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.

Swiss Ms.

(Image Credit: Picked up here.)

Dear Ruth Marcus,

Has it ever occurred to you that your babysitter might read the column you write for the Washington Post? More importantly, has it ever occurred to you that, when you choose to write about a real person in the world other than yourself, you should do so as if that person assuredly would see what you were saying about her, her life, and her work? Indeed, has it not occurred to you that you have an ethical obligation to consider what you have the right to disclose about such persons and how your disclosures are likely to make them feel?

Here's the thing, Ms. Marcus. We totally appreciate how hard it is for working parents to manage the work-family conflict, and we can understand why you felt moved to dramatize that conflict for your readers by talking about the difficulties you had making sure your kids were looked after while you were covering the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week for the Post. (Your husband was also away, on a work-related trip.) It was, after all, a slice of life that nicely concretized the conflict and the policy question of how employers and government could help parents -- particularly mothers -- negotiate the competing demands upon them. I imagine it was darn near irresistible for you to write about it, given how stressed you must have been, after all you'd done to make sure things went smoothly in your absence -- the pre-made dinners! the grandmother there for the overnights! the other moms lined up for carpool duty! And then the babysitter, "new but already somewhat spotty," let you down, despite having been told that she had to "turn up on time, every day." Oh, dear. It's enough to make you choke on a fine Swiss chocolate, isn't it?

Given the nature of what you do, Ms. Marcus, you are accustomed to having your work reviewed in public -- through comments, letters to the editor, and, yes, snarky posts from dog bloggers with nothing better to do on a Wednesday afternoon. We are guessing your babysitter is not accustomed to such public scrutiny. We are also guessing that she enjoys considerably less job security than you do, despite the precariousness of the journalism business these days. She is new on the job. You are her employer, and you have just let the world know that her performance so far is failing to meet your expectations. Even if we assume that you had the decency to convey your dissatisfaction to her privately and compassionately (since you seem to recognize that she had valid reasons for failing to "turn up on time, every day"), there is something about this column that doesn't sit well with us. Over and over again you ask, "What to do about the babysitter?" and all we can think about is what it would be like for this single mom with the unreliable car and her own uncertain childcare arrangements to read these words, to watch you publicly pondering what to do about her probably meager livelihood. Would she be relieved to know that for now you are "Crossing [your] fingers -- and hoping she shows up?" Or would she be terrified to learn that you consider the arrangement "unsustainable?"

We are not questioning your right to fire an employee who is not in a position to perform the job you hired her to do. What we find disappointing -- even a little appalling -- is the deep insensitivity of your having appropriated elements of her life and story to your ends and telling it in a way that renders her both mute and invisible. Add to that the callousness of your publicly hemming and hawing over whether or not to fire her, and we are left with an image of you as the angry god trying to decide when to withdraw the hand that keeps the pesky sinner from falling into the fiery pit of Hell. It's not a pretty image, Ms. Marcus, and we can't stop wondering how your babysitter would feel if she were to stumble across it.

Yours sincerely,
Roxie

What Remains

(With apologies to photographer Sally Mann and gratitude to the former student and FB friend who recommended Mann's extraordinary exploration of mortality, love, and grief.)

I told you Moose was digitizing me. To honor the one-month anniversary of my slipping of the mortal coil of the body (which was yesterday), she offers this bit of canine ephemera from the Refrigerator Art Division of the Roxie Electronic Archive (TM: RW Enterprises, LLC):

Lovely, isn't it? And how marvelous that the world's most famous beagle would recognize the capacity of my own delightful breed to make humans happy. Believe me, darlings, we WFTs earn our breed description as playful and friendly, making us excellent companions for children (and aging lesbians, though for some strange reason the AKC omits that particular detail in enumerating our many virtues).

How are the moms doing? you may be wondering as they mark this sad milestone, because you are caring people and you know how much they doted on me. That is a hard question to answer, even when it is posed by you, my legions of loyal and trusted readers. I feel protective of the moms right now, gazing down upon them tenderly -- as we might imagine I do -- from my new post here in heaven, right in between Spike, the butch gray tabby I never met, and Lily, the trans girl tabby who taught me early that cats rule the world, no matter what dogs or humans think. I watch Moose and Goose move, separately and together, through the early stages of their grief, and I long to lick away the unexpected tears that spring to their eyes in odd moments. I want to help them adjust to new routines or perhaps do something goofy to distract them from an unremitting sense of something missing, something silent, something painfully out of balance. Turns out, though, that my powers as Universal Dog are pretty much limited to sending out beams of all the love that was left in my mighty heart when it beat its last. The cats assure me the moms feel that sometimes, and I think they do, like when they tell the tale of one of my exploits and then start laughing. Or when one reaches out for no particular reason and squeezes the hand of the other. See, the cats say at moments like that, they're doing all right, Rox. They're doing all right.

Even though, from the moms' perspective, the world has become a minefield of heartwarming stories about dogs, humans, love, loss, and inter-species heroism, any one of which might produce some of those unexpected tears referred to above. Their in-boxes are full of such stories, and they read them eagerly and with gratitude for the kind thoughts that inspired the sender to pass them along:

• A long New York magazine feature on "The Rise of Dog Identity Politics," which explores how the increasing intimacy of human/canine relationships in urban settings and in households with fewer children has produced something of an existential crisis for dogs. Moose preferred the part of the story focused on recent studies showing that dog ownership produces an increase in the social-bonding hormone, oxytocin. She figures that anything that increases the human capacities for empathy, trust, and social affiliation has to be good.
  
• A touching story from the New York Times about two elderly dogs, Harry and Bix, who lived in the same New York City apartment building and died recently within twenty four hours of one another. I am enormously grateful to have spent my earthly life in a nice house with a ridiculously large back yard rather than in an apartment in the city, but I have to admit these two fellas seem to have had a pretty good thing going. Their humans got together after their deaths and shared a bottle of champagne. That sounds like a fitting ending to a happy story of urban canine life.
• An amazing local news story about a 4-month-old chihuahua who saved his owner's life by barking his tiny head off to alert his human that the big rig they were sleeping in at a Frederick, MD truck stop had caught fire. Coco saved the day, but he suffered severe smoke inhalation and racked up some hefty vet bills. Click on that link if you'd like to find out how to help defray the costs of this little hero's care.

Heck, Moose even found herself choked up over a story about the keeper at the National Zoo who is facing separation from the giant panda, Tai Shan, whom she has cared for for the past 4 1/2 years. (Tai Shan, in the extremely unlikely event that you haven't heard, is leaving Washington this week to enter a breeding program in China.) And both moms got a little choked up when they went to the movies this afternoon. They went to see A Single Man, the marvelous adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. Contrary to what you might have heard, this powerful film is actually a story about the devastating consequences of unexpected pet loss, featuring a couple of very handsome smooth-coated fox terriers. The moms agreed that the main character's life might have been marginally improved by the sex/gender revolution that would transform Western civilization in the years just after the film's 1962 setting, but they thought what he really needed was a new animal companion. As Snoopy notes above, there is just nothing like a terrier to cheer a guy up when he's down.

Meanwhile, in Roxie's World, there are as of yet no new dogs sniffing the grounds of my ridiculously large back yard. No dogs or plans for dogs -- just longings and memories and scraps of poetry like this one from Ezra Pound's "Canto 81," also featured in Mann's book:

What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st shall not be
reft from thee

Indeed, darlings. It is true. Don't ever doubt or forget it. Dogspeed.

Lines Almost Written Upon SOTU

There are plenty of English profs in Roxie's World, but, alas, no poets, which explains this bit of doggerel (if you'll pardon the expression) found on a crumpled yellow sticky in a wastebasket somewhere deep in the bowels of our global headquarters early this morning:

What's up with the POTUS,
Insulting the SCOTUS
And failing to quote us
While stealing our bestest idea?

This mercifully thwarted attempt at political poetry was inspired by my typist's long reflections on the president's brief remarks on higher education in Wednesday night's State of the Union address. (Paws up and a well-worn copy of Paul Fussell's Poetic Meter and Poetic Form to anyone who can come up with a rhyme for "idea," by the way.) In the speech, Mr. Obama, you may or may not have noticed, came out strongly in favor of Excellence Without Money (TM: RW Enterprises, LLC), which is this blog's way of describing the cynical or delusional notion that you can have quality, affordable higher ed with little public investment or support. He called on Congress to pass a bill that would, according to the Chronicle report linked to above, "eliminate the bank-based federal student-loan program and use the billions of dollars in projected savings to expand aid to students and colleges." Fair enough. We are certainly with the president in believing that, "In the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college." We fully support tax credits for college tuition payments and expansion of the Pell Grant program. Then, however, the president offered up this snarky little aside:

And by the way, it's time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs -- because they too have a responsibility to help solve this problem.

Okie-dokie, Mr. President, we'll get right on that. Let's see, hmmm, cutting costs on campus. What can we do? What can we do? Gosh, well, maybe we could freeze tuition? Oops, sorry, Mr. President, but we're in our fourth year of a freeze in the QTU system, and even MD Gov. Martin "You, Sir, Are No Jack Kennedy" O'Malley admits it's time to lift the cap. Trim program budgets? Oh, please, please, please, Mr. President, the itsy bitsy teenie weenie super cool queer program Moose directs has never, in its eight year life on campus, had a budget increase. Never! Indeed, its budget has already been cut several times, including a 10% cut earlier this year. Prick us anymore, and I guarantee you you will see some serious bleeding, even if we do have a supportive dean who gives back in soft money much of what gets taken away in hard money. Fine, then. Let's look at salaries. Gulp. Yeah, been there, done that, Mr. President. QTU is on its second round of furloughs this year and faces the prospect of a third round in 2010-11, depending on how much flexibility the state gives the university in handling a budget recall of $10.2 million. (Gov. Not Jack Kennedy calls for up to 10 days of furloughs for non-university state employees in his 2011 budget proposal.)

Here's the thing. Obama's little admonition to universities to "get serious about cutting their own costs" is itself not the least bit serious. It is a throwaway line, much like his proposal to freeze non-defense discretionary spending. In today's column, Paul Krugman borrows from the Center for American Progress in describing that proposal as the gesture of a "deficit peacock" -- i.e., someone who resorts to gimmicks as a way of scoring political points by merely pretending to address budget problems. Krugman goes on to take the president to task for indulging in a specious analogy between governments and families that has always made our skin crawl. Obama justified the spending freeze by saying, “Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.” Krugman points out that House minority leader John Boehner used the same analogy last year and was widely ridiculed for it. We've taken Gov. Not Jack Kennedy to task for hiding behind that very analogy in his effort to justify this year's round of cuts and furloughs.

The problem, of course, is that the current economic crisis has turned the chronic underfunding of higher education into an acute, even urgent, condition. It won't be solved by cynical rhetorical gestures or short-terms gimmicks. The belts on campus are already so tight that many of us are damn near choking for breath. We don't need to be scolded by a peacock president. We need a serious conversation about how to assure that the "world-class education" you say citizens need is affordable and available. Serious leaders can get voters to recognize the need to take serious steps to address such problems. Need proof? Voters in Oregon this week easily approved two measures to raise taxes in order to protect public education and other vital services. (H/T Chris Newfield.) You read that right: They voted to raise taxes -- in a state where voters hadn't approved an increase in the state income tax since the 1930s. Perhaps if some courageous, visionary leader in your adopted home state of Illinois had the guts to support such measures the state wouldn't be hundreds of millions of dollars in arrears to its flagship university for this year.

The choice is yours, sir: Will you truly be a president, or will you be content to be a peacock? A year into your term, an anxious nation longs to know the answer to that question.

(Photo Credit: iStockphoto, via)

Reading Obama

"I told you so" is no doubt fairly low on the maturity scale when it comes to political emotions and reactions, but, as we watch the world spin out of control over the astonishing news that born again deficit slayer President Barack Obama is apparently not the ideological soulmate of Che Guevara, we have to admit to feeling a powerful urge to climb up on the nearest rooftop and shout at the top of our collective lungs that we told you so, because, well. you. know. we. did. repeatedly.

(Image Credit: Picked up here.)

We're in good company, though. In the wake of Obama's proposal to freeze non-defense federal spending, Paul Krugman can't resist pointing out to progressives who are frustrated with his failure to challenge conservative ideology that the president is actually being the "same as he ever was" and that the evidence of his centrist inclinations was there for the seeing -- or not seeing -- all along. Melissa McEwan ends a scorching denunciation of Obama's embrace of "classic starve-the-beast conservatism" with this sardonic glance back at 2008's contentious Democratic primary race, in which she herself was excoriated for refusing to jump on the Obama bandwagon (Shakesville stayed admirably neutral as the battle between Obama and Hillary Clinton wore on and defended progressive, feminist values rather than a particular candidate):

You know, it's almost like progressives should have had a serious conversation about what kind of president Obama would really make, how he would really govern, when he kept telling us over and over and over that he wasn't a progressive.

But getting shouted at that I was a stupid, racist, man-hating traitor was fun, too.

That was fun, wasn't it, Liss? And the truth is it is not as fun as we imagined it might be to sit back and feel smug about having judged Obama correctly early in the game. (Our position, you may recall, was that Clinton and Obama were both centrists, so why not support the centrist with enough Washington experience to understand the scale of the challenge and the nature of the [implacable, uncompromising] opposition?) The stakes are too high. The political cost for the country if Democrats spend the next year cowering in a corner rather than producing results that will make a difference in people's lives is too great. Obama won because he inspired a lot of people to believe that voting mattered and government could work on their behalf. He and the Democratic congress have to start making good on some of their promises in order to turn back the rising tide of skepticism and fear that our political system and government are irreparably broken, paralyzed, unequipped to respond to the many urgencies facing the country.

Steve Pearlstein has a great column in today's WaPo on what the president would say in tonight's state of the union address if we lived in a more honest world. And Timothy Burke, over at Easily Distracted, has a moving, if dispiriting, account of the political malaise he senses in the midst of the Democratic meltdown, especially around health care but around much else as well. It's definitely a glass half-empty piece, and it ends with a confession of helplessness. We don't usually traffic in helplessness here in Roxie's World, but Burke is a smart guy and his reflections resonate with a lot of conversations the moms have been having lately with friends and fellow travelers horrified by the Democrats seeming to fall apart over the loss of a single senate seat. It's worth reading as you formulate your own assessment of the state of the union. (Secretary of State Clinton will miss Obama's speech, by the by, on account of she's got some serious world-saving work to do in London, at meetings on Yemen and Afghanistan. Girl's too busy to be jumping up and down over ideas that probably make the back of her throat burn.)

Honor bright, kids, there is little satisfaction for us in having been right about Obama all along. There was no joy at all in Moose's voice when she turned to Goose in the car last night and loudly whispered, "But it beats hell out of having been wrong, doesn't it?" No joy. None at all. Srsly.

POTUS Reads Blogs

(Barack Obama, as a presidential candidate, on his BlackBerry, 2008. Photo Credit: Jae C. Hong, Associated Press, via)

Note from the Office of Chopped Liver and Potted Plants

The "first truly wired president" reads blogs. Gay blogs even, apparently, but he prefers this one to this one, apparently. Are we bitter? Nah. Who's got time for that? We were tickled pink to stumble across this little nugget in a WaPo front pager this morning on what influences President Obama's decision-making:

As for what Obama reads online, his advisers said he looks for offbeat blogs and news stories, tracking down firsthand reporting and seeking out writers with opinions about his policies. Obama was particularly interested in Atlantic Online's Andrew Sullivan's tweeting of the Iranian elections last year, said an aide, who requested anonymity to discuss what influences the president.

Hmmm. Offbeat blogs? And a blog on politics, pop culture, and basketball written by a dead dog hasn't managed to catch your attention? Srsly? All due respect, Mr. President, but we've got it all over Mr. Andrew Sullivan when it comes to offbeat. It's true we don't have a snooty British accent, but we also don't have a history with the Republican party and a deeply obnoxious tendency to sound as pontifical as a big gay . . . pontiff. We realize there may be lingering sensitivity in the White House over our stubborn refusal to endorse you in the 2008 campaign, but if, as the Post story says, you are actively seeking "rival views" and enjoy "the rigor of having a conversation with someone who's going to push [you,]" well, then, you really might consider clicking. in. here. from. time. to. time.

Just sayin', Mr. President.

Your sincerely,
Roxie

Planning Update: MLA 2010

The convention is fake, but the fun is real!

Get in on the action, kids. We are still accepting proposals for sessions you will never see, keynotes that will never be delivered, workshops that will never be facilitated -- at MLA 2010, the best conference that never was nor will be, the conference lost to time through a brutal rearrangement of destiny. Imagine the free drinks you would have cadged at the book exhibit, the paradigm-shifting question you would have asked at the packed session of luminaries in your field, the world-transforming intimacy you would have enjoyed with someone whose eyes met yours as you asked that question . . . .

Some of you have already submitted multiple proposals, and we commend you for that. Since it's a fake conference, there are no limits on the number of insanely funny ideas you can put before us. Our partners in parody, the mysterious Photoshoppers over at MLA 2010, have already whipped up a fine image (above left) to go along with Julie Enszer's idea, posted here the other day, of a keynote address by Harold Bloom called "I Was Wrong: We Should Include Women and People of Color in the Canon." (The image was originally posted here.) Their design department is promising more book covers and fabulous convention swag for the best proposals submitted, so put on your (not) thinking caps and give it your best shot.

For the benefit of those who are too cool or too busy to venture into comments, we thought we'd pull a few examples out of what's already been submitted to inspire the slackers and the shy kids among you. You really should go back and look at the whole thread, though, so you can get the full effect of Prof. Manson Mingott's richly detailed proposal for a paper on the semiotics of bacon in Big Love, not to mention Julie's pitch for a new dramatic series called The Department. Julie also had a keynote idea for Donna Haraway -- "My Dog Died and Became a Cyborg." Moose liked that, though she thought "My Dog Died and Kept Right On Blogging" sounded like a more interesting talk. Blog pals Historiann and Dr. Crazy both weighed in with some fine suggestions. We were especially impressed with Historiann's idea for a roundtable for current grad students called "Forecast: Awesome! Your Employment Prospects As Soon as all of those Tenured Lesbian Baby-Boomers Retire." (She has such razor-sharp skills in professional prognostication, don't you think?) But we were ready to pack our bags and head for the airport when we saw Dr. Crazy's idea for a roundtable called "I Came for the Drinks." The proposal elaborates:

This panel would include everyone from graduate students to Eminent Scholars in the field who have attended one or more MLA conventions without a) interviewing (whether for a job for themselves or interviewing candidates), b)presenting a paper, or c) attending panels. Where are the free drinks to be had? What cash bars are not to be missed? Is there something wrong with enjoying crappy cheese and crackers and rotgut wine in a hotel room if you are over the age of 18? What do you do if you run into colleagues from your field or institution who ask you what you thought of a panel that you should have attended? These questions and more will be answered by our esteemed panelists.

Finally, the kind of professional advice a thirsty girl can actually use! Keep the ideas comin', kids. We need the laughs, and we're betting you do, too. Helluva week, eh? Oh, and just in case you wandered in here looking for information about the next actual meeting of a little organization called the Modern Language Association, you might want to click here.