blogs seem to be sprouting up like weeds on a site that claims to have an anti-hate policy, but to actively promote them to people who have taken the steps of blocking these blogs is beyond the pale. Clean this place up. It’s turning into Stormfront.

    I encourage everyone who sees this post, Jewish or otherwise, to reblog it. Tumblr has been ignoring the growth of Nazism on this site for too long. It needs to end.

  • Apparently we have to come back to the UK. Very disappointing. on Flickr.

    Apparently we have to come back to the UK. Very disappointing.

  • That would definitely be a glacier… on Flickr.

    That would definitely be a glacier…