More Lists (because then it looks like I'm productive) By Catherine on 5/31/2007 09:13:00 AM
List of Things I Want to Do Before I Die1. Learn to surf
2. Live outside the United States
3. Learn Latin (just for shits and giggles)
4. Own a pair of Manolos
5. Get acupuncture
6. Hike at least part of the Appalachian Trail
7. Write a bestselling novel
8. Visit all 50 states, plus the territories (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming; American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands)
Italics denote someplace I've been, and bold denotes someplace I am likely to visit within the next year.
More to come as I think harder and harder about it.
Something I've been thinking about quite a bit By Catherine on 5/11/2007 08:07:00 AM
In a time in the history of the United States when achievement in schools is slacking, scripted standardized tests are enabling our youths' senses of entitlement, and NCLB is being flouted by the Iraq War, why are we focusing so hard on fixing a country that WE DESTROYED? We're allowing our own country to disintegrate before our eyes, into fundamentalist camps like Jesus's Army or into total apathy.What happened to loving America? We impose democracy on a region that has been enmeshed in foment for thousands of years, we allow our government to blatantly lie through their teeth about the reason we're doing it, and yet we can't muster up the courage to turn our critical eye in the other direction and look at ourselves and try to fix what is so broken about our own society. I think, in a way, I do love America... But I love it for what it used to represent, not what contemporary history has turned it into.
Our President is arrogant, unqualified, and too stubborn to see past the tip of his nose. In contemporary America, the Patriot Act dictates our rights and liberties, dismissing the Constitution and Bill of Rights with a lighthandedness that should be scary-- but yet, there are citizens, including some of my own family members, who truly believe that we are being better protected now that our phones can be tapped and our assets frozen without so much as an explanation why. I know I don't feel any safer, now that going to the airport with my best friend, an Egyptian, means we have to open her trunk and allow the guards to look through her things-- if anything, I feel less safe. I guess I'm just a libertarian at heart, but government, STAY OUT of my life! The GOP, as A so succinctly put it, wants to get back to their roots: fucking shit up for everyone who disagrees with the ludicrous party lines-- they espouse an ethos of intolerance to dissent... But where would we be, had the colonists never dissented in 1774? Where would African-American culture be, had the North and South not disagreed over slavery? Where would you be, dear reader, if you had not disagreed with your mom on where to go to college, or whom to marry, or what to become?
And furthermore, who is GWB or any GOP candidate (aside from Romney, who is personally antiabortion but says that he will leave current legislation intact) to tell me what I may and may not do with my body? They're all MEN! They don't even HAVE reproductive organs, so fuck them saying that abortion is killing a little person. Now, here's where it gets personal. I can think of very few situations where I could personally make that choice, but thanks to birth control and sex ed (as fucked up as it currently is), I was able to make the right choices and never have to be in the situation to HAVE to decide. I feel like Republican platforms are all about control: you can be anti-abortion, but still support the death penalty? I can't reconcile that, I just can't.
If I were to write to every GOP party member running for office today (some of whom don't believe in evolution, WHAT THE FUCK?) I would say, "Just because it makes YOU feel icky doesn't give you the right to dictate to everyone else what they can and cannot do." It's a juvenile, black-and-white mentality that I really can't abide, and since they're all men, it doesn't affect them ANYWAY. It's the same thing as them saying, "I feel yucky about this, so no one should ever be allowed to do it and we'll never speak of it again." I picture C and J's cat Shwoogy (who isn't very smart, hence the reason for the comparison) sticking his head under the ottoman and thinking we can't see him. I'd rather have a personal opinion (and mine is, I don't know if I could, so thank god I've never had to decide) and keep something like abortion LEGAL and SAFE and (hopefully) fairly rare than take away the right entirely and watch women suffer and possibly obtain them illegally, in an unsanitary conditions, by unqualified practitioners (or worse yet) try to do it at home.
This turned into a way longer rant than I anticipated... I know I don't exactly bring up any good points that aren't all over the internet already, but truly, this shit weighs on me. As a woman, an American, and a believer in the inherent good that our nation is capable of, I hope that 2008 can reestablish some of the faith that my generation has lost-- and that our troops will be brought HOME. Thanks for listening.
Labels: abortion, hope, Iraq, politics