Power Struggles

There's a lively debate going on in post-derecho DC and the surrounding areas on how to make life in the national capital region a bit less like life in one of the less developed countries of the developing world when it comes to such basic accoutrements of civilization as, you know, lights and refrigeration. Is it time to consider burying power lines so they'll be less vulnerable to the extreme weather events that seem likely to occur with alarming frequency in the world brought about by our stubborn refusal to reckon with global warming? Can de-regulated, union-busting utilities like the justly maligned Pepco be expected -- or compelled -- to do a better job of getting customers back online when mass outages occur with little advance warning, as was the case with the sudden, violent storm that occurred on the sweltering evening of June 29? Or is it time to hunker down with our ukuleles and our generators and admit that we are, in this as in so many things, fundamentally screwed and on our own?

Ah, kids, modern life. The feisty old broads of Roxie's World know better than to be nostalgic for any mythical good old days, because the good old days were always already complex and flawed and unjust to whole bunches of people. Still, they are tempted from time to time to sigh that things are a bit less pleasant than they used to be. (My typist pauses here to check on which character it is in Flannery O'Connor's story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" who declares that, "Everything is getting terrible." Turns out it is not the doomed, talkative grandmother but Red Sammy, owner of the barbecue place/filling station where the family stops for lunch before the grandmother's flawed recollection sets up their fateful rendezvous with the murderous Misfit. Everything is getting terrible. It's a useful, funny, haunting line, even if one doesn't share Red Sam or the grandmother's nostalgia for a brutally ordered past. Sometimes, even one strenuously committed to seeing the glass as half full is inclined to feel that perhaps a lot of things are getting rather terrible.)

All those complicated questions of power are, however, above my pay grade. Instead of answers or recommendations, all I have to offer are a few photos that document the devastation wrought by the derecho in the physical space of Roxie's World. They also document Pepco's failure, nearly two weeks after the storm, to clear the neighborhood of potentially dangerous debris. Here, for example, is what is left of the utility pole that was brought down by a large tree in the yard right across the street from the Moms' house. The photo was taken on Monday, but the large piece of pole is still dangling out over the street in the middle of Thursday afternoon:

At night, that dangling remnant is just about the spookiest thing you've ever seen. And whenever the wind blows, Moose's heart skips a beat or two as her post-derecho stress disorder kicks in and she wonders what might happen if another big storm kicks up while that pole is still hanging around.

The next photo shows the two-pole solution Pepco contrived over on the Moms' side of the street after the top quarter of our pole snapped off in the storm. Workers installed a new, much taller pole right next to the old one, which still seems to have the wires for phone and cable running off of it. Moose calls this photo "Bi-Polar Disorder":

Finally, up in the next block, you see what's left of a massive tree that fell right across the road and landed on a car. These neighbors are trying to sell their property, which right now looks, as the sign says, "Impressive!" but not in a way likely to entice buyers:

(All photos by Moose, 7/9/12.)

Woodcutters of the world, I invite you to Roxie's World. There's a fortune to be made in chopping up firewood for winter. The Moms promise to buy a cord or three to prepare for the power outages the next snowpocalypse will undoubtedly bring.

And, Pepco, my Pepco, is it any wonder your name is a curse word, the nasty, hilarious song on everybody's lips? No, it is no wonder at all. We'll embed the song and dedicate it to our good friend PhysioProf, who will appreciate the salty Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. Srsly, Pepco, how hard can it be, to clear a f*cking tree? Your customers long to know. Peace out, and leave the lights on, baby.

Ruby's First Halloween

Miss Ruby tries on her hand-me-down wizard costume in preparation for her first night of greeting trick or treaters in Roxie's World:

Fits perfectly, don't you think? She has studied previous Halloween posts to get a sense of what this peculiar holiday is all about and why it requires her to cover up her pretty new haircut with a long cape that she will inevitably step on or wag off with her tail in the excitement of meeting throngs of young chocolate-seeking zombies and ghosts. She has taken my words to heart, though, and is ready to play her part in the festivities. "I love the little princesses and the animals and the girls with fangs and the one who explains she is 'the spirit of music,'" I declared in 2008, the last Halloween I was physically able to greet visitors. I went on to explain:

I love a festival of pretending to be something other than what you "are." I think that is a healthy exercise in stepping outside the usual order of things. I think it is good to try to know oneself in one's apart-ment, as Dickinson might have said.

As it was then, so it is now and ever shall be. Happy Halloween, darlings. Enjoy the dark side. Revel in your apart-ment. Just don't let your dogs eat chocolate. We'll be back soon with a blockbuster post on the theme of Excellence Without Money, but my typist, like all the other profs in the blogosphere, has a mountain of papers to grade and letters to write at the moment. Pray for her, please, as she endeavors to rid the world of comma-splices and mushy prose. Peace out.

Ten Years and a Day (or Two)

Or, Why We Failed to Blog the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11

Like our good friend Keguro, we have been "trying not to write" about what happened in the United States and in our neighborhood ten years ago Sunday. (Go read that post. Keguro is in Kenya right now and reflects eloquently on how location affects memory and on how the events of that day transformed foreignness in the U.S.) Tenured Radical kindly invited us to participate in creating a bloggy archive of 9/11 posts that she set up over at her place, but we failed to produce anything for the actual day.

A major factor in our muteness was simply shortage of time. The Moms were on the road this past weekend at a family wedding and didn't get settled back to home, hearth, and happy dog until late Sunday evening. The 9/11 anniversary was a focus of some conversation during the festivities, part of the way that long lost cousins reestablished bonds and a sense of what time and adulthood had made of folks once known primarily as fellow occupants of the kids' table at holiday gatherings. Still, most of the talk was happy, as suited the occasion: How's that brother of yours? . . . . I'd like you to meet my second husband. . . . . Holy crap, Mom's on the dance floor! . . . . Do come by for breakfast tomorrow before you take off, OK? We'd love to spend some more time with you. Oh, and there was a certain amount of commentary on Moose's weight loss and the girlie-girl ensemble she wore to the wedding. We'll give you just the smallest peek and trust you to imagine the rest:

(Photo Credit and Pedicure: Baby Sister of the Moosians, 9/10/11)

(Yes, we feel a little weird about putting that photo in a post even tangentially related to 9/11, but, well, some of the most serious bloggers we know post regularly about shoez, darn it, so indulge us just this once, will you?)

Another reason for our muteness in regard to the anniversary is that we did a commemoration post in 2008 that recounted the story of 9/11/01 in Roxie's World -- Moose at home, watching the horror unfold on TV, convinced when the Pentagon was hit that World War III had started and was practically in our ridiculously large backyard; Goose on campus, responsible for a work group comprised chiefly of students, ordered by the campus administration not to leave until the students were gone. That story and the feelings it elicits in us have not changed. It remains true that "the unimaginable can happen on an achingly beautiful autumn morning. The world can change in an instant. Individual lives can be lost, shattered, or merely transformed. And all you can say [by way of comfort] is, 'I know.'" What more needs to be said by a humble dog blog typed by a distracted English prof? Nothing, perhaps, but indulge us a little longer.

Moose could not bear to watch the few glimpses of the anniversary coverage she happened to catch on TV over the weekend. It was too much, she said, and it brought up too much sorrow, not only for what was lost on that beautiful morning ten years ago but for all the tragedies and nightmares unleashed in the wake and too often in the name of that morning. The visuals were just too intense. In the car, though, on the way to and from the wedding, the Moms kept the radio tuned to NPR and so heard much of its coverage, made bearable, perhaps, by the soothing voices and the absence of high-definition images of the World Trade Center towers gently -- or so it looks, in slow motion -- sinking to the ground.

And so it was that on their way out of town on Friday afternoon they happened to hear a story about the extraordinary efforts to rebuild and reopen the damaged section of the Pentagon within a year after the attacks. In the middle of the story, which featured Walker Lee Evey, a modest, genial-sounding fellow who managed the reconstruction project, they glanced out the car window and realized they were driving past -- the Pentagon. They marveled at that weird bit of synchronicity and went on their way. On the return trip Sunday evening, they listened to a selection of StoryCorps' 9/11 tributes and recollections. The stories are captivating, of course, recording with gut-wrenching specificity the individuality of lives lost and survivors struggling to carry on. They listened intently to one particularly powerful account by Beverly Eckert, whose husband Sean Rooney spoke to her for more than 30 minutes from the 105th floor of the World Trade Center until the collapse of the building cut off the call and his life. As Eckert's narrative ended, the dulcet-voiced reporter picked up the story -- with the tragic update that Eckert, who became a prominent advocate for those affected by the attacks, was killed in a plane crash in 2009 while flying to an event to honor her late husband. Both Moms gasped as they took in that painful detail, and as they struggled to absorb it the car rounded a curve -- and there again, across several ribbons of highway and in the soft light of a sweet late-summer evening, was the Pentagon.

The Pentagon is about ten miles from the global headquarters of RW Enterprises, LLC. Going south from Roxie's World, it's the first clear sign that a trip is underway, as the federal city and its monuments fade from view. Coming north, it means, Hooray, we're nearly home! One part of our household's 9/11 narrative that didn't make it into the 2008 post is that, on the weekend after the attacks, the Moms felt moved to get in the car and drive down to see the damaged building. It felt necessary and appropriate to do so. They are hardly fans of the military-industrial complex, though Moose has always admitted that in the aftermath of the attacks she took comfort in the sounds of fighter jets constantly passing over the house. In any case, they needed to see for themselves the appalling gash in the massive building, smell the smoke from the barely extinguished fires. They were hardly alone in that impulse. The highway was packed with vehicles that slowed to a crawl as they approached the Pentagon.

Others have written about experiencing 9/11 at some distance from the attacked places. (See, for example, Historiann's comment on TR's post.) The Pentagon is different from the World Trade Center in being geographically separate from its surroundings and in being not a relatively open center of commerce but a closed space designed to be hard to access and even, in some ways, to see. These are points made in a thoughtful piece by Marc Fisher in WaPo a couple of weeks ago on why and how it is that public memory of the 9/11 attacks focuses almost exclusively on New York, with only nominal attention paid to the Pentagon (or Shanksville, PA, for that matter).

"[T]he story of 9/11 has become overwhelmingly a New York story," Fisher notes. He goes on to explore this imbalance by acknowledging the many factors that have given rise to it, including the scale of the losses at the different locations, the lack of video of the plane hitting the Pentagon, the building's architecture and its physical remoteness from its surroundings, and a military culture that favors secrecy and efficiency over openness and prolonged public debate over how to honor the victims of the attacks. Fisher writes without rancor about the skewing of public memory toward New York, refusing to enter into an unseemly game of comparative suffering, but his point should raise concern for those who are interested in having as full and accurate a record as possible of the attacks and their impacts.

The military may not be comfortable having such a devastating assault on the symbolic and actual center of American power be a part of public memory, but the rest of us should insist upon it. The Moms have lived in the Washington area for a quarter century now. Nothing in all those years compares to those terrible hours of uncertainty when the Pentagon was burning and rumors swirled of bombs on the grounds of the Capitol. If history "requires the assembling and collation of memory," then Washington stories, too, must be brought into the account. The Pentagon was on fire. My friend could see the flames from her office window. Goose went to Taco Bell on her way home from campus late in the afternoon because neither of us had eaten. I stayed in my bathrobe and watched TV for 16 hours. In the family calendar she faithfully maintains for the household, Goose wrote on September 11, 2001, simply: "The saddest day." That weekend, we drove down to Arlington and went slowly by the Pentagon. We rolled down the windows and could smell the smoke. I don't remember what we said or if we said anything at all. That was a sad day, too.

(Photo Credit: Bob Houlihan, US Navy, via)

A Song for Pepco

Why? Oh, we could come up with about 113,000 reasons, in our county alone, as of this moment.

Get your $hit together, you big dumb corporate doofus, and get the power where it belongs: to the people. Sing it, Johnny. Click on this vid, even if you're down to the last drop of juice in your cell phone. It'll warm your heart, no matter how cold your house is:

The moms have been without power since 8 PM last night and fled the house this afternoon when the thermostat in the great room hit 56 degrees. They are in their cozy offices on campus now, enjoying warmth and functioning WiFi. They are hoping they don't have to spend another evening playing Camp Fire Girls, but, well, if they do, they'll cope. They've got plenty of wood, plenty of liquor, and a gas stove in the basement that puts out a fierce amount of heat. (Be kind, darlings -- Don't ask how cold they had to get before they remembered that useful little fact.) Happily, they've also got 21st-century reading devices that come with their own light sources. The way things are going, Moose stands a decent chance of actually finishing Jonathan Franzen's Freedom before the weekend is over.

The cause of all this mayhem? Oh, you know, three or so inches of snow. Yeah, it was nasty last night, with thundersnow and strong winds and a whole lot of frozen messiness falling from the sky, but it all stopped by midnight and roads were passable pretty early this morning. It's hard to believe Pepco can't get everybody back on line within 24 hours, but this wouldn't be the first time the national capital area was left in the dark for an unreasonable period of time.

You can kill the lights, Pepco, but you can't kill our spirits. Power to the people, power to the people, right on! Stay warm, my pretties, stay safe, and, if you've got power, for dog's sake, use it wisely. Peace out.

Tell Us If You Felt It

That would be affirmative, WaPo.  Oh, boy, you betcha.  And how.

The little earthquake of 2010 that shook the Washington, DC area shortly after 5 o'clock this very a.m. was assuredly felt in Roxie's World.  Both moms were startled into wakefulness by an eerie rumbling noise that shook the house for several seconds.  WTF, Moose muttered, is that an earthquake?  Goose of course was skeptical, because that is her nature, but she was inclined to agree with her sleepy yet perceptive partner when she realized she didn't hear the gears of an exceptionally large truck grinding its way through the neighborhood in the predawn hours, which was the only other possible explanation she could imagine for such a rattling and rolling of the usually steady world.

Here is the U.S. Geological Survey's poetically named "ShakeMap," which shows that the epicenter of the 3.6 magnitude quake was about 20 miles north and west of our ridiculously large backyard, in Montgomery County, MD:

As soon as the tremors subsided, Moose's first thought was, Hey, I should put something up on Facebook.  She fell back asleep before that thought could be actualized, but when she awoke the first thing she did was to check Facebook to see if friends and neighbors had also felt a certain rumbling in the night.  Sure enough, they had.  Her news feed was full of comments, quips, and links to reports on the quake.  It was a delightful way to get a personalized ShakeMap -- and to get insight into the sleep patterns of her friends by noting who slept through the quake and who was awakened by it.  She quickly weighed in with a couple of quake-related status updates, the cleverest of which was, Is that an earthquake, or are you just happy to see me?

Note the pattern of information-seeking here, my friends.  Moose didn't turn on the television or click on the WaPo website.  She went to a social networking site, to get a sense of how the quake was experienced by friends and neighbors.  Had the quake been more serious, that obviously would not have been the case, but this feels like a modest yet significant example of how new media tools have changed our patterns of information consumption and our ways of experiencing such events.  They are personal and public, simultaneously and instantaneously.  That is a big -- one might even say seismic -- shift in our way of being.

So tell us, darlings, did you feel the little earthquake?  Let us know!

Noted, While Walking

Or, One More Reason We Totes Heart Our Neighborhood:

(Photo Credit: Moose, on her iPhone, 6/15/10)

Where else do you get a call to environmental conscience and collective action through a clever revision of a famous American poem -- on a home-made sign gone drippy in the rain?

Welcome to the People's Republic of Takoma Park, comrades. There's no place like home!

Peace to all living things, except for kudzu. Kudzu must die, even in Takoma Park. Have a nice day.

The Deer Who Came for Brunch

. . . and helped herself to a prodigious amount of hosta salad before Moose noticed she was out there and ran out into the yard in her nightgown shrieking, "Go away! Get out of my hosta!":

The deer was unperturbed by Moose's histrionics and went out to a remote, shady part of the yard for a postprandial nap, rousing herself only when Moose came back out to capture the moment on her iPhone.

Interestingly, as that last paragraph was being typed, Moose looked out and saw that the pretty yet unwelcome guest had returned for another go at the all-you-can-eat hosta bar. She has now officially become that crazy neighbor who shakes her fist and yells in order to protect the sanctity of her home. I will let you know if copies of American Rifleman start showing up on the doorstep.

Note to the Moms: You know, it's really OK with me if you start looking around for a new dog. Srsly, guys, it's been almost six months since I kicked the bucket. I'm doing fine up here in what we might for lack of a better word call heaven, but it's clear that things have gone straight to hell security-wise out in my ridiculously large backyard. Do it for the hostas and, you know, for what's left of your dignity. Just sayin'.

The moms have been inordinately preoccupied recently with matters domestic. In the last few weeks, they have been dealing with, let's see, well . . .

• an upstairs shower that started leaking water through a light fixture in the kitchen;
• an $800 car repair that required several follow-up conversations with our entirely trustworthy mechanic when Moose realized that the exact same repair had been done less than two years ago;
• a consultation with Raymond, our eccentric yet masterful furniture guy, about how to repair the antique table that UPS smashed to smithereens when shipping it up from Texas;
• appointments first with a trapping service and then with an exterminator to investigate the source of the scary tippy-tappy, scritchy-scratchy noises in the eaves of the moms' bedroom (upshot: bees, now deceased, but Brandon the Mighty but Kinda Dumb Trapper messed up the ceiling [in a futile effort to find nonexistent mice], which will have to be repaired by Orlando, the paint and drywall guy; see next bullet);
• waiting on Orlando, whom we adore and have known for years, to come fix the damage done by the winter's ice dams, which is actually going to involve a fairly significant amount of painting and a little dry wall repair;
• hanging out in the meantime with our beloved Joe, awesome carpenter and all-around fix-it guy, who figured out what caused the leak in the shower and the squeak in the dishwasher door and came up with a fix for a threshold in the basement that kept tripping Moose every time she came out of her study;
• getting Cromcast to figure out what was going on with the suddenly glitchy Interweb connection, which was making my typist want to throw her laptop across the room rather than type for me or work on the Most Overdue Project in the History of American Publishing, which she is, actually, occasionally doing these days.

Wow. That's a long list!

Note to Dr. Crazy, who just bought her first house: I swear to dog, home ownership usually isn't this much of a pain in the a$$ or a drain on the wallet. Do not read this post and get scared. The moral of this tale of temporary woe is that everything can be fixed. It's just a matter of knowing who to call. As time goes on you, too, will develop a long list of reliable guys and gals to call in the event of emergencies or problems beyond your range of expertise. As for the money, well, some things (e.g., the ice dams) are covered by insurance, and some you just have to close your eyes and say, "I will get it all back at tax time, I will get it all back at tax time." Your home is an investment. Keep it in good shape in order to protect or enhance its value. Take it from a couple of fiscally conservative old broads who screwed up the nerve to cash out a decade's worth of equity and re-build the whole damn joint back in '03. You'll be glad you did.

While we are on the subject of housekeeping, Moose has racked up a long list of open tabs in her browser. We'll pass them along to you for your summer weekend reading pleasure:

• The backstory on Charlie Riedel, the photographer who took those amazing photos of birds mired in the oil on the Louisiana coast that everyone, including us, has been talking about;
• Melissa McEwan's eloquent and deeply perceptive take on the separation of Al and Tipper Gore, which we also weighed in on earlier this week;
• Think outside the burqa! Here's a Time report on British research suggesting that Internet use makes people happier -- yes, HAPPIER! -- especially women and people in the developing world;
• On the other hand, here's a WaPo story that raises questions about whether the millions of dollars schools are sinking into high-tech gadgetry actually improves student learning;
• For Marylanders following the rematch between former Gov. Bob Ehrlich and current Gov. Martin "You, Sir, Are No Jack Kennedy" O'Malley, here's a WaPo piece that fact-checks the claims each candidate is making about the other's record on taxing and spending;
• In the mood for a good cry? Eager to relive your own dead-pet experience? Well, then click on over to The Best-Ever Dog (H/T Kelly), for a well-written and heart-rending reflection on "how we repay unconditional love."
  

That's it, kids. A happy Friday to you and yours. Here's hoping the deer and the antelope are staying on the right side of your high fences.

Educate the State

(Image Credit: Eric Coe)

Seems like a good idea, doesn't it? Educating the state, we mean.

We've been intending to write this post since the big March 4 Day of Action to Defend Education, which, as we noted at the time, turned out to be a day of not much action on the campus of Queer the Turtle U. Elsewhere, however, the day became the occasion for a significant shift in strategy for those concerned with the problem of funding for higher education. Most notably in California, where so much attention had been focused on the regents and the always entertaining Mark Yudof, on March 4 the battle was taken to Sacramento, where 2000 people rallied at the state capitol in an action designated "Educate the State." At that rally, Berkeley political science prof and co-chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association Wendy Brown gave an impassioned speech on the vital importance of an educated citizenry to the functioning of democracy:

Without quality public education, we the people cannot know, handle, let alone check the powers that govern us. Without quality public education, there can be no substance to the promise of equality and freedom, no possibility of developing and realizing individual capacities, no possibility of children overcoming disadvantage, or of teens reaching for the stars, no possibility of being a people guiding their own destiny or of individuals choosing their own course. Above all, there is no possibility of being a self-governing people, a democracy.

For public universities, of course, the state has to be a target of efforts to organize, lobby, advocate, and educate on behalf of their missions and their institutions. That is especially important now, in a moment when a deep recession has converged with decades of declining levels of state support to put "quality, capacity, and the underlying ability to meet student and societal needs at risk," according to Paul E. Lingenfelter, executive director of the State Higher Education Executive Officers. Lingenfelter is quoted in a Chronicle of Higher Ed article from mid-March that surveys the national scene and sums it up with a sobering headline: State Cuts Are Pushing Public Colleges into Peril. (Go read that article if you haven't already. You need to know these things.)

As this year of activism on campuses throughout the country winds down, we are pleased to note that California is not alone in raising the pressure on state governments to halt the functional privatization of public higher education. In Georgia a couple of weeks ago, hundreds of students marched on the state capitol to protest cuts to the state's university system. In Illinois, our rabble-rousing pals in Shampoo-Banana are planning to use another of their collective furlough days in April to "storm Springfield," as one of the organizers puts it in a fiery post on the importance of protest not just as a means of educating the state but of teaching her daughter the value of being "a giant pain in the ass." PAWS UP to that, eh, kids?

Meanwhile, here in Turtle Country, flowers aren't the only thing popping up on campus. In our neck of the woods, it appears that part of educating the state might involve sending a message to Gov. Martin "You, Sir, Are No Jack Kennedy" O'Malley, who is up for reelection this November:


(Photo Credit: Goose, on her iPhone, on the campus of QTU, 3/23/10)

Moose did some research on teh Internetz and thinks that "Furlough Owe'Malley" is connected to a group of state employees disgruntled with having been forced to shoulder a disproportionate share of the effort to balance Maryland's budget in the past couple of years. We share their consternation, if not the hostility to unions evident on their blog. Heading into his re-coronation (oops! of course we meant to say reelection!) campaign, O'Malley seems to think his cynical and short-sighted (oops again! that should have been courageous and tough-minded) strategy of slashing budgets rather than raising taxes will protect him in a rematch with his opponent in 2006, former Gov. Robert Ehrlich (who will formally announce next week his intention to run again for his old job). It will be interesting to see how the strategy plays out. For all O'Malley's fiscal restraint, Ehrlich will still try to tar the Great Furlougher as a big spender who saddled Maryland's middle class with "the largest tax increase in Maryland's history" in 2007. (WaPo compares the records of the two govs here. O'Malley did raise taxes in 2007 -- and we applaud him for it.) O'Malley will counter that Ehrlich, who actually governed as a moderate and was pretty generous to QTU, is a spooky-scary guy who will turn back the clock -- to what? the time when the state's university system got its largest budget increase ever? Oops!

Listen carefully, precious Turtles: We can't stand Gov. Bob and have no wish to see him ensconced in Annapolis again, but Martin O'Malley can't count on us to get up off our big comfortable couch and vote for him a second time. Indeed, Moose has publicly declared she cannot imagine any circumstances under which she would do so. Our disgust with O'Malley comes not from the right -- surprise, surprise! -- but from the left. It arises from his willingness to put his own political self-interest above the needs of the state's most vulnerable citizens and the financial security of its 70,000 employees. Furloughs and cuts to Medicaid and local aid programs were not fiscal necessities in Maryland. They were political choices made by Martin O'Malley and Democrats in the state's legislature who refused, for example, even to consider raising taxes on alcohol, despite the fact that taxes on beer and wine haven't been raised in 37 years and taxes on distilled spirits haven't budged since 1955. For an illuminating survey of the alternatives that were available to O'Malley, go read around on the wonkish Web site of the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute, which advocates a mix of cuts and revenue enhancements as a way of balancing the state's budget while preserving the level of public investment needed to assure "a good quality of life and a decent standard of living for all Marylanders." (That line is from a special report, "A Balanced Approach to Meet Maryland's Needs." It's a PDF file accessible from here.)

As of today, there are 11 days left in the 2010 session of the Maryland General Assembly. It appears that the forces of gutlessness are going to prevail. That means no tax increases, about $120 million in cuts above the $1 billion originally proposed by O'Malley, and, we surmise, an increased likelihood of a third round of furloughs for QTU staff and faculty next year. Further, there's a proposal in the state senate to freeze support for the university through 2012, which means more fun lies ahead over how to maintain both quality and affordability.

Educate the state: What does that mean in Roxie's World? Well, for starters it means banging the drum here on this little blog, hoping that local readers will get informed, get angry, and get active in support of higher ed. It also means reaching out to the good guys and gals who represent us in Annapolis. We're fortunate in the People's Republic of Takoma Park to be represented by true profiles in political courage, like Senator Jamie Raskin and Delegate Heather Mizeur, who believe in public goods and have the guts to fight for them. (Raskin is a law prof, too, at American University, so he's especially sympathetic to the cause of higher ed.) We're in regular contact with these dedicated public servants and have let them know how disappointed we've been by the lack of compassion and equity in the state's budget decisions. We tell them we expect Democrats who campaign as progressives to govern as progressives. We'll work and vote for Raskin and Mizeur again. O'Malley? Sheila Hixson, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committe and issued a blanket declaration that "We're not going to consider taxes" this election year? Sorry, folks. These Turtles will be staying in their shells when it comes to you.

Who's your rep in Annapolis? Reach one, teach one, Turtles. We've got some educatin' to do.

Matter Out of Place

Spring is in the air, and you know what that means: The birds are singing, the moms are walking, the snow is nearly gone -- and the audiovisual equipment that was for some reason abandoned in the park is there for all the world to see. And to photograph:

Hey, you know, it felt like a nuclear winter:

Ah, nature! culture! technology! CameraBag!

Breathe deep, walk tall, and keep your eyes peeled, darlings -- You will see the darndest things. Peace out.

(Photo Credits: Moose, on her iPhone, with ToyCamera [top] and CameraBag [bottom], 3/6/10.)

Boots on the Ground

(Photo Credit: Moose, on her iPhone, 2/24/10)

This isn't a post, really. It's more of a Post-It. A little bit of a love note, just to let you all know that we are thinking of you here in Roxie's World. The photo is from a walk Moose took yesterday out on the trail. She hadn't been out there in several weeks, because the snow was too icky for skiing and too high for walking, but yesterday was warm and sunny and she was feeling restless and bold, so she ventured down to see whether conditions were go for a bit of a stroll. Happily, they were. She made it all the way to Piney Branch without too much trouble, except for one nasty spot near where some road work is being done. She wandered off the trail at that point and ended up stepping into mud that nearly covered her shoes (see above), but instead of feeling annoyed she was delighted -- delighted that her feet were in three inches of mud rather than three feet of snow, blissed out by the smell of the rich brown goo and the sound of the water roaring in the creek -- because of course it all means that spring is edging its way toward Roxie's World, whatever the weather report for the next 24 hours may say.

Which of course made her think of Winnie-the-Pooh's ecstatic celebration of early spring, his poem "Noise," from The House at Pooh Corner. Surely you know it:

Oh, the butterflies are flying,
Now the winter days are dying,
And the primroses are trying
To be seen.

And the turtle-doves are cooing,
And the woods are up and doing,
For the violets are blue-ing
In the green.

Oh, the honey-bees are gumming,
On their little wings, and humming
That the summer, which is coming,
Will be fun.

And the cows are almost cooing,
And the turtle-doves are mooing,
Which is why a Pooh is poohing
In the sun.

For the spring is really springing;
You can see a skylark singing,
And the blue-bells, which are ringing,
Can be heard.

And the cuckoo isn't cooing,
But he's cucking and he's ooing,
And a Pooh is simply poohing
Like a bird.

Moose has loved this poem for darn near half a century, and, despite that PhD in English, she still has no idea what Pooh's "poohing in the sun" might mean, but, well, if you can do it in the sun she is all for it, and she hopes that you are, too. Peace out, silly old bears. May spring find you soon, wherever you are.

Natural Causes

Nature -- sometimes sears a Sapling --
Sometimes -- scalps a Tree --

(Photo Credit: Moose, 2/18/10)

And sometimes nature cleaves a poor little sapling right in twain, doesn't it, Ms. Dickinson?

It's a small thing, when you consider the scale of damages wrought by the Blizzard(s) of 2010 in the Washington area, but, still, there is mourning in Roxie's World for the sweet Japanese maple that was planted just a couple of years ago out by the pond in the ridiculously large backyard. The moms doted on that pretty, slow-growing tree and looked forward to watching it quietly assert itself in front of the crepe myrtles that anchor that part of the garden. It's hard to imagine that a young tree can survive such a deep wound, despite what Dickinson says, in the poem quoted above, about a plant's capacity to recover from the searings and scalpings of nature. "Her Green People recollect it," Dickinson writes, the "it" referring presumably to the assault upon the plant, "When they do not die -- ." Spring will come again and with it new growth. Even if an individual tree dies, its remains will eventually crumble into the ground, enrich the soil, and nurture the growth of other plants.

That is a thought worth keeping in mind, perhaps, as the long, slow process of melting gets underway and we wait impatiently in the cold to feel the warm, green ground beneath our feet again.

Peace out, my darling Green People. May all that is damaged in your world sprout into something beautiful.

Postscript for the Literal: Need some advice on how to care for plants damaged by the storm? Click here.

The (Gender) Politics of Snow

This Vehicle Liberated by Vagina Power!

This Path Cleared by
Sistas Shovelin' for Themselves!

(Photo Credits: Moose, 2/11/10)

What's up, Rox? you are probably wondering. Somebody wake up on the wrong side of the gender binary? Or maybe cabin fever has settled into the neighborhood, nearly a week after Snowpocalypse II blew into town and not quite 24 hours after Snowpocalypse II, Part B finally shot its wad? Nah, the moms are good, despite having discovered evidence of an ice dam problem on another wall in the house. Moose just felt compelled to offer a broad-shouldered, gynocritical response to an especially dopey column in yesterday's WaPo by Kathleen Parker.

The Post has, of course, been all over the snow story, which is appropriate, given the historic scale of the storm and its significant local and national impact (because the federal government has been shut down for four straight days). WaPo being WaPo, there's even been a look at how the region's leaders, including Maryland Gov. Martin "You, Sir, Are No Jack Kennedy" O'Malley, have negotiated "the politics of snowstorms." Much of the coverage has been great. We've especially enjoyed the photo galleries, but business columnist Steve Pearlstein had a really smart piece on what the response to the storm by cash-strapped state and local authorities says about our broken politics. Here's the money (ha-ha) quote:

It is a measure of the dysfunction of our political system that we can no longer rationally debate whether it is penny-wise and pound-foolish not to spend a little more to try to keep the Capital of the Free World from grinding to a halt every time a snowflake descends from the heavens.

I realize there are lots of problems that cannot be solved just by throwing money at them, but snow removal is not one of them. We have the know-how, we have the technology and we have the money and economic self-interest to do it right. What we don't seem to have is the leadership or political will.

Amen! And then there is Parker's not especially illuminating meditation on what the storm allegedly revealed (or conveniently affirmed) (to Parker) about gender difference. Parker notices how quickly her neighbor, USA Today columnist Craig Wilson, gets out into the storm to do battle with the snow "with his Great Big Snow Shovel." Craig's alacrity is evidence to Parker of a primordial male urge to act in response to a "taunt from Nature." She acknowledges that when she poked her head outside during the epochal storm she saw "many women," presumably also equipped with shovels, clearing sidewalks and unearthing cars. Hmmm. One guy, "many women," all doing exactly the same thing. Sounds like a paradise of gender non-difference, doesn't it? Nope! Not to Parker, who blithely asserts, on the basis of evidence as substantial as a melting snowflake, that "most women do these things because they must, while men apparently can't wait to do them."

We'll pause here so that you can go get your pink or blue barf bag and relieve yourself of that icky burning sensation in the back of your throat.

Better? Thought so.

By the way, Parker also lets us know in the course of her "analysis" that Craig Wilson, who is so hot to go after the snow with his "Great Big Snow Shovel," is gay (he is -- Yay, Craig!), which, I guess, is Parker's way of letting us know that even light-in-the-loafer guys are not immune to the Great Big Manly Urge to subdue Nature, while women -- Ah, well, if I must, I must, I guess, but, really, it would be so much nicer if a big strapping fella would come along and do it for me -- and then if his boyfriend would feed me stroganoff, too, well, that would be just peachy!

We are not making this up, peeps. Feel free to grab that bag again if you need it.

Here's the thing, Ms. Parker. By 10 o'clock this morning, we had had approximately 47 guys come knock on the door and offer to dig out the cars and shovel the walks in Roxie's World. We declined, not because they weren't offering to do it for free and give us stroganoff into the bargain, but because, contrary to what you assert, we actively enjoy doing this kind of work. No, we didn't race out at the height of the storm to catch flakes before they even hit the pavement, and we certainly didn't wield the biggest shovels on the block. Nonetheless, we derive a deep satisfaction in everything associated with shoveling snow: being outdoors, doing work that is physically taxing yet pleasurable, and being a part of the social, communal experience of something like a snowstorm. The work is less about subduing nature than respecting it, figuring out how best to exist in it so that people and property will be safe. A storm is a moment of chaos and uncertainty. The cleanup is a period of checking on things and setting them to rights. And shoveling snow is one of those activities that always has a feeling of play about it, because the cold air makes us giddy and wet clothes make us feel like kids again. As the moms shoveled, a stream of neighbors passed by, and everyone laughed as they exchanged loud greetings and stories about the storm. Such rituals confirm not only our shared participation in a significant event but our membership in a community, our neighborliness.

It wasn't a guy thing, Ms. Parker, it was simply a good thing, and we were delighted to be a part of it. We're sorry to hear that in your neighborhood, which, since we don't know its name, we might as well call Gender Gap, shoveling is for manly men, while the girly girls are stuck indoors. You should come outside sometime and pick up a shovel. You really don't know what you're missing.

Ice Damnation

Oh, dear. All hell has broken loose in Roxie's World, and "Snoverkill" is just rolling into town.

Here's what Moose noticed on the wall of the breakfast nook this morning, as she was putting the a.m. load of carbs and proteins on the table:

(Photo Credit: Moose, 2/9/09)

I told you it wouldn't be pretty if she saw signs that ice dams were starting to force water into the walls of the house. I told you there'd be hell to pay, and indeed there was, as Moose stuffed an egg and two orange danish (snow day diet, obviously) into her mouth, while stealing dark, sidelong glances at the ugly blister on the wall. She downed her orange juice in one angry gulp and pounded up the stairs to get into her snow gear. She didn't even stop to make the bed -- and the moms firmly believe that beds must be made every day in order to keep the forces of barbarism at bay.

When she came back downstairs, she had a wild yet determined look in her eye. "I am taking a hammer with me," she announced to Goose. She ordered Goose to venture down under the deck to retrieve the ladder so that she could get up to the gutters to do whatever she had to do to clear a path for the water. While Goose dug a path to the ladder, Moose frantically shoveled the deck, getting the snow away from the house, pounding the hammer against the wall to break up the ice. She was . . . possessed. She spent the next three hours shoveling and banging, moving the ladder from here to there, wiping ice out of her eyes, accidentally throwing piles of icy snow down on poor Goose's head. I hate to steal a page from GayProf, but there really is no better way to describe what Moose looks like in these transcendentally crazy I will strike the snow if it insults me moments. She looked like this:

(Image Credit: Picked up here.)

Meanwhile, just a few miles from Roxie's World, First Dog of the United States, Bo, cavorted happily on the grounds of the White House:

(Photo Credit: Pete Souza, Official White House Photo, via)

For the moment, the house is warm and dry. The snow is piling up on the deck again, and who knows what tomorrow will bring? Moose sits quietly in her red chair, muscles pleasantly aching and fire happily cracking. She wonders languidly if there are ice dams in the White House. Damn, she thinks, I bet Michelle wouldn't put up with that $hit. I bet she'd bang the hell out of the gutters on that joint if there was water in her breakfast nook. Girl would not put up with that. No way.

Peace out, snow angels. And lord let the power stay on!

Snow Daze

(Photo Credit: Moose, 2/7/10)

The Knickerbocker record is safe, but we had ourselves a $hitload of snow here in the national capital area over the weekend, kids. At this point, we are way over trying to measure the stuff, though Moose did of course take a stab at that when the storm finally ended late Saturday afternoon. She measured 20 inches up by the house, but it was much deeper out in the remote section of the ridiculously large backyard, which she visited yesterday to check on a stand of Leyland cypresses she planted back in '95. She has always called those trees her "mighty sons" (don't ask me -- it's some cryptic Willa Cather joke, I think), and they seemed to be struggling under the weight of the wet, heavy snow. She borrowed a long window-washing tool from a neighbor to shake some of the snow and ice out of the branches. That's the kind of thing Moose does when she feels anxious about a situation but can't do much to change or improve it. Heaven help us if she starts obsessing about ice dams. Goose might have to summon an army of mighty sons and daughters to restrain her from climbing out on the roof to shovel off snow if that happens.

Goose has been encouraging Moose to take pictures of the storm and its aftermath as a way to keep her safely occupied. Here is a public link to the album she uploaded to Facebook. You can access it even if you are not Moose's friend, even if you are famously Facebook-phobic or Facebook-contemptuous. (Yes, Historiann, that includes you.) It documents the storm from the first flakes on Friday to the start of the big dig-out on Sunday. WaPo has a gallery of photos up that is almost as impressive as Moose's. It's here. Oh, and if you're interested in how DC's famous and powerful are coping with the snow, click here. (Short version, with spoiler: Power couple Andrea Mitchell and Alan Greenspan spent Saturday glued to the TV and their computers, as Greenspan prepped for a scheduled appearance on Meet the Press Sunday morning. Gee, and I would have figured those two crazy kids would have spent a snow day doing unspeakable things on a rug before a roaring fire!)

The storm has had a significant impact on the DC-area chapter of the Aging Sisterhood of Righteous Academic Fem Bloggers. (Sisterhood of the Non-Traveling Laptoppers?) Moose has been reluctant to type for this blog, thinking she needs to conserve hand and shoulder strength for shoveling out the next dump of snow being predicted for Tuesday night. (Five to ten more inches! Good times, people, good times.) Clio Bluestocking finally broke a prolonged blog silence this morning, with photos and a detailed description of her efforts to dig her car out of her apartment building's parking lot. (Clio, baby, we've got shovels! So near and yet so far! Here's hoping the white merlot hasn't run out yet!) Meanwhile, the indefatigable Margaret Soltan of University Diaries has decamped to a hotel on Rockville Pike, because her home in Bethesda has been without power since Friday night. She is back to blogging, though, and wins the prize for most poetic description of the storm:

The snow came down thin and sifty like confectioner’s sugar, but when it finally stopped the whole world was whipped cream.

Moose might have said the whole world was mousse, but, well, she is not a poet and Soltan is, so we'll defer to her. Moose was rather pleased with the FB status line she came up with to go with the photo at the top of this post, which she took first thing Saturday morning: Moose awoke to diamonds, she typed, as the morning sun transformed the ridiculously large backyard into an ocean of tiny sparkles. Nice try, Moose, but don't give up the gig as a lit critter, 'kay?

Meanwhile, inside the house, the moms polished off the last of the baked potato soup last night while watching Super Bowl commercials (H/T June Star) and waiting for Big Love to start. They've got a big box of Clementines to ward off scurvy, plenty of booze, and a bunch of chicken thighs destined to become a hearty but low-fat stew this evening. They've amused themselves by watching basketball and were tickled pink that the Non-Lady Terps used a blizzard of 3-point shots to immobilize the visiting Tar Heels of UNC, handing Coach Roy Williams his worst defeat in ten years. They also caught the premier of HBO's riveting biopic Temple Grandin, with Claire Danes in the title role. Danes is amazing, as are Julia Ormond as Grandin's quietly determined mother and Catherine O'Hara as an empathetic aunt. Directed by Mick Jackson, the film does an exceptional job of showing viewers how Grandin, an autistic, views and experiences the world. It doesn't entirely avoid a narrative of heroic disability, but there is much that is heroic in Grandin's story. More importantly, the film -- and Grandin herself -- asks us to look at autism not so much as a disability as a difference in neurological development and function. Grandin is fortunate in having had strong allies and advocates, but her success as an animal behaviorist and livestock consultant must also be credited to her having made the most of autistic modes of seeing and being. Temple Grandin is a powerful argument in support of neurodiversity.

So, no serious signs of cabin fever so far in Roxie's World, though that could change quickly if water starts pouring out of ceiling lights (meaning that ice dams have started to melt and the water has nowhere else to go because downspouts are frozen solid) or if Tuesday night's storm proves to be as big and awful as some of the predictions are beginning to suggest it might be. The moms will be okay as long as the liquor holds out and the cable stays on, but, hold onto your hats if they can't tune into Damages Wednesday night with a little nip of something to warm their tummies. That just wouldn't be fair . . . or pretty.

Be well, my little snow angels. Tell us how you're holding up and what your strategy is for getting through the next round. Good grief, kids, what shall we call the next one when we haven't even dug out of the last one? How about, Say It Ain't Snow? Leave your suggestions and the tales of your adventures and tribulations in comments.

Cute blue and white guy on the right is Moose's new Facebook doppelganger. Because Roxie's World is firmly committed to seasonally appropriate identity costuming. Peace out.

Snowpocalypse II

Roxie's World Rides the Leading Edge
of the Storm of the Freakin' (Young) Century!

View of the Ridiculously Large Backyard, 4 PM, Friday:


Snowfall Predictions, as of 7 PM, Friday:


Baked Potato Soup, For Crucial Pre-Shoveling Carbo-Loading:


A Hearty Red, For Warding Off Cabin Fever:


A Tragic Historical Context That Keeps Being Invoked and Making Us Worry When All We Want to Do Is Sit Back and Enjoy the Snow:


Let us know what's going on in your neck of the woods, kids! What are you eating? Drinking? Reading? Watching? Thinking? Hoping? Talk to us, darlings. It's not like you're going to be going anywhere! Be safe, be warm, and remember: Spring is just six weeks away! Peace out.

Snowpocalypse Takoma

You might have heard that we had ourselves a bit of a winter weather event here in the national capital area this weekend. My typist is too tired from her epic bout of shoveling this afternoon to do much typing, so we thought we'd just put up a little photo essay on the storm. Snow is so pretty to look at that we figured you wouldn't mind. (Want more wintry eye candy? Wa Po storm photo gallery is here. Blog pal and neighbor Clio Bluestocking has photos from her neck of the woods here.)

Photo 1: Dog Tired. Here's what America's favorite dog blogger looked like early Saturday morning, after the moms drove me home through the leading edge of the storm. We had gone to Baltimore for a sybaritic early solstice feast with our beloved Candy Man and his crew. The return trip took two hours, as heavy snow quickly overwhelmed the efforts of plows on I95. Goose drove heroically, while Moose worried and offered helpful commentary (e.g., "Don't you think you should turn the defrost on, dear?") from the passenger seat.


Photo 2: Rear Window I. This was the view out into our ridiculously large backyard shortly before 1 PM on Saturday, at the height of the storm.


Photo 3: Rear Window II. Same view at 10:30 AM Sunday.


Photo 4: Sligo Reflections. After the shoveling, Moose insisted on a walk in the park. The creek is gorgeous, but the trail is treacherous. Tomorrow, she may lobby to do the trip on skis.


Photo 5: The Fire Is So Delightful. Goose is the family fire maker. And the chicken and dumplings maker. And the cocktail maker. And the one who doesn't panic on an icy highway in the dead of night when Moose can hardly breathe or see. We all have our roles to play.


Wherever you are, my lovelies, Roxie's World hopes that you are safe and warm, sheltered from every storm. Peace out.

(Photo Credits: Moose, 12/19 and 12/20/09)

Signs of the Times

1. Got Blood? Apparently somebody was disappointed with the Great Speechifier's announcement of a major troop escalation in Afghanistan on Tuesday evening. Moose ran across this image on Facebook Wednesday morning:

Its provenance is unknown, but don't blame us, kids. The moms watched a basketball game Tuesday night. Oh, and supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary battle, but you knew that already. (PS: No need to jump in here to claim that if Hillary were president she, too, would probably be escalating troops in Afghanistan. A) We'll never know. B) Her supporters never claimed she was Gandhi in a pantsuit. Obama's did.) (PPS: For more on scales falling from the eyes of disappointed Obamaniacs, see Historiann's latest.)

2. Need Lunch? Well, you won't get it at this former bastion of groovy good eats in the People's Republic of Takoma Park:

Another local business has bitten the dust, the latest victim of Great Depression 2.0. Walking by the suddenly empty building yesterday (on her way to lunch at this new kid on the block), Moose couldn't help but tumble into her fantasy of an alternative career as owner of a neighborhood bar called the Takoma Tavern (TM RW Enterprises, LLC). It'd be a friendly, literate joint with a menu full of comfort food, the best martinis on the East Coast, poetry slams on Thursday nights, and acoustic music on Fridays and Saturdays. Oh, and a large screen TV that would only be turned on for QTU sporting events and Glee. And Big Love when it comes back from hiatus. Oh, and of course Damages. And Ellen. And Brothers and Sisters if Moose is working the bar on a slow Sunday night. Interested investors should contact me at roxieblog@gmail.com. Srsly, kids, the way this whole academic thing is going, I'm thinking the moms should get serious about exploring their options, just in case a big-time Hollywood writer/director never stumbles into Roxie's World and recognizes its potential as a blockbuster feature film starring Meryl Streep as the hormonally unbalanced amanuensis for the funniest darn dog blog in America.

3. Walk much? If you do and you're of the female persuasion, then you'd better take Wanda's advice and leave your vagina at home:

This crime occurred on the hiker-biker trail right here in Roxie's World. Takoma Park Police have released a sketch of a suspect in the assault, which occurred in a wooded area along the trail near sunset.

Is it just us, kids, or does the glass feel half empty today? Does it seem that there is a meanness at large in the world, some ill wind blowing across the land? Be careful out there, will you, darlings? You know how we worry about you, especially those of you who recklessly insist on taking your vaginas with you everywhere! Be vigilant, be fierce, and beware vagina-haters, who are also, alas, everywhere. Peace out.