Owl's · Nest

Follow link. Read down.  Help?  Which you can do by buying books, so, you know, it's not like we weren't going to do that anyway...

Watch, think, pass it on.  Maybe to our representatives and senators?  http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html

Yes, this is shameless promotion.  My friend Lyndsay Faye has written a book.  Not only has she written it but it has been published and is available in bookstores as of today.  The book is called Dust and Shadow, a story about Holmes and Jack the Ripper, and it is highly enjoyable.  She has done a fantabulous job and Simon & Schuster is already looking forward to publishing her next novel.  If you are buying a book this week, I highly suggest this one.  If you are not buying a book this week, go and ask your library to get it!

Some of you already know about SPARC.  Actually probably all of you, since it's a small group that reads this lj.   :)  SPARC's first big fundraising event is coming at the end of this month.  The Totally Normal Event is being put together by Jeff Mach of Wicked Events and promises to be an exciting time for all.  We have

-great performers -- Voltaire, Freezepop, Brian Viglione of Dresden Dolls fame, for a few

-vendors selling cool stuff -- think along the lines of swords and sex toys

-tribes of people who share common uncommon interests -- I myself am a Mad Scientist

-and more!

The event is taking place at a very nice hotel in Whippany, NJ, nice in terms of both the hotel itself and the attitude of the management to our strange group.  Tickets are, I believe, $30 at the door, but less in advance.  You can come for the day, but if you can, get a hotel room and stay the night -- these folk are famed for their afterparties!  It will be a fantastic time, and is in support of SPARC.

PSA ends.  Thanks for reading!
Info about the Totally Normal Event: http://www.wickedfaire.com/TNE/index.html
Info about SPARC: http://www.sparcsummer.org

I am unnecessary.  Harvey Fierstein rocks (but we all knew that, didn't we?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/opinion/13fierstein.html

The Phantom Menace.  George Lucas got a few things right, there.  "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, hatred leads to suffering."  Right on Master Yoda.  I'm not even going to talk about suffering, it's too obvious.  I'm going to stick with the first part of the lesson: fear, and hatred.  Specifically hatred.

See, Don Imus has been suspended.  Not that I care specifically about him; I don't think I've ever heard his show. (Stay with me here; it doesn't matter for what I'm going to talk about.  This isn't about Don Imus.)  His crime was some sort of racially offensive remark.  I have no idea what it was; obviously the news programs are not repeating it.  I'm going to assume, since the whole world seems to be up in arms over it, that it was in fact pretty offensive.

As offensive as Michael Richards?  As offensive as Mel Gibson?

See, I'm not interested in these people, particularly, or in what they said or even who they managed to piss off.  I'm interested in the fact that they managed to piss off somebody.  That in a moment of bad judgement, of not thinking about it, what emerged from their mouths was hateful speech against one group or another.

Hateful speech is a symptom.  If we accept Master Yoda's assertion, these people express hatred because they are angry.  And they are angry because they are afraid.  (Spider Robinson has written artfully about anger always being fear in disguise.  The next time someone gets mad at you try to figure out what they're afraid of.  Interesting things happen.)  If hateful speech, or any other act of hatred, is a symptom of fear -- what are these men afraid of? 

But there's another symptom, here, and that is the reaction of society to hateful speech.  We suppress it, hide it, publicly condemn those who have spoken it.  We do not expose it, or question it, or talk about racism or anti-Semitism or other form of bigotry.  In fact, we hate the people who say it.  Because we're afraid.  I think this fear is a little more obvious than the other kind.  We're scared that people might believe untrue things about us or our friends.  Scared that if we let the rhetoric of hate have free rein that we will permit oppression, even genocide if taken to its extreme.

But we forget that suppression is never a solution.  A school that refuses to talk about bullying is a safe haven for bullies.  A school that refuses to talk about sex is one with a high number of pregnant teens.  A country, a world, that does not talk about its hatred is one where hatred is, perversely, allowed to flourish.

There's not much we can do about the celebrities, the ones with the microphones, the ones with the cameras.  But if we are seeing this fear in people who are so much in the public eye, how much fear is there not recorded by the tabloids?  All we can do is watch ourselves, and each other.  When someone speaks to you in a hateful way, ask them what they are afraid of.  If you hear hate in your own voice, ask yourself about the source of your fear.  Maybe interesting things will happen.

Oooh, a second post. This is one better than I've ever done on a blog before. I've been taping my dissertation notes to the wall and will probably have to start moving furniture to accomodate it. My trip to England was fantastic, by the by, and here's a pic to prove it:

This is from the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, London. Sherlockians are not to miss it.

Welcome to my livejournal. Probably I won't update it much, but now I can look at all the friends-locked stuff you keep teasing me with (you know who you are).

In two hours I am on my way to the UK for a week, a real vacation. Flying tomorrow at 8:15, god help me. That's why I'm spending the night with my friend; I literally can't leave Westchester early enough on public transit to actually get to the airport in enough time to make my flight. And I'm just so excited it's spilling over onto the internet.

'Cause I'm a dweeb, here are my most recent poems. Obligatory stuff: do not repost it or use it or claim it as your own. It's mine and I worked hard on it. Please do comment with constructive criticism; I want to start getting some of my stuff published, so I welcome any thoughts that will help me be a better poet.

Emblazoned
Fire grows like hope;
an eternal sun flies through the dark.
Believe this:
a day is coming
when the season will turn
and our work will set the world alight.

Observations Upon the Pull of the Lunar Orb
Love flows, and I am helpless in the tide;
The change impelled beneath the waxing moon.
I sing my savage howl across the wide
Sea, and I pray you will slip anchor soon.
The salty wind wakes fire in my scars,
Left by the lash, to drive the wolf away.
But you alone know how to end my war:
Sweet silver in your hand, and you will say
My Christian name three times; and I will stand
Like human being, and throw off my curse.
And will you love me then, and stay on land?
Or am I saved from savagery for worse?
The beast is better, if I pray in vain,
If your tide ebb, your love decrease and wane.