Diversity

I'm not naming names, but someone close to me has been posting stuff about immigration recently on Facebook -- stuff like "Like and Share this picture if you don't want to be forced to learn a second language to accommodate illegal immigrants." You know the stuff I mean, I'm sure.

This saddens me, really a lot for several reasons: first, no one is being "forced" to learn a second language in order to "accommodate" anyone. There are several very good and valid reasons, some of them solely about the way our brains create neural pathways, for learning a second language. We are a member of a global society; not everyone we are ever going to interact with speaks only English or even halfway decent English (although my understanding is that it's becoming more and more common a second language in other countries). And if we were in fact being forced to learn a second language for the sake of others, surely there would be a standard language that was the only second language available to learn (maybe varying regionally?) Not to mention many fields of study's jargons can be almost like having to learn a completely different language (have you ever asked or been asked "Once more, in English this time, please?").

Chinese dragon

SO.

My biggest reason why stuff like this saddens me is that it seems to want to homogenize our nation. Setting aside the question of the legality of the immigrants speaking other languages -- we have no way of knowing, just from looking at someone, if they're legal or not; language is hardly a clue. They may very well be able to speak and understand English but choose not to on what they consider home ground, or may have trouble with it for one reason or another.

One of the things I find most fascinating and compelling about the United States is all the little pockets of foreign culture that pockmark the country. You can, in some cases, literally cross a street and be immersed in a completely different way of life: different styles of architecture and decoration, dress, food...and language is a vital and integral part of that. How much less magical would Chinatown be if all the shopkeepers and passersby and customers spoke in unaccented, textbook, workaday American English? What nuances would be lost?

Taste of Greece 2012 -- Chicago (from: Greektown Chicago)

This country was built, as it is now, on immigration, and for many many years there were few if any restrictions. The people who came here came searching for something that was not available to them in their home countries: freedom to make their own choices, freedom from religious persecution, jobs...are we now to turn others away from the search for those same things? I get that we can't support the entire world. There are people here who are still looking for work, who are persecuted for their religious beliefs, even, ironically, those who use their religious beliefs as grounds to persecute others. And there were people harmed -- harmed DEEPLY -- by the way European settlers went about creating nations on these continents. We're not perfect. But it seems to me hypocritical in the extreme to on one hand proclaim what a great country we are, and on the other, attempt to deny all the things which made us.

Irish step dancers (from Savannah Irish Festival)

More thinking-out-loud about girly parts and sexual content of books and what doesn't bother me.

We seem to have a new kerfuffle which is really just an old kerfuffle revisited around the community in which I read and interact. We'll just call it the OMGLADYBITS!! problem and move on from there.

I'm just going to make a brief rebuttal of some things that were said on a site which shall be nameless (if for some reason you don't know but want to, email or something and I'll tell you but you will probably be all head-asplodey) and which I have since removed from my blog feed because really? I don't need that shit in my life right now, and anyway, as a review site it was becoming less and less relevant to my actual INTERESTS, y'know, because of how books that I thought sucked donkeywater were given highest accolades and books that I thought were funny/cute/interesting/otherwise pushed some boundaries in an opening-up-the-mind kind of way were dismissed as lame/trite/blah/whatthefuckever.

ANYway.

I read. I read a LOT of stuff, yeah, some "Literary Fiction" and some nonfiction, and mystery and science fiction and fantasy and and and... yeah. Most of what I read, though, is romance. Or one of the other things with strong romantic elements.

People like to put things in boxes.

Boxes are OK, sometimes. I mean, I like to have a box (basket, drawer, whatevs) to keep my cheeses separate from my eggs separate from my condiments in my fridge. I have a nice little box in the pantry which I keep full of approved snack items for my kids where they can reach, and I have another nice little box out of their reach where I keep the "Only Occasionally" treats. I have a box for the kitty litter, because, let's be honest, you *don't* want that just spreading out all over the floor.

You know what I don't put in boxes? Books.

Piles, yes. Shelves, naturally. Randomly stuck down the side of the couch so I can pick it right back up in the morning? Oh, HELLS yeah. Boxes, though? Not so much. Only when we're moving. Or I'm mailing them to someone. For a while, I kept some in a box under my bed, but then I decided I wasn't ashamed of it, I just didn't want my 7YO boy reading b/c Holy Inappropriate, Batman! So I put all that stuff on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in my bedroom where no one but my mom and my sister ever look, and they're grown-ups and if they go poking and get shocked, SO NOT MY PROBLEM.

Also, do you know what paper books don't have that a lot of ebooks (especially from small presses) do? Warning labels. To me, that's like the Darwin Awards-worthy labels on push mowers warning the user not to pick it up & try to use it to trim the hedges. I mean, really. They should all say "Warning: Thoughts Ahead. Make Sure Mind Open, Or Put Down NOW."

So, when I read romance, I don't go into it with any expectations, beyond the expectations of a minimum of typos. And that I will be entertained (unless I'm reading for some reason other than entertainment. Even then, entertainment is a plus). And if I'm reading a romance written within the last 20 or so years, I do generally expect sex. Particularly if it's an erotic romance, when I expect LOTS of sex. Hopefully well-written sex, but I will settle for cliche and throbbing parts and excessive dampness. The point is, though, I don't look for a particular TYPE of sex. I'll take girl parts, boy parts, alien parts... in whatever combinations and numbers. I've never been "blindsided" by menages, or het sex in a gay romance, or gay/lesbian/trans* sex in a het romance. In fact, one of the reasons I gravitated AWAY from het romance is that it has been feeling too confining. There's a formula for sex, and a formula for characters, and a formula for story. I hoped by moving over toward more of a LGBTQ-friendly reading space, I would come across different types of relationships, characters who didn't fall into the same old stereotypes, new takes on old tropes...

For the most part, I've found that. There's been less of the -LBTQ than of the G-, granted, but I'm digging a little deeper and seeing more. I'm seeing more interracial romances, some May-Decembers where the balance of power is a bit different. I'm even seeing more babies -- with fewer Plot Moppets, although still plenty of those -- which I love (side note: I've seen some people despairing that some of their favorite series are moving toward the baby-crazy, despite being m/m pairings. I'm all like, YES PLEASE MORE OF THAT! because you don't have to be ovaried to believe "Families should grow, not shrink." (quote from Strawberries for Dessert by the lovely Marie Sexton).

So, dear authors who might accidentally read this, Give me girly bits along with the man-sex! I'll read it! The only place I demand to know what to expect sexually is the space where I'm sharing said sexual content with my very own husband in our very own bed. I don't object to warnings about dubious consent because my enjoyment of that is dubious, at best, but I also don't refuse to read it. And I only DNF if I can't actually connect with characters or plot -- some of those stories would probably have been improved by more sex! Give me variety! Give me interesting people doing interesting things! (It doesn't have to be save-the-world interesting; I'm a homebody, so domestic weirdness interests me.)

And, hey, if I ever run across ACTUAL heterosexual intercourse in a romance with gay male protagonists, maybe I'll be shocked enough to actually review it!

Religion and Reading and a LOT of Rambling

So, I was chatting with a friend over Twitter about religion -- specifically regarding interpretation of the Bible/Torah/Your Holy Book of Choice -- and how that can damage people. And then I read an article somewhere about the movie (or TV miniseries? I don't know) called The Bible, wherein Satan was deliberately portrayed as Barack Obama (which just disgusts me on levels I don't feel up to getting into here and now) and THAT article discussed the whitewashing of the Bible in terms of artistic portrayals -- Jesus is Westernized as a very toned, pale-skinned, nearly-blonde man, instead of the medium- to dark-skinned Middle Eastern Jew he actually was. [ETA: here is the article] And then TODAY, I was chatting briefly with someone else about some of the defining books of our teens -- books like Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams -- and when it's appropriate to start indoctrinating my little Minions by reading them aloud at bedtime. My oldest, the Girl-child, at Very Nearly 13, is probably old enough to read them on her own, but sometimes I have difficulties getting her to actually, y'know, ACCEPT my suggestions. The boys are 7 and 9, and I think they *might* be a little young, but DinoBoy, the elder of the two, is pretty precocious and sophisticated in some ways, so I could be wrong about him. And I think he might enjoy some of the humor, even if he won't get a lot of the references for years yet, if ever.

And we mentioned, in passing, on Twitter, that we're only just now, as adults, starting to realize the number of those references and subtleties that we missed as kids, and how much deeper and richer certain narratives are when approached from this new, grown-up perspective.

So this little ramble today is probably going to be about those things -- books, particularly the ones I read as a teenager for the first time; how they affected me then; how they affect me now that I'm starting to share them more and more with my own kids; and, of course, though to a lesser extent, religion.

I think there are actually a LOT of books that I read in my teens which affected me profoundly then, but which I continue to be amazed and enthralled by (in new and exciting ways!) now that I'm an adult -- and more pertinently, perhaps, now that I'm married and a parent. Because I can't deny that those two things probably have more to do with the new sight than simple age. Just a few of those books, offhand, are the Anne of Green Gables series, Little Women, Good Omens, Hitchhiker's Guide, and most of Mercedes Lackey. I don't think I'm going to touch on ALL of them here today; it's been a while since I've read some of them, and I'm not too clear on some of the details, but suffice it to say that between Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and the combination of Pratchett and Gaiman, I had *quite* a religious awakening as a teen.

I mean, I'd had a basic religious "education" as a kid. We went reasonably regularly to a surprisingly non-judgmental Baptist church in TN until I was 10, where I was completely miserable because I just could not make friends with any of the other kids in the youth group. I suspected then, and still do, that it was (as it sometimes still continues to be) the fact that I not only read, but I asked questions about what I read. And I expected logical, consistent answers, which religion is usually hard-pressed to provide. When I was 10, we moved to Ohio. We stopped going to church regularly, but when we did it was to services at a nearby Presbyterian church, and that was when I fell in love with the more formal service, and the music of religion, but still, most of the logic managed to elude me. At 12, we moved to a small town outside of Atlanta, and the nearest church was another Baptist Church -- a HUGE one, comparatively -- where the pastor preached about the Evils of Women in the Work Place, and about tithing. This went over like a lead weight with us, because at the time, my mom was the sole earner. A year later, we moved again, to Virginia, where my parents still live, and, again, had a bad Baptist experience, at which point, my parents pretty much gave up. They figured we had the basics of how to behave as socially responsible, polite little people, and the rest would work itself out on its own. And Mom made sure to leave various books lying around for our education and amusement.

So, Faith (of the kind that can, theoretically move mountains) wasn't exactly a high priority, nor was it mashed and stuffed down our throat like some kind of baby food for the toothless. We were given a basic road map, and the tools to navigate, and allowed to find our own way there, or not. And honestly, a lot of what passes for my faith was built on the backs of Anne Shirley and the March girls. They had what now seems like a simplistic but logical view based largely on the tenet "Do Unto Others" and they still struggled with that, in a way that I struggled with it. But they really tried to simply be kind to others, generous with those in need, and honest and non-judgmental with themselves and others. The "Thou Shalt Not" stuff was rarely, if ever, an issue, and, while I know it's probably more a sign of their times than a deliberate event, things like women bringing in a paycheck were not looked down on. Yes, there was a bit of racism/bigotry in some attitudes, and some classism, but those tended to be confined to the group of "older and set in their ways," rather than condoned by the characters the stories were really about.

However, I had issues with religion as it was presented to me in Real Life, particularly relating to things like the Old Testament's attitudes toward anything and everything, and how nobody seemed really interested in the Love & Kindness stuff unless it was directed toward them personally, and I really had trouble reconciling the omniscient/omnipotent God with the whole Garden of Eden and Fall of Lucifer, as well as the whole issue of free will, who has it, who doesn't, and why on Earth we would be told it was a huge gift from God in one breath while the next breath told us not to question what we were being told. There were just too many contradictions for me in all of that, and then World History started getting into the evolution of religion in the Western world, and there was fracturing and schisms and latching on to established Holy/Ritualistic/Spiritual days and just... I was spinning.

And then, my best friend and I were at the library together (as you do) and she handed me this book: hardback, black cover with white writing, nattily-suited angel and devil. "This is the funniest, smartest book I've ever read. You'll love it, I promise. I mean, listen to this list of characters!" and I was hooked when she got to the bit about Crowley: An angel who didn't so much fall as saunter vaguely downward.

So I read it. And read it again. And a third time, just to be sure. And it addressed -- and seemed to be just as bewildered by -- many of the same issues that had been bothering me, in that nebulous, can't-really-put-my-finger-on-it way, with humor and gentleness and sometimes harshness and... I was completely blown away. It wasn't me -- or wasn't JUST me. Some of this stuff didn't really make any sense!

And then, I passed it on to my mom, who also loved it. And my brother and sister...

And now, I've finally been able to reconcile my spiritual side with my skeptical side. Religion is all about interpretation, and doing the best you can. You can choose to believe blindly, thoughtlessly, the interpretation of others, or you can exercise free will and choose your own interpretation. I think the most important -- the ONLY important -- part of the Bible or any other religious work that I've studied (however cursorily) boils down to what we call the Golden Rule: "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You."

In the end, if there is a God, I think I will be judged based on my intentions, not my slavish adherence to another's need to Be In Charge and Tell Others What To Do. I think He'll be a more generous judge than many "more religious" people seem to believe.

And if there's not? Well, by that point maybe I won't be aware. But either way, I'll have the personal satisfaction of know that I'm trying, as hard as I can, to be kind, generous, honest, loving, and non-judgmental.

What more can we really ask?

Food for Thought

I know there are a lot of jokes about Chinese food, but the truth is, I kind of love the fortune cookie part of going out for Chinese. The Horde and I went out to the local buffet at the request of DinoBoy (his party was today, although his actual birthday is Monday). The Girl-child and I got some pretty basic pabulum, nothing special, but the boys both got "Food for thought" fortunes. I love those -- some random bit of truth that forces you to think about yourself and the people around you. You especially get that effect when there's a smallish child self-aware enough to ask, "What does that even MEAN?" and you have to try to explain this concept of philosophy or ethics or culture or whatever to them.

DinoBoy's fortune read "We judge others by actions; we judge ourselves by intentions." I really really love this one. It's a concept I sometimes struggle to get across to others -- my kids or my DH -- that when someone is hurting because of your words, or because your words don't match your actions, or simply don't SEEM to to this person outside of you, it really doesn't matter what you THINK or FEEL or think you're putting out there. Intentions are well and good, but we are the only ones who can really know our own intentions. I might *think* I understand my husband's, but I can't really know for sure; all I can do is judge to the best of my ability.

That's a hard concept to teach a kid: the idea that sometimes, you can say or do something intending it as a kindness, but that it doesn't always appear that way to the person you're trying to help. What to you may seem a simple offer of help or support may rub the wrong way or play on fears you don't know about and come across to the other person as a judgment on them, or an attempt on your part to show them up and make them feel inferior.

It's easy to assume that because WE know what we intend, that others will, as well. It's much harder to remember that they're not seeing those intentions; and that everyone filters other people's words and actions through a lens built on their own experiences and insecurities.

VelcroBoy's fortune was "The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice you give to others." I like that. It's fairly simple and straightforward. If you tell someone X is the way to get to what you want, and you're not doing X, then why should they listen to you? And if X is the path then why are you not on it yourself? Although I think it's more simple than that, even. It's the antithesis of the old saw, "Do as I say, not as I do." That one's a particular trap for parents, I've found; one I'm trying not to fall into. There's a part of me that wants to avoid chores on weekends, while telling the kids to do theirs, and I recognize that that's a form of hypocrisy. Of course, at the same time, if I'm doing my chores, I can't make sure they do theirs. And goodness knows when they're at school I have a hard time following my stated household rule of "Do the things that NEED to be done before doing the things we WANT to do." Especially when there are new books to read.

And on that note...I have books to read! Catch you later!

The Human Pack

I should be at the store doing my grocery shopping; instead I had stuff tumbling over itself in my head and thought I should let some of it out before it's lost for good -- or takes over so deep I can't do anything else. This is a result of clicking on links from *this* to *that* to *hey, over here!* so I can't point you directly to any specific articles. It also has to do with Romance Novels and Erotic Romance and M/M Romance and...anyway. Onward.

One of the bits I read this morning was about homosexuality in animals, observations made by the people who make those kinds of observations about animals, and observations made by the people who make those kinds of observations about other people. And overwhelmingly, what I've noticed over the years, boils down to this: animals engage in homosexual behavior. Some of them flit from partner to partner, never bothering to learn names -- or even gender -- of the partner-of-the-moment, sowing their seed copiously. It may or may not take, depending on the partner's gender and fertility and whatnot, but...there you are. Those are the party/frat boys of the animal world. Others engage in long-term/permanent relationships with Just One Partner -- whether or not reproduction is involved depends on the genitalia. Still others are in long-term sexual relationships with members of the same genital club but will briefly defect just long enough to (hopefully) propagate the species, obeying primal biological necessity, before returning to the beloved partner.

Sound like any people you know?

The next thing I observed is the sheer volume of paranormal fantasy/romance, whether of a straight version or M/M persuasion, wherein one or more of the main characters is a shapeshifter or werebeing. Many many of these are series; plenty of the series follow a single couple through myriad trials and adventures along their course to True Love Ever After, but an equal if not greater number focus on different couples within a single unit -- pack or family or both. (Statistically, unless the pack is composed of unrelated persons who were cast out from their family groups for being gay, I seriously doubt there are *that many* gay werewolves in a single pack, though. Not that I mind, I'm just sayin'...) (and, yeah, just so you know...I've read WAY more of these in the M/M category. Probably because that's what I'm mostly reading right now.)

The difference is that within a pack of animals with no human side, those animals displaying "homosexual tendencies" are not cast out of their group, they are not treated as pariahs. As long as they can fend for themselves, other animals seem to be pretty much live-and-let-live about it. (What, do my freckles give me "redheaded tendencies"? I don't really understand that phrase -- I understand the individual words, but I think the usage is, at best, disingenuous.)

So here's what I think. I think we, as humans, are not as far removed from the animal as we would like to think we are. We believe the opposable thumb bestows some special form of self-awareness, a sense of Holier-Than-Thou, makes us somehow MORE than strictly Animal. And, in a sense, we do have some of that. We have fire. We have technology. We have domesticated animals and domesticated vegetables. And yet...does that make us better off? In the sense that we can now expand our living space to include areas that were once too cold or too hot, yes, perhaps. In the sense that we can support the kind of population growth that a lack of biological-imperative-driven fertility periods seems to inspire, yes. In the sense that we can now, to an extent, control the length or our lifespans, I suppose (although, really, that seems unnecessarily cruel in some ways. I don't exactly relish the day when I will be unable to care for myself and will have to sit through unending hours of same.)

But how are we putting that self-awareness to the test? Are we choosing to use it for general good? Are we accepting that we have the same proclivities as our animalian ancestors? We are all in search of food to eat, water to drink, shelter from cold and wet. We know that others are in need of the same things. Yet we choose to focus on superficial externals -- genitalia, sexuality -- as an excuse to decide who we feel deserves our time and attention, rather than helping out wherever we can and leaving the rest to be sorted by whoever's in charge of sorting (God, or some equivalent thereof, for most of us.)

'Scuse me; I got a bit derailed there. I was trying to make a point about pack behavior.

The pack is a unit of its own, composed of multiple individuals, and can go by many names in the animal kingdom -- hive, flock, herd...they all mean the same. When unaffected by people, these tend in general, although not exclusively, of loosely-related family groups.

And we humans have an urge to belong to a pack , or sometimes several of them. We define our packs differently. Your pack may be a family group, or a group of friends. It may be a business association, an arts council, a religious organization, a political affiliation. You may surround yourself with a pack connected by the same school, social group, ethnicity or geographic location. But you are part of at least one pack, and most probably more. And you change, from pack to pack -- the people in your family may see one You, while your office pack sees someone else with no relationship to the other beyond superficialities of appearance and home address.  Perhaps you are conflicted, because the goals and ideals of one of your groups is in distinct contravention to another -- how do you reconcile a social life in which you're in love with someone of the same sex as yourself with a profoundly fundamentalist religious belief?

Maybe we need to start looking at all of the world as one big pack. Animals don't kick other animals out of the pack for any reason. We're not wholly animals anymore. We are aware of our actions; shouldn't our actions be *more* than those of animals? Even animals show compassion toward pack members who are injured; when did we (humanity as a whole) lose our ability to show compassion to all our fellows? Nobody says you have to like me, or want to make the same choices I made, but compassion dictates that you help me if they turn out to be the wrong choices. Compassion says that you support my right to live my life in a way that doesn't actually harm you.

Deployment and FRG and what ifs

Ok, so, I've been thinking about something for a little while now. Most of you (heh, who am I kidding? What *most*? There are 5 followers to this blog & one of them is ME! Anyhoo...) know that my hubby is active duty Army, and he's deploying soon to...y'know what? I'm not really sure how much I'm allowed to say, so. We've done Iraq, and we're OUT of Iraq, so it's not there.

Anyway, my point is. The last week or so has been full of FRG (that's Family Readiness Group, for those of you who don't know; it's supposed to be an organization of spouses and family members of deployed soldiers within their battalions/companies/whatever to provide support/info/resources) meetings and informational meetings and whatnot, gearing up for the guys going to NTC (National Training Center) in California for a month. They'll be home for roughly 3 weeks afterward before shipping out for a 9-month deployment.

Almost a week ago, the big thing was the Pre-Deployment Fair, where all the various resource organizations on-post gathered to provide brochures, etc., to soldiers and spouses. 24 tables of tons of pieces of paper. Some of it was info that I already had, and had used. Some of it, I knew about but had never had occasion to use. There were a number of people who were "new" -- had never really done one of these before, didn't know about the resources, whatever. The problem is, they started late & had to finish kind of early, and they wanted everybody to visit everywhere, so there was sort of a bingo-sheet & we were supposed to get every little square for every table marked. This just seemed rushed and stressful to me, especially for me not needing a lot of the info, and, I imagine, for those who DID need it but felt like they had to hurry through so that everyone else could have their turn.

What I was particularly struck by was the number of soldiers who were there unaccompanied. Granted, some of them probably have spouses who were unable to attend for some very good reasons, but I wondered how many of them had SOs who didn't feel welcome or couldn't come for some less good reasons. It's one thing to not show up because you can't get the time off from work, or because you only have 1 vehicle and your spouse couldn't get home in time to pick you up and bring you back. It's something else entirely if you can't get on post because you don't have the proper ID and validation stickers on your vehicle because they're not available to you because you HAVE no marital status allowed on a federal level. It's something else if you can't come because, even though DADT has been repealed, maybe your guy isn't ready to tell the people he works with about you.

That strikes me as unbearably sad, that there might be people living just a few miles from me, in need of some of the services and support that are available to me, that I'm able to choose whether or not to make use of. Since FRG meetings always take place on post, and you have to be either a soldier, a spouse, or a veteran/spouse with post privileges to even really GET on post, that pretty much lets out a whole segment of potential friends/fellow sufferers from even knowing the people who would be able to say, "Hey, I absolutely get what you're going through. I'm here if you need to talk to someone about it." I don't know how I'd cope without those few military spouses I've managed to forge a real friendship with; I really wish I knew how to reach out to the nontraditional families and say "I'm here if you need me."

That's a story I'd love to see -- how someone deals with a deployment when he's left without those resources. Maybe his guy was in the middle of a deployment when DADT was completely repealed, and now he's still not ready to come out. Maybe the one left at home is kind of feeling unsure about their relationship; after all, if he was really important, wouldn't his soldier want to tell *someone* about them, now that he can? How isolating would it be to know that you're entitled to some of this stuff, at least, but not be able to take advantage of it because to ask for it would be to out the one you love without his permission? What if *no one* knows for sure about your relationship; what if all your mutual friends have been led to believe that you're just roommates? (Yeah, sure, at least someone has guessed, but they know as well as you do that they can't just out someone like that.)

And what happens when he comes home...?