Pink Answers the Question: "If you had a clone, would you do yourself?"

Bye Bye!

Swim

This morning while swimming, there was an older gentlemen swimming in the other lane in my direction and both of us were doing breast stroke and wearing goggles. I so wish that we had high-fived.

Racism

While it is true and important that we have made the historic decision as a nation to elect a minority of our country for President, there has been a backlash of racist activity directed at our President-elect. To some people, this is shocking, to others, it's normal, and other people don't care. The fact is, if someone believes that racism is dead in our country they really haven't been paying attention.

Reading the comments section of the article posted above (which was actually pretty intelligent for internet commentary), I found several mentions to the completely erroneous "reverse racism" targeted at white people who criticize Obama or would vote for McCain. I'm getting into controversial territory here, but I would say that there is racism against many different groups of people from other groups of people, but that what is most detrimental is racism with power behind it. An individual that hurts another individual based on their race is wrong, but an entire group of people being classified as less human and denied equal opportunities and rights for centuries is an atrocity. These things are not able to occur unless there is massive power behind the racist ideals and the effects of this oppression are long-lasting. White men control most of our nation's wealth and are a majority of the representation in our government and while it is much more likely for a black man to go to prison than college and affirmative action is unacceptable "reverse racism", ivy league institutions use legacy admissions to continue their tradition of upper class white students.

The point is that there cannot be "reverse racism" if there is no power coming in the reverse direction. Everyone holds some sort of power over others, but the massive weight of white privilege in our country changes the dynamic. The other interesting relationship between the comments about "reverse racism" and the list of racist incidents relating to the election is that they are all absent of concrete consequences. I know that the emotional distress of seeing a burning cross on your lawn and the history that evokes can be incredibly powerful and overwhelming, but it is very different than the systemic racism that exists and persists in our country. In my view, these are the things that should be viewed as atrocious and vile, that we do not give a portion of our population the same opportunities due to where they live, how impoverished they already are, and the color of their skin and what it means to our country historically.

There has been a new attitude of "Now there is no excuse for young black men; it has become apparent that they can now become president." There are plenty of reasons that young black men and women still do not have the opportunity or belief that they could one day become president. When you spend every day living in the midst of extreme poverty and violence, it appears that there is no way out, and in many ways this is true. The more symbolic, threatening, and personal incidents from this article are more representational of a mood that still exists, a personal belief that one person is inherently better than another, a persistent hatred. But the systemic problems are the ones that make my skin crawl, because we are legally allowing oppression and not viewing it as so. We go on ignoring the real problems facing our nation and black communities and we will forget that we are trying to reach true equality.

Age

jasonbenedict.com

I do not visit my grandmother often, so when I do visit her, it is an Experience.

My grandmother, Grandma Hunin, lives in a retirement home called Cathedral Village. She suffers from Alzheimer's and the last time I visited her she would begin crying at seemingly random times. I remember being incredibly impressed with how well my mother coped with seeing her own mother so unable to communicate, so frustrated with her own memory loss, so emotional and helpless. I cried during that visit, remembering the strong woman that my grandmother is but not seeing that strength when I looked at her. She was only using one word responses at that time, a lot of "Yeah".

I was nervous about this trip, two years after I had last seen Hunin. She has progressed to the point that she does not speak really, and her communication is limited. But through my experience during this visit, I would say that there is a strange arch of development in this disease. The last time I was here, I was never really sure whether or not Hunin recognized me. This time, even though she is more progressed in her disease, I felt that maybe she did recognize me. Maybe her recognition is now on a different level; maybe after not remembering for so long she has come to a point where any glimmer of recognition or sense of memory has become strong enough to trust. If I could see the way she works through it, maybe it would be something like: "I recognize that there is a blonde woman smiling at me. I remember that smiling like that means that we are close. I will smile back." And she shows me as well in the way that she grips and squeezes my hand as I sit near her on the bed, as she kisses my cheek while I kiss hers, that there is some connection there. Maybe there is memory in the blood, and on the path to mental oblivion there is a point in our threshold where we let go of our mental ability to know and rely on our physical sense of recognition.

Either way, I felt the strength of my grandmother again as she met her great-grandson Mason for the first time, as she stared at me for a length that proved lack of self-consciousness. As my family processed the visit together, we mentioned the similarities between infants and Alzheimer's patients. Both in new territory, unable to fully competently communicate, and distressed at these facts. The end seems like it's a little like the beginning.

Victory AND Defeat

Today has been a roller coaster of emotions so far. I was absolutely joyous with the news that Barack Obama will be our 44th President, I even cried I was so happy. I ended the night with uncertainty about the results for Propositions 8 and 4, and found out this morning that Prop 4 thankfully did not pass and Prop 8 unfortunately did. I've been bouncing back and forth all morning between elation about our new, hopeful, competent, and impressive President-Elect and depression over the success of denying rights to a portion of our population through the passing of Prop 8.

How utterly disgusting that we would even be willing to allow a popular vote to choose what rights people are allowed to have. Why haven't we learned yet that just because someone is different, in a minority group, or against the "norm" does not mean that they deserve less than everyone else? How do we not connect the civil rights movement of the black community with the current struggles the LGBTI community faces?

I'm having a difficult time articulating what I think should be said about this issue...I'm realizing as the day goes on how much this means to me and how passionately I feel that everyone should have equal access to name their love, so passionately that I have snapped at people I care about and teared up thinking about what this means. This is painful, it hurts and I don't know how to say what it means as well as this article from the Good Times of Santa Cruz:

"Yes, there is tremendous power in the word “marriage,” and that’s why it should be made available to every person who’s capable of such love that they choose to use it. We have imbued the word with the ultimate and complete amounts of commitment, faithfulness, and sanctity. Sadly, it is a word with such power that many people—of all persuasions and sexualities—sometimes find they are incapable of living up to it. It is a word with such nobility that it perhaps asks more of people than they are truly capable. But that is why we choose to use it. The word ‘marriage’ represents a goal to be the best, most caring, most loving, most amazing person one can be for the sake of another person. There is no other word for that hope. The word must be available to all people."

They have said it better than I could and have perfectly articulated why marriage should be available to all who love, no matter how separate church and state must be. We should all have the right to language and its meaning for us.

With both of these results, we have a lot of work moving forward, but this country is worth it to me.