Category: Uncategorized

race and the election

I heard this awesome piece, Does Race Matter In ’08? The View From York, Pa., on NPR yesterday afternoon and I want to write more about it, but don’ have time right now.  Still, I wanted to through it out there because I think the people profiled say some very awesome and very scary things, but they’re all very real in a way that I rarely see the media create space for discussions about race.  I think that people said the things that they did because the reporters framed race in precisely the right way, asking about race not just as who you are, but as what you’ve experienced:

Most voters say they won’t decide between Barack Obama and John McCain on the basis of race. But, in a question that is more subtle than the standard questions in a poll, can a decision be based on the racial experience of the voter?

why vote? and distance from policy

I would now ultimately summarize my last post on the election as saying that deciding whether or not to vote and who to vote for is a personal decision based on one’s own politics, policy analysis, investments, family, identity, etc. in all it’s contradiction and complexity and not overwhelmed by media coverage of the election, political pundits, ideological rhetoric, or other people’s (however vocal they might be) reasons for supporting a given candidate.  To paraphrase a pundit on the radio, this election is not about issues, it’s about how the candidates resonate with voters.  This is true and great and sad.  But, this reality doesn’t have to be as stark and uncomplicated as the campaigns would like it to be.  I’m so excited that race and gender are part of this campaign and that I have heard more and more people talking about these things as a result of the election.  Still, I got really sick of people debating just how black Barack Obama really was, or trying to explain why women identified with Hillary Clinton, and now, the super-cynical steel cage match between race and gender that was ushered in by Sarah Palin’s VP nomination.  What this leaves out entirely is any imagination for the way that Barack Obama’s experience with race might resonate with someone’s experience with gender or all the other complicated ways that we can connect with or reject the ideas of the people around us.  I resent the implication that people of color identify with Barack Obama just because he is multi-racial or that white, working class people can’t for the same reason.  It shouldn’t be that stark, and it isn’t if people just give themselves some space to do some critical introspection.

This isn’t the only reason why I think people like me (young, punk, creative-classish, college-town living) should vote.  In the first few elections where I was eligible to vote, I voted by absentee ballot.  The first time I actually went to the polls it was pretty exciting and also eye-opening.  I think that people should vote if only to see who else votes and what this says about where political power lies on your community.  Are the people at your polling place mostly of one race?  One gender?  Perceivably of one economic group?  What about the election workers?  Is it easy to vote or confusing?  What might your experience suggest about barriers that others could encounter in having access to even the most basic forms of political involvement?

Finally, Patrick asked me why I thought many of my peers weren’t voting.  Off the top of my head, I said it was because of people’s identification as radicals or anti-authoritarians and because many people just couldn’t be bothered to navigate the process of getting registered and going to the polls.  I forgot one important factor however.  An argument that I frequently hear is that libral, Democratic candidates are just as bad as the conservative ones at a policy level.  Common examples of this are the environmental policy during the Clinton admininstration or support for free trade agreements and more recently Scott Ritter’s statement that there wasn’t much difference between Obama and McCain’s rhetoric about Iran.  More importantly though, I feel like many of my peers feel unaffected by politics, even in the last 8 years of the Bush administration.  This makes sense.  Of my friends few own or drive cars very often, hardly anyone has been in military service or even has a family member in active duty, hardly anyone is a parent, hardly anyone is an immigrant or child of first-generation immigrants, few had to sustain the full cost of a college education themselves and many decided to forgo college, few work in a professional setting where job loss due to discrmination or harassment is a concern, most are young and lead a healthy lifestyle and have been free of chronic health concerns.  I’m not hating.  This describes me too, and I’d say we’re in good company.  However, this is a dangerous place to be in because it is very easy to feel like we haven’t been directly affected by the policy decisions of the last 8 years.  It’s also easy to imagine weathering another 8 years of a Republican administration feeling like little has changed in our daily lives and with the slim satisfaction that we supported neither the reviled Republican leader nor their imperfect liberal rival.

I don’t think this perception is always true, but it’s an easy one to have.  For myself, I had to think a little before I realized how differently my mom, a special-ed elementary school teacher, talks and thinks about teaching and what she sees as possible within and as a result of education since No Child Left Behind became part of her reality.  Also, I’ve been out of college for a few years, but I’m thinking of going back and the prospects for financial aid are really, really different than five years ago.  Still, it took a bit of thought and intention to go from “all the candidate’s policies suck, fuck em'” to “these things affect me”, so I understand the apparent apathy of many of my peers.  I just hope it doesn’t stick.

Asking about animal ingredients in Spanish

 

We were in Miami 2 days ago and were pretty excited to make sandwiches with Cuban bread.  Unfortunately, a lot of Cuban bread has lard as an ingredient.  I struggled to ask if bread contained lard.  I found on the web that the Spanish word for lard is manteca (or perhas grasa de cerdo).

My high school spanish question should have been: ¿Hay manteca en este pan?

Great moments in personal sporting history

The collective sense of captivation that the Olympics now seems to hold and just trying to be more active on tour has made me think a bit about sports.  On the first day of tour, stopping in Columbus to pick up t-shirts, will and I played a fast game of basketball against Ryan and Austin.  We lost by a point, but it felt good to run around before getting back in the van to drive the hours to Buffalo.  My only basket was a pretty beautiful one where I moved into space around Austin, shot, and swished one through the hoop.  I played horse yesterday afternoon in a well-worn court by the sea and while we were playing it made me think about the ideas of great moments in personal sporting history.  I think that sports are a pervasive enough part of our culture that everyone has a few of these.  These are things like the time you swung high enough on the playground swingset to awe your playmates, or the time you got the 4-square bully out with the eliminator, or the time you miraculously got picked first for the kickball game.  For those who played organized sports there might actually be a goal in the big game or a sprint to the finish to outpace a rival.  Will remembered his as the time he stole home base in a little league game or the time that his proficiency at sinking 3-pointers from the corner of the court got him the respect of two girls who were total ballers at his childhood summer camp.  For me, I remember fencing in the woods with sticks with this kid I knew who was kind of a bully.  At one point, I knocked him off balance and he fell into a creek.  I ran like hell hoping to escape the repurcussions of my momentary triumph.

Sports, Race, and Imagination

I came across this article in the New York Times, A Country Feels a Hurdler’s Pain, and was at first surprised that there would be such a reaction to one runner being unable to compete.  It made more sense when I read further in the article and read this quote by the runner, China’s Liu Xiang:

“It is kind of a miracle,” Liu said. “It is unbelievable — a Chinese, an Asian, has won this event. It is a proud moment not only for China but for Asia and all people who share the same yellow skin color.”

“Please pay attention to Chinese track and field,” he said. “I think we Chinese can unleash a yellow tornado on the world.”

and the accompanying commentary:

Please note these are not the ravings of a Western journalist. These are the words of Liu — reasonable enough, since he had just become the first Chinese male ever to win a gold medal in Olympic track and field.

…

This was not some foolish boast of racial superiority, just an assertion of standing tall against the world. Liu was suggesting that a Chinese man could reach the level of Rafael Nadal of tennis or Kobe Bryant of basketball or Ronaldinho of football or Catherine Ndereba of Kenya, who sprang from other continents.

I can see why the prospect of a Champion Chinese sprinter would be a big deal.  I loved sports as a kid, but of all of the heroes of Ohio Sports at the time Bernie Kosar, Mark Price, and countless baseball players whose names now escape me – none of them were Asian, looked like me, or my father, or my paternal relatives.  I think it’s hard with institutions, like pro sports, that seem so important, to feel like you don’t really have a place in this world.  This is connected to ideas of masculinity too and a global event like the Olympics and the things that people invest in it make me think about the possibility of a  globalized masculine ideal.  To be sure there are many talented, respected, championed Asian athletes.  However, none come to mind that rise to the top in the contests that seem to define a certain ideal of manhood – absolute strength and speed.

For a long time I’ve wanted to interview my friends who are Asian about their experience, because it’s something that doesn’t seem to have much space to be discussed otherwise.  I’ve only gotten to interview one friend so far, and the thing that surprised me the most when he spoke about his experience of being Asian in a small Indiana town was that what defined his sense of difference was size.  He was just smaller than most of his other male peers.  In retrospect, this was important to me too.  One way of being a boy, one centered around strength and power and physical presence just felt closed to me.  This is probably for the best, and I should feel glad that I managed to find things that gave me attention, that garnered respect, that made me feel like an expert, chances to lead or make decisions, all the subconscious expectations that are important to many people, but that I have always felt were tied to maleness.  I can still remember that sinking feeling though, of surveying the territory and hearing the hum of voices insisting, “this is not for you.”

passing grep results to other unix commands

This is old news to a lot of folks, but new and powerful to me.

Search for text in files and move matching files

$ grep --files-with-matches --null foo * | xargs --null -I xxx mv xxx dir_for_foos/

The above command searches for the string foo in all files in the current subdirectory.  It then moves each file to a specified directory.

Read a list of files from a text file and move those files somewhere

$ xargs -a ok.txt  -I xxx mv xxx /var/lib/accounting/joblogs/parsed

Healthy Indiana Plan Update

I still haven’t gotten my introductory literature from my health provider (MDWise) or my second month’s bill for my POWER account.  I called MDWise and they said they were behind on sending them but that I should receive them “soon”.  The rep also said that I shouldn’t worry about being late on my POWER account payment because of the delay in sending out the bills.  Finally, I was able to get the name and # of my assigned doctor and my Recipient ID (RID) number so I can go and receive healthcare.  So, if anyone else has the HIP and hasn’t heard from them, call MDWise or Anthem and see if you can get your info.  You can call Anthem at 1-800-553-2019 and MDWise at  1-877-822-7196 or 317-822-7196 if you are in the Indianapolis area.

water heater woes

Well, if you’ve been paying attention to my del.icio.us feed, you’ll see I’ve been struggling to repair a water heater that had been partially submerged in the recent flooding:

Submerged Waterheater

Tristan recommended replacing the thermocouple as it is a frequent point of failure for gas furnaces and water heaters and is relatively cheap and easy to replace.  I eventually got the manifold assembly removed and had access to the thermocouple.  A little water spilled out, so I figured that messing with this was probably a good idea.  I went to get a replacement thermocouple, but neither of the two hardware stores had a left-hand threaded thermocouple.  Eventually, I was directed to a plumbing supply company who told me that only Whirlpool made those parts and that replacements weren’t generally available and that there was a class action lawsuit about this.

I finally went to Lowes and apparently they have some replacement kits (but not for sale, you have to let them know the serial # of the water heater).  I didn’t have time to pursue this further, but hopefully I can get the part from Lowes and have hot water.

I also found theremocouple replacement instructions for replacing the thermocouple on Whirlpool’s support site.

More on healthcare

I just wanted to post a link to an old post about the Healthy Indiana Plan because it’s got some recent comment activity that might be of use to some.  You can find that post here.  I believe that the point of contact for the HIP is the FSSA, so many of the issues discussed in the previous post about the FSSA forum can also be seen in trying to navigate through the HIP system.

Also,  I heard a story on NPR this morning about a report that even insured people were experiencing less access to healthcare.  I couldn’t find a link to the story, but I did find a Reuters article on the report.

From Insured losing access to healthcare – US study:

 About 20 percent of the U.S. population delayed or were unable to get access to medical care when they needed it in 2007, up from 14 percent four years earlier, a study released on Thursday found.

About 9.5 million more people went without medical care in 2007, compared with 2003, the nationally representative survey released by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan policy group, found.

In a striking finding, the survey said although those without insurance were more likely to report going without care, those with insurance had a greater percentage increase in unmet medical needs.